10/06/2026
Posted by Buffalo Latino Village:
COMMUNITY VOICE
October 2026
Closing PS 33 Bilingual Center Would Be a Failure of Educational Equity
Community leaders, educators, and advocates call on Buffalo Public Schools to remove PS 33 from the proposed closure list and pursue meaningful alternatives.
Alexandre E. Burgos | Wilmer Olivencia Jr. | Gloria Pagan
And Concerned Community Leaders and Advocates
On October 2, 2026, Buffalo Public Schools announced a sweeping restructuring proposal that would shutter or repurpose eight schools across the city beginning in the 2027–2028 school year. Among those targeted is PS 33 Bilingual Center, located on Elk Street in South Buffalo — a school that for decades has served as an irreplaceable educational home for the city's Hispanic, Latino, and immigrant families. We, the undersigned community leaders, educators, parents, and advocates, write today to register our deep and unequivocal opposition to this proposal. Closing PS 33 would not simply eliminate a school building from a district map. It would dismantle a living, breathing institution that has anchored a community — and in doing so, it would constitute a fundamental failure of educational equity.
PS 33 Bilingual Center is not merely a school; it is a promise that was made to families who arrived in this city — often with limited English, often navigating complex immigration journeys, and always holding onto the belief that their children could thrive here. That promise took the form of a dual-language, bilingual education model that allowed children to grow academically in both Spanish and English, to see their culture reflected in their classrooms, and to develop the cognitive and linguistic skills that research consistently shows lead to stronger long-term educational outcomes. For parents like those we stand alongside today, PS 33 has meant the difference between a school system that speaks to their children and one that simply speaks at them.
The district's proposal justifies the closure on the grounds of three factors: declining enrollment, the rising cost of operating nearly sixty schools, and the need to ensure adequate staffing across the district. The proposal claims it would save approximately $24 million annually — a figure that sounds significant in the abstract, but which must be weighed against what is being lost. We do not dismiss the district's fiscal pressures. We understand that Buffalo Public Schools faces real and serious financial challenges. But fiscal responsibility and educational equity are not mutually exclusive obligations — and the way this proposal has been assembled suggests that the communities most reliant on specialized, culturally responsive programming were not adequately consulted before these decisions were made.
“No child should lose access to culturally and linguistically responsive education simply because the district needs to balance its books.”
A COMMUNITY BUILT OVER GENERATIONS — NOT EASILY REPLACED
The district has indicated that students from PS 33 would be able to continue studying Spanish and English at PS 3 D'Youville Porter Campus School, PS 30 Frank A. Sedita Academy, and PS 76 Herman Badillo Bilingual Academy. We appreciate that bilingual options exist elsewhere in the district. But this argument misses a critical reality: the families who chose PS 33 chose it because of where it is located. Rising housing costs have pushed many Hispanic and Latino families out of the East Side neighborhoods historically associated with Buffalo's bilingual programs and into communities in South Buffalo. PS 33 is not just accessible to these families — it is often the only bilingual option that is geographically reachable given transportation constraints, work schedules, and the practical demands of daily life for working immigrant and refugee households.
Moving children across the city does not preserve access — it shifts the burden of that access entirely onto the shoulders of families who already carry disproportionate burdens. A parent who works two jobs and cannot afford a car cannot simply redirect their first grader to a school on the opposite side of Buffalo. A child who is just learning English cannot simply absorb the disruption of a new school, a new teacher, and a new peer environment without significant academic and emotional cost. These are not hypothetical concerns. They are the lived realities of the families we represent, and they deserve to be treated as serious policy considerations, not logistical afterthoughts.
We also call on the Board of Education to consider what the closure of PS 33 signals to the broader immigrant and refugee population of Buffalo — a population that has been central to this city's demographic revitalization over the past two decades. Buffalo has invested significantly in its New American welcome infrastructure, and bilingual public education is one of the most tangible expressions of that investment. Dismantling it without exhausting every alternative first sends a message that this community's trust in public institutions is misplaced. We refuse to accept that message, and we do not believe the Board of Education intends to send it.
THE CASE FOR EDUCATIONAL EQUITY
Research is unambiguous: multilingual learners who receive sustained, high-quality bilingual instruction outperform peers educated exclusively in English-only environments over the long term. They demonstrate stronger reading comprehension, higher graduation rates, and greater cognitive flexibility. The benefits extend beyond the individual — bilingual graduates and contribute to a community's economic vitality, its capacity for cross-cultural communication, and its civic health. When a district eliminates a bilingual school, it is not simply making an administrative adjustment. It is interrupting an educational pipeline that serves among the most vulnerable students in the system — English Language Learners, newcomer students, children of immigrants and refugees — and it is doing so in a way that places the costs of fiscal restructuring squarely on the children who can least afford to bear them.
