Many years ago, the comedian George Wallace ridiculed the notion of the U.S. military developing a faster bomber. Was this, he asked, a problem? Have the many people the United States has bombed been waiting outside and asking “When’s that bomber going to get here?”
In related news, the San Francisco Unified School District was, tomorrow, supposed to release its preliminary list of schools that will be closed and/or merged, the moment of truth in a nine-month ordeal. Mission Local has learned that, on Friday, the district realized it would have to delay this announcement. A planned Monday statement from superintendent Matt Wayne instead dropped over the weekend when the news of the delay got out and questions were being asked.
And now public school parents are more irate, not less. When’s that bomber going to get here?
No need to mince words: This is a disgrace for the San Francisco Unified School District. And not just because, after nine agonizing months, public-school families have been left to twist in the wind for however many more weeks. That’s part of it, but only a tiny part.
Rather, this entire process has been a disaster, and it’s questionable that the district can get its act together and make things right, let alone by next month, which is when Superintendent Wayne said is the new deadline.
Mission Local has learned that, last week, the district presented Board of Education members with an inchoate plan calling for the closure/merger of 10 to 14 schools. This was done prior to the completion of either the district’s equity audit or its financial analysis. What’s more, the methodology behind the closure decisions was opaque, and the strategy to implement this plan in the face of inevitable parent — and political — blowback was jarringly lacking.
If the district moved to, say, close a K-8 in the Excelsior, or an elementary school in Chinatown, what would its next move be when the elected representatives for those districts, both of whom are running for mayor, scooped up this political football? It appears that nobody at the district thought about that one.
School board members pushed back and, to paraphrase the “Hamilton” number, informed the district that it didn’t have the votes. So here we are.
If you are a public-school parent, you received a survey over the summer in which you were asked to weigh in on the pending closures. This was not a straightforward survey, however: Parents were asked to imagine that they had 12 coins, and could divide them into buckets marked “equity,” “access” and “excellence.”
As you would expect, most every parent who bothered to answer the survey likely attempted to allocate these coins in whatever manner they interpreted would lead to the SFUSD central office passing over their kids’ school. But there’s no satisfying and intuitive way for a parent to engineer that outcome. And there is no satisfying and intuitive method to reverse-engineer the tangible list of 10 to 14 schools presented to school board members based upon how desperate parents allocated their coins to the Cap’n Crunch or Count Chocula or Toucan Sam baskets.
But, God help us, we’re told that district officials are defending this process. How parents divided their coins among the Lucky the Leprechaun or Trix Rabbit or Tony the Tiger baskets is actually a serious explanation the district was apparently ready to provide to affected public school families as to why their kids’ school was on the list.
Heck, that’s unfortunate. It means that school district officials are flunking the test when it comes to basic human understanding. After nine months of work, the district still cannot answer the most basic of basic questions for any affected family: How will closing their kids’ school improve their kids’ education?
Word to the wise: Aggrieved parents, and I am one, don’t care about your baskets. If you can’t look a parent in the eye and give them a straightforward and defensible answer to that question, you have no business moving forward with a plan to close and merge schools.
In so many movies, you’ve seen a character tell someone about to harm themselves or others that “you don’t have to do this.” That’s true here, too. To a point.
Does San Francisco need to consolidate schools? It does not. But if an honest and defensible answer can be provided as to how closing and merging schools will improve the educational outcomes for the affected kids, then it could, and even should. Like so many districts, San Francisco is shedding students. There are many understaffed schools. In the abstract, if not yet the concrete, getting the same amount of resources into fewer edifices sounds like a defensible plan; that’s why this whole move is called the “Resource Alignment Initiative.”
So whether the district has to do this is an open question. But it certainly doesn’t have to do this in a vague, hurried and slipshod way. It is now resplendently clear that closing schools is not a short-term money-saver. The district is facing a massive deficit, and members of the general public could be forgiven for thinking that the drive to cut schools is part and parcel of that. But it’s not: We wrote in July that, despite the overriding assumption that closing schools was a cost-based move, it was not: It will actually cost money in the short term, and lead to small savings, if any, down the road.
Coincidentally or not, the district has admitted this publicly in the wake of our article. In his weekend statement disclosing the delay, Superintendent Wayne overtly noted that closing and merging schools is not a dollar-driven move.
Fair enough. But that still prompts the questions of why this is being done, and why this is being done right now. These are legitimate questions. The district’s cost crunch is real. Things are bad enough that officials from the state of California are now directly involved in financial decisions; the district’s hands are tied, so it can’t easily reach its wallet.
And yet, Mission Local is told that the district’s state overseers are perplexed at the SFUSD’s drive to push forward a list of impacted schools before the financial analysis is even complete. This aggressive timeline is not one they are presently pushing.
