Garfield Pool, located at 26th and Harrison streets within Garfield Park, will no longer be open on Fridays and Saturdays starting on Sept. 27, part of a new pilot program shifting pool hours across the city.
The pool will instead be open Sunday through Thursday, cutting short popular swim classes and swim times, according to neighbors who are up in arms about the proposed change.
“The problem is, they haven’t asked us,” said longtime Garfield Pool swimmer Jane Wilson.
Community members have started a petition calling on the director of the Recreation and Parks Department, Phil Ginsburg, and Mayor London Breed to reinstate the pool’s current hours and programming. The petition argues that changing the schedule “last minute and at the expense of swim classes” is unfair to Mission District families, including low-income families and families “without easy access to other pools.”
Timothy Chase, an assistant supervisor at Garfield Pool, said the pool’s exact hours and programming for Sundays and Mondays are still unclear. The pool will “most likely” allow for a lap swim and recreational swim, but Chase said he is trying to add senior swim too. “Everything is up in the air,” he said.
Tamara Barak Aparton, a parks department spokesperson, said that the changes were an attempt by the city to ensure a public pool is open somewhere in San Francisco any day of the week “for the first time since 2020.”
“Some schedule adjustments at individual pools are necessary,” Aparton wrote. “We are working to restore any programming canceled during the transition by the next season — winter of 2025. In the meantime, everyone can swim seven days a week in our system.”
Wilson, the longtime swimmer, said officials with the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department cited the results of a community survey, which was open from June 26 to July 31 this year, as the reason for the changes.
Wilson said the survey was poorly publicized. She found it in a San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department newsletter, but she said that “hardly anyone” she knows in the Garfield swimming community took the survey.
She lamented that “any city department can come up with a slap-dash survey” and subsequently “make sweeping changes … in the name of the survey.”
Wilson added that Garfield Pool is an important resource for many families in the area, citing its location across the street from Bernal Dwellings, an affordable housing complex.
Aprton wrote that more than 120,000 subscribers to the department’s weekly newsletter received the survey five times, and that the survey was posted on the department’s social media. “In return, we received approximately 1,700 responses,” Aparton wrote.
Mission Local reviewed an Aug. 9 email from Rec and Parks’ online registration email address, informing community members that “the swimming classes scheduled for Friday and Saturday at Garfield Pool for this upcoming fall have unfortunately been cancelled due to a schedule change.” The email appears to be directed toward those who previously expressed interest in those classes.
The email reminded recipients that sign-ups for classes would begin the following week. On the sign-up website, filtering the activities by fall 2024 Fridays and Saturdays at Garfield Pool brings up two “parent and tot” swims and one preschool swim, all marked as canceled.
City pools should be open on Saturdays. This is a ridiculous decision.
All pools should be open Saturdays AND Sundays, not just one or the other!
So rec&park has OSL monopolize half of GGP for several weeks every summer. Next thing we hear how they squeeze amenities like this pool. Where does all the money go?
Probably a step to privatize the pools like they have done with most of the clubhouses all in the name of staffing shortage.
Staggered open dates put no more burden on budget/staffing than current schedules…all we are saying is don’t close all pools on the same days! ( current ly all closed Thursdays at noon for “training” as well)
I’m with SF Kids Swim (https://www.sfkidsswim.org/), and we’ve been working to establish Sunday Swim in San Francisco. It’s our number one request from parents. We also have other initiatives. If you would like to improve swimming opportunities for all kids in SF, please join our newsletter.
The community complained about no Sunday pool access and they listened… All I can say, is watch what you wish for, y’all got your Sunday swim but at the cost of losing Friday and Saturday. The city has a huge staffing issue across all departments and does not have the capacity to run a 7 day operation at any pool.
Sunday swim is actually great news for swimmers – we currently have nowhere to swim in SF on a Sunday (since Covid all city pools have been shut Sun). I imagine it’s going to be pretty busy. Most of us can find another City pool to go to on Fridays, and now we have Sundays at Garfield.
Man, the disrespect Rec & Parks puts up with from residents.