We are acutely aware that the Buffalo Board of Education is being asked to make painful choices. We do not minimize that responsibility. But we ask the Board to apply the same rigor to measuring the human cost of these closures as it has applied to measuring the fiscal cost of keeping these schools open. We ask that equity impact assessments be conducted and made public before any vote is taken. We ask that the communities affected — not just notified after the fact, but genuinely engaged in a collaborative problem-solving process — be given a seat at the table before this decision is finalized. Three public meetings scheduled across two weeks, with limited notice, do not constitute meaningful community engagement on a decision of this magnitude.
WHAT WE ARE ASKING FOR
We come to this moment not merely as critics of a proposal, but as stakeholders committed to helping Buffalo Public Schools find a path forward that does not sacrifice its most vulnerable students. To that end, we put forward the following demands to the Superintendent and the Buffalo Board of Education:
1. Remove PS 33 Bilingual Center from the proposed closure list immediately. The Board should not vote to approve any restructuring plan that includes the closure or repurposing of PS 33 until a full equity impact assessment has been conducted, published, and subjected to genuine community review. The stakes for multilingual learners and immigrant families are too high for this decision to be rushed.
2. Conduct and publish a comprehensive equity impact assessment for each school identified in the restructuring proposal. This assessment must examine the demographic composition of each affected school, the availability and geographic accessibility of equivalent programming at receiving schools, the transportation barriers facing displaced families, and the projected academic outcomes for English Language Learners under each proposed scenario.
3. Establish a meaningful community co-governance process that includes parents, educators, community-based organizations, and elected officials in the development of any alternative restructuring plans. This process must be transparent, adequately resourced, and given sufficient time to produce genuine alternatives — not serve as a rubber stamp for decisions already made behind closed doors.
4. Explore all available alternatives to full closure before any school serving predominantly immigrant, refugee, or multilingual learner populations is eliminated. These alternatives should include, but not be limited to: shared-space arrangements with other district programs, partnerships with community-based organizations to co-locate services and increase enrollment, grant-funded expansion of the bilingual model, and the consolidation of administrative functions into underutilized district-owned facilities rather than school buildings currently serving students.
5. Guarantee stability, continuity, and culturally responsive programming for every student currently enrolled at PS 33 Bilingual Center, regardless of what ultimate decision the Board reaches regarding the school's future. This guarantee must include written assurances regarding the preservation of bilingual instruction, the retention of qualified bilingual staff, and the provision of adequate transportation to receiving schools for any student whose family requests it.
WE STAND TOGETHER
PS 33 Bilingual Center has stood as a pillar of stability, accessibility, and culturally and linguistically responsive education for the families of South Buffalo and beyond. It represents the principle — one that Buffalo Public Schools has publicly affirmed time and again — that every child, regardless of the language spoken at home, regardless of the country from which their family came, deserves an education that meets them where they are, honors who they are, and prepares them fully for the world they will enter. That principle is not a luxury to be discarded when budgets tighten. It is a foundational commitment, and it must be defended.
We recognize that the district faces a genuine fiscal crisis, and we do not ask the Board to ignore that reality. We ask only that the Board not resolve that crisis by concentrating its costs on the children and families who have already sacrificed the most, who have the fewest alternatives, and who placed the deepest trust in the promise of public education. There are paths forward that do not require the destruction of what PS 33 has built. We are ready to help find them. But we will not remain silent while a community institution is dismantled without a fair, transparent, and equitable process.
The Buffalo Board of Education has both the authority and the obligation to remove PS 33 Bilingual Center from this proposal. We call upon each member of the Board to exercise that authority — to stand on the side of equity, of transparency, and of the children and families who are counting on them. The decision before the Board is not simply a financial one. It is a moral one. And we are watching closely how it is made.
We stand together in opposition to the proposed closure of PS 33 Bilingual Center.
Respectfully submitted,
Alexandre E. Burgos
Wilmer Olivencia Jr.
Gloria Pagan
And Concerned Community Leaders and Advocates
Buffalo, New York | October 2026
This op-ed was submitted to the Buffalo Board of Education and shared with local press as a public statement of community opposition to the proposed closure of PS 33 Bilingual Center under Buffalo Public Schools’ October 2, 2026, restructuring proposal. The Buffalo Board of Education must review and approve any school closures before they take effect. Public meetings regarding the proposal are scheduled for October 8, October 15, and October 20, 2026. For more information, visit buffaloschools.org.