That’s worth thinking about. If there’s a good-cop, bad-cop scenario here in which the state is the bad cop — and will jump in and brutally enforce fiscal cuts the district is too lily-livered to enact — that breaks down here.
That’s because — again, for the people in the back — closing schools will not save money in the short-term, and doesn’t figure to save much money in the long-term. And if this really is about “resource alignment,” we should be honest about what those resources are: People. Educators, mostly.
Just about the only way to save money is to have fewer people. If the district has fewer educators in fewer schools, then it makes a mockery of the notion of “resource alignment.” That’s just “downsizing.”
Working on a process to close and merge schools isn’t the only big project the San Francisco Unified School District is undertaking right now. It is also doing the prep work to install an overarching new Enterprise Resource Planning system, and working with the state to cut $100 million from its central office.
Notably, all of these plans are coming out of that central office, which adds a degree of difficulty.
That’s a lot to do. The district appears to be laboring greatly to convert oxygen to carbon dioxide these days, so it has been questioned, both internally and externally, whether it has the bandwidth to undertake these three major projects simultaneously.
Higher-ups, we are told, are optimistic. Nobody else is. That’s something to keep an eye on.
As is the actual rollout of whatever school closure and merger proposal the district eventually puts forward (assuming the votes materialize at the Board of Education). It’s one thing to come up with a plan; it’s another to enact it.
In San Francisco, politics runs in the tap water like fluoride. But the district’s higher-ups apparently do not seem to grasp this. Mayoral candidates Aaron Peskin and Ahsha Safaí have both made it clear that they will stand with the affected families and fight closures in their corners of the city.
The district seems to have been blindsided by this incredibly predictable eventuality. The district that purportedly wanted to explain to aggrieved parents that not enough coins went into the Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs basket for their kids’ school to stay open generally seems to have been oblivious to the level of grassroots pushback that is likely coming.
The district really does appear to be like a bombardier in the clouds, oblivious to the damage they’re inflicting down on planet Earth. And, to boot, they’re late.
When’s that bomber going to get here?
It seems bad that one of the key architects of this plan was a lifelong charter school employee prior to his nine months of district service and despite having lost at the polls thrice is now in a position to vote on his own work product. Phil Kim must recuse if the Board ends up voting on a plan. Data from around the country tell us that poorly-planned public school closures lead to more kids at charter schools. San Francisco’s charters have the space, and SFUSD cannot afford the loss of students and funding.
It’s also striking that our FCMAT advisors seem at best unconvinced that this plan is a good idea. When FCMAT has fully taken over school districts, it almost always proposes closures. Here, Duchon and Lauzon appear to doubt the district’s ability to close schools without catastrophic consequences that further drain the budget.
Also, if the Superintendent is convinced closures are necessary, perhaps he should start by not opening a 525 student elementary next year?
As of Tuesday afternoon, Dr Wayne’s statement has not been sent to families or rank & file staff. It has only been emailed to admin and the media.
Joe first of all thank you for your coverage of this issue it’s been fantastic. It’s slightly troublesome the amount of (low) coverage this issue has gotten considering the impact on the city in the short and long term and the complexities you are outlying.
Regarding the delay, it’s obviously a farce and Matt Wayne now has limited credibility. I do worry that we are aiming for a post-election delay that will remove any voting power for supes or board members that could change the course of whatever decision is made. Clearly SFUSD needs oversight from somewhere.
As a parent who wants to know where their kid is going to school so my family can decide whether to move or not, these decisions are fundamental to day to day life. The city fails on the fundamentals all the time and I wish our leaders and more importantly, our citizenry could focus on these.
Keep at it, perhaps not everything is set in stone?
At this rate, nobody should be surprised if the announcement on which schools are getting closed gets postponed again, until after the election. Nobody on the school board is going to want to weigh in on this issue in an official capacity this close to the election, especially if they are on the ballot. And the SFUSD will certainly get heat from all the candidates running for mayor & supervisor, no matter what schools are on the list.
Interesting that the candidates would weigh in on public education when several of them are skipping the district all together and sending their kids to high priced private schools. If more families invested their time, care, and resources into neighborhood public schools instead of opting out for private education, we as a city may not have the same struggles within SFUSD that we are currently seeing.
I was one of the people that tried so hard to make SFUSD work, but moved my kid to a private school after 6 years. The district has to step up and make schools better and attractive to all residents.
I just can’t have my kid attending school with no math teacher (and she did for three months)
Only one current commissioner is on November’s ballot. But the mayoral candidates are staking out their positions.
Yay! Thank you for saying it out loud.
