A weeks-long drama at the Board of Education is expected to end Tuesday night when the board officially votes to appoint Maria Su to replace Matt Wayne as superintendent. Mayor London Breed recently named Su, for many years the administrator of city youth-oriented programs as city director of the Department of Children – Youth and Families, to lead a school stabilization team to help the school district through budget and other uncertainties. Now, they are hers and she will face six immediate challenges as the new superintendent.
Wayne’s removal, labeled as “acceptance of his resignation,” came as a result of dissatisfaction with, and lack of public participation in, his recommendation to close 11 schools as well as miscommunication with the Board of Education and state budget overseers that resulted in the failure to timely hire 250 needed special education teachers. Ironically, the board acted in secret, out of public view, by failing to abide by state law open meeting procedures after its first weekend emergency meeting and by agreeing to Su’s hire even before Wayne had resigned. Even the school board’s two student delegates were left out. One had to resort to public testimony at last Friday’s evening meeting to speak about student exclusion from the deliberations.
As the incoming superintendent with a contract that extends to June 2026, Su must successfully navigate six complex tasks for her to begin to turn around the school district:
First, she must become visible not only to parents of current public school students but to families who are deciding whether to send their children to S.F. public schools for the first time or to give the school district a second chance. This job is made easier by the board’s dividing the superintendent’s responsibilities into a general management position — playing to Su’s strengths and experience in City Hall bureaucracy — and elevating a senior administrator to be deputy superintendent chiefly responsible for academic issues. Su is well respected throughout City Hall and among organizations serving children and receiving city grants. But she must instill confidence in families throughout the city who see chaos at school district headquarters to win them back and reverse enrollment declines.
While no schools will be closed in the 2025–26 academic year, that is little relief to parents wanting to minimize the disruption to their children’s education beyond then.
Second, reassuring the public at large about public school leadership will have a beneficial impact on the fate of Proposition A, the $790 million school bond measure, on which voters are casting their ballots daily until Nov. 5. Every day that passes with ongoing uncertainties about our schools makes passage more difficult. While the campaign has raised $325,000, it has come from just 30 donors. The vast majority of the public needs to be convinced. If not, Su’s 2025–26 school budget, already in the red, will have to include operational funds to pay for needed school repairs and modernization without bond funds to rely on.
Third, come January, Su may have to win the support of a substantially new team of governing partners. The November election may bring a new mayor, four new Board of Education commissioners and up to seven new members of the Board of Supervisors. Some of the termed out or potentially defeated supervisors have been among the most involved in support of the schools. A financial bailout of the school district by an already cash-strapped city may depend on budget architects not yet known.
Fourth, while Wayne has departed, the school district’s obligation to submit a fiscal update to the state Department of Education by Dec. 12 remains. The school district must show its plan to close an anticipated $113 million budget gap in the 2025–26 budget. One fifth of that amount was to be covered by the planned school closures that now have been delayed by the school board. Su has three choices: (1) Increase the 500 layoffs to account for savings the school district will not now achieve by not closing schools; (2) get funding help from city officials who might not control next year’s budget; or (3) win a reprieve from the state that has its own fiscal worries. Failure to satisfy state officials on Dec. 12 brings state takeover of our schools much closer.
Fifth, while the school board has decided that no schools will be closed in the 2025–26 academic year, the decision provides scant relief to parents wanting to minimize the disruption to their children’s elementary or high school years. If the moves are made sooner, the students have more years in their new schools which, at least according to the original plans, would have more amenities and support than the existing under-resourced schools have. Su will have to unring the bell in the ears of parents that schools are still inevitably closing or else they will leave.
Sixth, Su must energize, strengthen and equip, with the help of her deputy, a school district bureaucracy that the state criticized for its inability to produce reliable fiscal reports and that the recently hired associate superintendent for human resources termed “dysfunctional.” A new payroll system is in the works and City Hall experts from the school stabilization team, previously headed by Su, can help.
In 2014, addressing the problems of our schools, Su described a student’s “civil right to succeed” and the schools’ responsibility not just to graduate students but to prepare them with the skills necessary to succeed. She concluded, “I have to believe it is possible.” She now has that chance as the incoming superintendent of schools.
