By delaying the announcement of the proposed closure of as many as 20 San Francisco public schools, Superintendent Matt Wayne has placed his plan at the center of the local election calendar. Revealing the list of schools he proposes to close now will take place in October, right when voters receive their ballots for the school bond measure and four school board seats. While the school board won’t vote on the closures until mid-December, voters may send a message on Election Day as to what they think of the plan.
Even prior to the 1970s California taxpayer revolt and the passage of Proposition 13 (which San Franciscans opposed), community and business leaders, parents, and educators routinely have come together to raise resources to successfully fight, or at least ameliorate, school cutbacks. Local voters have supported additional fees, property taxes, surcharges, and bond measures to fund local public school construction and repair, arts programs, libraries, sports and, more recently, publicly funded teacher housing.
The November election will test whether San Francisco will come through again or whether our schools have lost sufficient favor with the electorate. Over the past 50 years, public school enrollment has plummeted by 50 percent as families left the city while the new homebuyers and renters tended to have fewer or no children. While we have fewer Catholic schools than in the past, San Francisco parents have more options for private schools and take them.
The timing of the proposed closures makes it more important for the school district to explain why a $790 million bond is needed to repair and replace schools.
When he was appointed by the Board of Education in 2022, Superintendent Wayne inherited long-ignored budget and managerial challenges and missteps created by past superintendents and boards of education for perhaps decades. Three of the seven board members who appointed him had themselves been appointed following a historic recall of their predecessors by the voters. Together, they took on a prolonged struggle with the payroll system approved by their predecessors that failed to pay some educators correctly and failed to pay some others at all. Unable to fix the payroll system, the district is now replacing it.
At an early September 2024 Board of Education meeting, one of the district’s senior leaders told the board she was surprised how dysfunctional the district’s systems were but assured them that the people were not. This candid assessment came up during the disclosure to the public district staff made approximately 200 job offers and later had to rescind them because of the district’s inability to match a source of funding to the positions. As of last week, 15 percent of San Francisco public school classrooms lack a permanent teacher.
The district may not be able to find the money because it does not have the money. Despite targeted funding from the state for particular educational needs and students, the enrollment drops mean we have 15,000 more classroom seats than needed. Smaller enrollments have not translated into better student outcomes when measured by student performance at third grade, eighth grade readiness for high school, or 12th grade readiness for college. To their credit, the superintendent and district have sharply reduced what was projected to be a $421 million deficit and have eliminated vacant positions before laying off classroom educators.
School closures are described as a necessary component of changing the way the district spends. Moreover, the superintendent maintains that having a nurse or social worker in every school, or opportunities for two teachers of the same grade to collaborate is possible but only with a reduced number of schools.
The ongoing planning for school closures has been met by muted acknowledgement of the need and organized parents and educators defending the merits of their own individual schools and community concerns. Up to now, parental and community input has not carried the day. When asked what criteria should be used to close or keep open a school, the district’s surveys of parents and community members documented that they slightly preferred “excellence” closely followed by “equity” and “good use of resources.” In response, the district panel planning the closures weighted “equity” eight times as important as either “excellence” or “good use of resources.” In scoring each school, the superintendent declined to pick one option over the other and issued a compromise of half “equity” and a quarter each for “excellence” and “good use of resources.”
While the school board is not scheduled to vote on the closures until December, parents and voters may decide to speak via their votes on the November school bond measure. The timing of the proposed closures makes it more important for the school district to explain why a $790 million bond is needed to repair and replace schools at the same time that many will be closed and how a newly envisioned central kitchen to provide meals to students at all schools, the largest single expense of the bond, will improve educational outcomes for San Francisco’s school children.
It may have been necessary but the school closure announcement delay makes it more challenging and raises the stakes for education and bond items on the November ballot.
