The summer will be anything but quiet for the San Francisco Unified School District as it takes on three monumental challenges — getting its fiscal house in order to prepare for $113 million in budget cuts next year; closing schools in response to low enrollment; and passing a $790 million facilities bond measure on the November ballot.
Accomplishing any one of these tasks is a heavy lift for any school district. The school district has made doing so more difficult by choosing equity over excellence as a key factor in school closure decisions. All children deserve both. Parents in all communities chose excellence as the key criterion. Their negative response to the decision could mean more kids leaving our public schools and less support to pass the November school bond measure.
A year ago, the Board of Education passed its Commitment to Expenditure Reduction to eliminate its structural budget deficit in the 2023–24 budget and subsequent ones. On Tuesday, the superintendent stated that eliminating the budget deficit will not happen until the 2026–27 budget. The district is making progress on this goal by not filling vacant positions and planning for 535 layoffs in 2025–26 and 82 more the following year. In other words, the painful cuts of teachers, administrators, and other staff that will be felt throughout the schools are just beginning. District staff will spend the summer side by side with the California Department of Education Fiscal Crisis Management Assistance Team (FCMAT) charting a path forward.
At the same time, school district officials are working to develop a list of schools that it plans to close or merge in the 2025–26 school year. Initially, the district stated that closures were necessitated by shrinking revenues from a 50 percent loss in enrollment since the 1960s. In what opponents to school closure call an “admission,” the district now acknowledges that school closures on their own will not reduce expenses and may not generate much revenue either because the vacated buildings will not be leased to charter or private schools or sold to add to operational revenues. Instead, the district is now touting school closure as a way to have fewer, but better, schools. For example, it’s easier to have a social worker in every school when you have fewer schools. And having two fifth grades in one school instead of two neighboring schools makes collaboration between the two teachers possible. While the district must describe what a reduced number of schools will look like and offer, putting communities through school closure with conflicting reasons for it risks increasing uncertainty and decreasing acceptance.
Making the school closure decisions (officially known as Resource Alignment) even more difficult is a fundamental confusion over the criteria to be used. To its credit, the district conducted two citywide surveys, each answered by about 6,000 parents and other stakeholders, about how to weigh the relative importance of “excellence,” “equity,” and “effective use of resources” as factors to close or keep a school open. Stakeholders chose excellence over the other two categories. Of 16 criteria, “historical inequities in schools” and “historical inequities in neighborhoods” ranked 13th and 14th. Concerned that not enough African Americans and Latinos responded, the district reran the numbers to give those respondents’ answers greater weight and reached the same outcomes. Instead of abiding by the results, the district advisory committee on resource alignment recommended that equity constitute 80 percent of a school’s score and relegated excellence and effective use of resources to share the remaining 20 percent. The superintendent decided to split the difference so the advisory panel will weigh equity twice as important as excellence or effective use of resources instead of eight times as much in deciding which schools belong on the “to be closed” list.
When the advisory panel reversed community input that school excellence should be the primary factor in deciding what schools to keep open, it shortchanged all San Francisco families.
Diminishing excellence is never equitable. When the advisory panel reversed community input that school excellence should be the primary factor in deciding what schools to keep open, it shortchanged all San Francisco families — both those now in the district and those who the district needs to attract back to increase enrollment.
At the board meeting, Superintendent Wayne stated, “‘Equity’ can mean a lot of things to different people.” His goal is for no neighborhood or community to bear the brunt of school closures. It is the right goal, notwithstanding one board member’s retort that she would look differently on school closures if the two neighborhoods adversely affected were Noe Valley and Pacific Heights instead of Bayview and the Mission. Yet, the superintendent’s effort to reach a compromise goes too far unless it restores excellence as the primary attribute of schools and ensures that all students have access to excellence in all neighborhoods.
In the face of “excellence” being favored by all communities when given the choice among “equity” and “effective use of resources,” giving equity twice the importance in these decisions when it is difficult to define and hard to apply provides a shaky foundation for the district to act. These terms can complement and do not have to compete with each other. The district should reverse the advisory committee’s shortsighted decision and embrace the consistent community preference for excellence, academic performance, and school culture and climate.
Successfully realigning district resources is essential for prospects to pass the district’s bond measure. The district plans to announce the list of school closures on Sept. 18, less than 20 days before the Department of Elections mails out ballots to San Francisco voters for the November election. The district can ill-afford a confused or angry electorate. The superintendent and Board of Education are taking on challenges delayed or ignored by their predecessors and will need a united community of San Franciscans to be successful.
