How SFUSD Fails San Francisco Kids and Families
The San Francisco Unified School District has received a lot of attention throughout the pandemic, and not for good reasons. The actions of the San Francisco Board of Education in particular garnered national outcry and eventually led to the successful recall of three School Board members earlier this year. It is difficult to summarize all of the controversies that erupted recently, but you may remember some of them:
San Francisco public schools were among the last in the country to reopen despite repeated guidance from the Department of Public Health that it was safe to do so.
One School Board member was found to have sent racist tweets against Asian-Americans, which led to her being stripped of her role as Vice President. Instead of apologizing, she sued her fellow School Board members and the School District for $87 million.
The School Board supported the renaming of 44 schools, including schools named after Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, for having ties to slavery, sexism, or other types of oppression. This took place while those same schools remained closed without a timeline for them to be reopened. The process was riddled with factual errors, violated the Brown Act, and was eventually reversed.
The Board rushed through a change in the admissions process for the selective Lowell High School in just ten days while the school was still closed, outraging parents, students, and alumni.
The School District was found to have used $525,000 dedicated for school facility improvements to instead defend a lawsuit relating to the School Board’s controversial decision to cover a mural at Washington High School.
These actions, and the many other scandals caused by the School Board, embarrassed the District and the City. But the reason the three School Board members were recalled with over 70% of the vote was not just because of bad headlines. It was also because of the undeniable trend of worsening outcomes for students across the spectrum in San Francisco’s public schools.
SFUSD students are in the bottom 5% of literacy for the entire state of California despite living in one of the richest cities in the world. From 2020 to 2021, during which time SFUSD schools remained closed while private schools had safely reopened, the number of students proficient in math dropped from 74% to 67%.
While there have long been large demographic disparities in SFUSD student outcomes, this trend was seen throughout SFUSD’s student population. Math proficiency dropped from 85% to 77% for Asian students, 84% to 78% for White students, 54% to 48% for Latino students, and 46% to 38% for African American students.
Yet despite the across-the-board declines in math and reading proficiency, the School District’s graduation rate has actually increased by almost four percent over the last four years. This would normally be a positive sign for the District, but unfortunately it is almost certainly explained by a lowering of standards.
It is no surprise then that many parents have simply chosen to vote with their feet and pull their children out of SFUSD. Last year alone, the District lost 3,000 students.
San Francisco has more dogs than children. This is no doubt a result of a number of factors, including the high cost of housing and childcare in the city, but it also the direct result of San Francisco’s underperforming school system.
Families in the City should expect a world-class educational system that serves all of our children, regardless of what neighborhood they live in. This will not happen overnight–SFUSD’s problems are deeply entrenched and have been greatly exacerbated over the past two years–but we should expect and demand better.
Here is what we want to see:
Our leaders need to prioritize academic outcomes
The San Francisco Board of Education has long served as a stepping stone for politicians looking to run for the Board of Supervisors or other higher offices. What that has meant is that their focus has too often been on attention-grabbing efforts like school renamings instead of on the nuts and bolts issues of delivering a high-quality education for our students. We need leaders who want to work to improve the School District, not just run for higher office.
Doing the job well requires focusing on issues like budgeting, staffing levels, disparities in school performances, and teacher retention. The response to declining educational outcomes needs to be a renewed focus on the classroom; increased resources for students and teachers; and a commitment to follow the data on what is and isn’t working.
High-quality schools with rigorous curriculums
The controversy surrounding the Lowell High School admissions saga in recent years was guided by concerns relating to equity. What’s truly inequitable, however, is the vastly different outcomes for students at different schools throughout SFUSD. There needs to be more focus on bringing all of our schools up to the elite standard of Lowell. It should not matter whether you live in the Marina, or the Excelsior, or the Sunset, or SOMA. Every child deserves access to a high-quality education.
Likewise, all of our schools should hold our students to high standards. In recent years, SFUSD has delayed the teaching of Algebra 1 until Grade 9 and pushed back other advanced math courses to all students, also in the name of promoting equitable outcomes. The answer to declining academic results should be a renewed focus on high-quality education, not lowering standards for our students.
In the long run, we need to reform Prop 13 to ensure stable funding for education, which will allow us to better invest in our schools, increase teacher pay, and retain our best educators. In the immediate future, we need to identify additional revenue sources and hold the School Board accountable for making the most of the limited resources we have.
Families should be able to rely on SFUSD
Right now there is simply too much uncertainty with SFUSD for San Francisco families. The school assignment system is overwhelmingly complex, lengthy, and unreliable. Families are unable to plan for which schools their children will attend in future years, they often do not get their top choices, and they are sometimes forced into untenable commutes. Many families with the means to do so choose to send their kids to schools outside of SFUSD rather than go through this process multiple times throughout their child’s education.
The admissions process needs to be reformed to allow for families to have the expectation that their children will be able to attend a good school near their home, and to do that we need to ensure that all of our schools are providing a high-quality education.
On a broader level, the SF Board of Education and the San Francisco Unified School District need to focus on depoliticizing our schools and prioritizing their core responsibility: educating our students. The good news is that we have a new class of School Board members and a new Superintendent who have committed to refocusing on improving our schools and student outcomes. We hope to see this progress continue.