A Board of Supervisors special hearing requested by Supervisors Aaron Peskin and Ahsha Safaí increased the number of elected and appointed officials adding “fixing our schools” to their already full-time jobs. At the same time, the hearing may have left Superintendent of Schools Matt Wayne with contradictory guidance and more people to educate about school budgets, priorities, and outcomes.
The current superintendent, now in his third year, inherited years of questionable and deficit spending from his predecessor and prior Boards of Education but did not inherit many operational, budget, and financial systems that worked. At a recent Board of Education meeting, the new associate superintendent for human resources remarked that she found good people but dysfunctional processes. The state Department of Education found that the San Francisco Unified School District was in danger of “no longer being a going concern” and appointed fiscal advisors to monitor, and veto if needed, budgetary decisions normally made by the Board of Education on the recommendation of the superintendent.
In September, on top of — and perhaps as a result of — state oversight, Mayor London Breed established a School Stabilization Team of City Hall experts to provide management and fiscal help to the school district. While such a City Hall initiative was suggested in the Voice of San Francisco in early May, the discovery in August that 250 special education teachers and paraprofessionals had been requested by district staff but not hired, prompted the creation of the support team.
Left undiscussed was how a school district strapped for funds could receive $11 million from the city for student success programs and leave $8.4 million unspent.
The topic of the hearing — special education funding — is a prime example of the complicated and confusing nature of budgeting. From a budgetary standpoint, special education is legally required but only partially funded by states and the federal government. Special education services typically mean the difference between a child with disabilities or special needs having access to educational programming or not. The failure of a district to provide services identified in a students’ Individual Education Plan (IEP) can lead to complaints and litigation mandating such services and compensating parents.
San Francisco schools plan to spend more this year for special education than they did for a greater number of special education students enrolled in 2021. Since Covid, despite lower overall district enrollment, a greater percentage of students have IEPs and the costs associated with them, including new raises for educators, are higher. Following the money trail is often difficult for the school board, let alone other city leaders. For example, to achieve a $103 million reduction in its current budget to satisfy state overseers, the school district included a $10 million general fund cut for special education but replaced it with city funding. Members of the Board of Supervisors at the Tuesday hearing appeared to take skeptically Superintendent Wayne’s testimony that the district had already increased special education funding to meet the new need and that not all of the money had been used. When Wayne explained that his budget staff denied the request because it was not accompanied by sufficient justification, some supervisors suggested criminal wrongdoing for denying legally required services. While the services are required, the budget amount is set by the superintendent and the Board of Education, not an advisory committee. The advisory committee must certify it participated in the budget decision, not that the district adopted its recommendation. The superintendent acknowledged that up to 250 special education positions could have been filled with identified, qualified candidates. On further examination of 2023–24 spending, the superintendent appears now to have found other unspent money that can pay for these positions to provide legally required services.
Another area in which the superintendent is caught in the middle is how to spend approximately $8.4 million that was originally part of the city’s $11 million Student Success Fund for school district use but was not spent. The mayor’s team plans to spend it on emergency school district needs — as yet unspecified — as well as for the costs associated with reaching out and preparing parents, teachers, and students affected by anticipated school closures in 2025. Supervisors, who helped create the fund by placing it on the 2022 ballot as Proposition G, fear that spending for other purposes “sets a bad precedent” (Supervisor Ronen) or “undermines Prop. G’s integrity” (Supervisor Walton). When asked by Supervisor Preston whether he agreed with the use of the funds outlined by Mayor Breed’s staff, Superintendent Wayne responded that he agreed “with the partnership.”
Left undiscussed was how a school district strapped for funds could receive $11 million from the city for student success programs and leave $8.4 million unspent.
In fact, were it not for the mayor’s team rescuing and repurposing the $8.4 million, they would have reverted to the city treasury. The supervisors’ concerns about diverting money for kids to other purposes seems misplaced because the mechanism they wrote into the law forced the school district to give up the excess entirely and return it to the treasury to replace other city dollars that could go for other purposes. This coming year, Proposition G will provide the school district an additional $35 million with the same mechanism to return excess funds to the city.
City Hall and the state have stepped in to help the Board of Education and Superintendent Wayne get the school district back on track. That comes at a cost of more hearings and meetings and sometimes competing demands to coordinate.
