After years of delay and avoidance, the San Francisco Unified School District is set to face its economic and enrollment realities. Led by new Superintendent Maria Su and a largely new Board of Education, the district will make major decisions over the next six weeks to five months aimed at balancing its budget without worsening the environment for students, parents, and educators. This difficult task must be accomplished with little expected further financial help from cash-strapped City Hall and Sacramento and amidst an outright hostile posture of the federal government. In Olympic parlance, the “degree of difficulty” could not be higher.
By late June, the school board must approve a balanced budget that currently is expected to require up to 535 layoffs and $113 million cuts to programs and salaries. The action starts next week as school communities receive enrollment and economic forecasts from the district that will shape and inform their model staffing plan. Schools will be told what positions are absolutely essential in a no-frills school and be provided a supplemental allotment from which, in their general discretion, they can pay for additional teachers, counselors, library, and other staff. This process is both an opportunity for the school site to be heard and a burden on them to pick and choose what vital programs remain or are consolidated or eliminated.
School site decision-making is made more difficult by parallel actions being taken by the district. It has initiated the Supplemental Employee Retirement Plan — a buyout to encourage higher-paid employees to retire now and be replaced by a lower paid junior employee or not be replaced at all. While a financial plus to the district and the retiree, buyouts often involve educators esteemed by students and colleagues alike and impose a loss not calculated in dollars. At the same time, Superintendent Su is seeking a significant reduction in central office administrators, “cuts from the top,” prioritizing those that can be made without classroom impact or weakening the district’s ability to hire and pay personnel. School site planning will have to be made without a complete understanding of the impact of these initiatives, and it will be up to the superintendent to reconcile the shares of financial and educational pain involved.
By late June, the school board must approve a balanced budget that currently is expected to require up to 535 layoffs and $113 million cuts to programs and salaries.
At its March 11 meeting, the school board will vote to send preliminary layoff notices to potentially 1,000 or more employees. Some notices, but not all, will be pulled back between then and May 15 and the final budget approval. Under state law, if an employee has not received notification by March 15, the employee can’t be laid off. Some employees who are laid off from one position can stay employed by “bumping” to another position and causing a typically less senior employee to be laid off. In that example, both employees get letters but only one departs the district. Teachers with special credentials in critical education areas may also be considered on a separate track.
In past years, recipients of the March 15 letters had a well-placed belief that the district or the state would “find money somewhere” and they would not be laid off. This year, the prospects of the city or state providing greater financial assistance to our public schools is vastly diminished by Mayor Lurie’s own hiring freeze and inherited $800 million budget deficit to close by June 30. At the state level, Governor Newsom’s budget was unveiled before any assessment of the Los Angeles fires. The budget plan’s modest surplus and commitment to full funding for schools — let alone a chance for more money for San Francisco or other schools — may have been wiped out.
Yet another unknown factor of even greater potential magnitude is whether the Trump administration will cut or deny funding to San Francisco and other school districts based on the cities’ immigration policies or enrollment of immigrant children. Already, the U.S. Department of Transportation is prioritizing grants for entities that require compliance or cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. In the education context, the Trump Administration could attempt to condition federal education assistance on a school district reporting the number of students who lack legal immigration status and then eliminating the funding for those students. The student census count has already been proposed by the Oklahoma State Board of Education. That plan and the funding cut would conflict with a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision treating all school children the same and would likely be litigated.
Superintendent Su has put into place a new team to oversee the budget process. She will have plenty of help from the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team from the state Department of Education. Similarly, utilizing her decades at City Hall will help loosen restrictions on City Hall funding even if it does not increase the amounts. Now, and over the next five months, as the Board of Education is asked to make unpopular but necessary decisions, school communities must have reliable information and accurate data to give them a reason to stay in the public schools and for new families to enroll.
