SAN JOSE — Suddenly reversing course, San Jose Unified Superintendent Vincent Matthews has backed away from uprooting three charter schools — including the popular and politically connected Downtown College Preparatory high school — from their campuses next school year after an uproar from parents and the school’s staff.

But the schools would only get a one-year reprieve, with the district still planning to move them for the 2016-17 school year.

Instead, the administration will recommend Thursday that DCP remain at Hester for a year. The staff also will recommend that DCP’s middle school and Sunrise Middle School be located next to San Jose High, and that a special-education program run by the Santa Clara County Office of Education remain at the former Erikson school campus on Pearl Avenue.

“The resolution is a step forward,” DCP Executive Director Jennifer Andaluz said. “There’s a lot of work ahead, but the effort is there on both sides.”

The district’s new proposal was presented in a meeting Monday in Mayor Sam Liccardo’s office, with district officials, charter school leaders and representatives of other schools and programs. If the school board approves, the district would work with charter school leaders to modify the campuses that they would occupy in 2016-17. At that point, DCP would move from the former Hester School site on the Alameda to a site near San Jose High.

“We feel more confident with a year of planning time,” said Stephen McMahon, San Jose Unified’s chief business officer. “We get another year to sit down with everybody and make sure we’re on the same page.”

Newly elected trustee Susan Ellenberg, who was not at Monday’s meeting, called the one-year reprieve “the best possible outcome.” She said that the delay sends a message “that this new board is prepared to shift the culture and not continue to do business as usual.”

But the proposal still leaves several people unhappy.

For next school year, the plan would move the small Sunrise Middle back to the campus it occupied last year, and then relocate it again, to Allen at Steinbeck School in South San Jose for 2016-17.

That would be three moves in three years. “I don’t think that’s good planning,” Sunrise Director Teresa Robinson said. “It’s not good for the students; it’s not good for anybody.”

Likewise, the ACE Middle School would open next school year on the Bachrodt elementary campus, then move the following year to Burnett Middle School, where its leaders had hoped to be from the start.

The district has been criticized for acting unilaterally, without considering public input or even informing those affected by its decisions. DCP’s Andaluz said she first heard in mid-October of the proposal to move her high school. Likewise, Robinson didn’t hear about her proposed move until she noticed an item on a board agenda mentioning her school might move somewhere identified only by an assessor’s parcel number.

San Jose Unified administrators say they are willing to make accommodations to meet charter schools’ needs, but that they don’t want to renegotiate the proposed locations.

“Keeping it open-ended means next January we could be where we are today, and nobody knows where they’re going,” McMahon said.

Ellenberg, who campaigned for school board on a platform of transparency and responsiveness, said, “We are listening and acknowledge that this was not done in a way that responds to and honors our schools and constituents.”

Contact Sharon Noguchi at 408-271-3775. Follow her at Twitter.com/noguchionk12.