SAN JOSE — The Alum Rock Union School Board on Saturday held a heated, emergency meeting after a beloved community center burned down on Friday.
Board members in a packed chamber room clashed with community organizers who largely blamed officials for what they called a lack of action to save the Mexican American Social Services Agency building adjacent to the district’s Renaissance Academy at Mathson site.
Organizers with SOMOS Mayfair and the Si Se Puede Collective say for months they had been pleading with the board to remodel and reopen the vacant and deteriorating building that was once a cherished and popular youth center. The site had been at the center of major financial scandals, which included the Internal Revenue Service revoking the facility’s nonprofit status in 2012 over misuse of teacher pension funds.
“This is your failure,” district alumna Liz Gonzalez told the board Saturday. “You are not equipped to work with the community.”
The MACSA facility remained closed for over a decade and was fenced off Saturday after firefighters at 1 a.m. Friday morning fought a three-alarm blaze that eventually destroyed the building. The building appeared on the San Jose Preservation Action Council’s “Endangered 8” list in 2025, which gathers together architectural landmarks believed to be endangered.
In her comments to the board, Gonzalez claimed board members don’t “give a damn about us” and have shown residents “disrespect” by not repurposing the building before it burned down.
“This moment could have been avoided and it is your failure to act. Don’t come here today talking about urgency when the people have been waiting for years for this building that no one got to step into, that people now will never get to know,” Gonzalez said. “We are tired of the disrespect.”
Board Vice President Andres Quintero, skirting around board policy to limit back-and-forth comments with the public, replied that, “Alum Rock is not the enemy. We’ve been partners, and we’ve attempted to work with you.”
In March, organizers proposed to the board to take control of the site to be reused again as a community center, though the board decided to wait to take action and instead voted unanimously to continue studying a future use for the site.
Victor Vasquez, co-executive director at SOMOS Mayfair, called the building “sacred,” and said the fight to remodel and reopen MACSA “cannot be over yet.”
“The kids still need a gym, they still need a library, they still need a place to feel safe,” Vasquez said.
Officials told the community that the building was filled with suspected asbestos, lead and other potentially dangerous chemicals, and poses a threat to the community.
The board voted unanimously Saturday to override the usual policy of setting a building project up for construction contract bids, deeming the fire’s aftermath an emergency that requires immediate attention. The district expects to receive updated information on the future of the MACSA facility at each of its next meetings until the board decides to take more formal action.
Olivia Ortiz, who said her children had been students in the district for the last 12 years, told this news organization Saturday that the building is important to the residents because of its long history serving the surrounding neighborhoods.
The building, opened in the mid-1980s, previously held community workshops, had a clinic for women and children and a gym. Residents say the facility was a valuable resource to the district’s large Spanish-speaking and immigrant communities. It is still unclear when the site will be cleaned, demolished and if any rebuilding will occur.
The district remains strapped for cash as it suffers plummeting enrollment and lack of funding, among other issues, such as the board’s repeated hiring and firing of superintendents over the last two years.
“This doesn’t mean we’re going to stop here. We can rebuild it,” Ortiz said. “If they really care about the kids and the community, we can rebuild it.”