Other things for people to be aware of: SF Planning Dept’s perspective and how these “RAI” plans are not aligned with the city’s housing element/CA 2030, and the state’s perspective with AB-1912, see AG Bonta’s guidelines for school closures. Google them.
An SFUSD official has said the District anticipates gaining up to 5,000 new students from all the 82,000 units “mandated” to be built under the Housing Element. That’s one new student for every 16.4 units.
A huge problem with SF housing construction is the size of the units: studio and one and two bedroom units account for the vast majority of what has been built in the last 25+ years. Most public school families have two or more kids (I know families with six kids). While it is certainly true that a lot of those families live in studios and one bedrooms, they – with support from the city and, more importantly, the state – deserve larger apartments.
If the Housing Element ends up with virtually no larger family affordable units, SFUSD might not even gain 5,000 kids. Failure to build the right kind of affordable housing amounts to telling larger working class and immigrant families to fuck off and live elsewhere.
You do not get a bonus for overpopulating the planet. Have kids if you can afford it, and skip them if you can’t – especially in this town.
Chances are 1/2 of the 82k units are getting built and that’s going to be dependent on new jobs. Why build if there are no new jobs, where will these new residents work so they can pay for their housing? Unless the plan is to turn SF into one big retirement home with no children.
That 82,000 number has nothing to do with reality. It’s deliberately impossible to reach so that they can invoke the builders remedy.
The 82000 number has to do with the reality of how many people live in this country now. Coastal California has been pretending that population growth doesn’t exist for 50 years and the result is the mess we’re in today.
Holy shit. That survey. That’s real?!?! On the bright side it gives me hope the school closure proponents within the district are too incompetent to make it happen.
Please do a whole article that is just parents ranting about that survey. I’ve got a JD, and even more than most lawyers my job specializes in reading complex documents, and even to me it was completely impenetrable. How normal parents were supposed to make any sense of it… I have no idea.
In the “any other comments” field I went off. So it’s very consoling to see another word-savvy parent completely bewildered too.
Luis —
Thank you, this is one of the best comments I’ve ever received on an article. I appreciate it.
JE
Luis —
Okay, I’ll do it. Please drop me a line at joe DOT eskenazi AT missionlocal DOT COM
JE
I don’t believe they sent this survey to families new to the district (kids enrolled for 24-25 SY) . We first heard of this ridiculous set of criteria when we found out our kids’ school is a likely shutdown target, as best as we can tell, we never got any chance to participate at the genesis of this nonsense.
Thank you soooo much! We love your work.
Will the closed schools be sold to developers for market rate (luxury) housing? It would be interesting to compare the list of schools being closed to the desirability for redevelopment in this high interest rate market.
> nine-month ordeal… nine agonizing months
And
> hurried and slipshod way
So which is it, did they take to long? Or did they rush the process?
I still can’t believe Wayne is in charge after the payroll fiasco. How many millions were spent before they had to scrap the system?
Vincent Matthews was the superintendent when the district initiated and completed the InfoSystems contract. Multiple other districts refused to work with InfoSystems, but no, not SFUSD. The board that was recalled was in power at that time. No one thought to research Infosystems. They were ALL negligent. Information was widely and readily available. Such poor stewards of public funds. Disgraceful. Wayne is the new superintendent.
Wayne is in his third year as Superintendent. He was advised repeatedly in his first year to dump the Infosys program, but chose to invest over forty million unrestricted dollars in attempting to salvage it rather than immediately seeking other options and paying only for minimal patches.
Moreover, Wayne was the Superintendent for all but three of the months in between the (bad) FCMAT audit in 2022 and the (dumpster fire, including literal threats of prison time) audit in 2024. The auditors found fewer fraud controls, more siloing, and a culture of fear that kept folks from asking for help or admitting mistakes.
Teachers in SFUSD are held accountable for each class they teach. It’s not too much to ask that Wayne be held accountable for the last three years.
Note that Wayne says in the announcement “the rest of the timeline remains relatively consistent; the Board of Education will vote on the package of school closures in December…”. So less time for community input, less time for communication (as poor as it may be), leas time for organizing, less time for board members to debate and discuss… ie Less time for a democratic process.
Can you follow up with a piece on the district’s BS that this is not a “cost saving” measure. Schools are not just buildings and supplies; they’re educators, administrators, social workers, extracurriculars, etc. I’ve heard these closures will mean the layoffs of more than 500 employees, that’s the real cost savings the district will benefit from. How is that not being discussed more widely and transparently? How will that improve (or not) open vacancies, the chronic use of subs and many schools where they are forced to merge classrooms due to lack of personnel? I want to hear more about that.
As a Bay Area teacher with 25+ years of experience in SFUSD, I’ve witnessed the devastating impact of budget cuts, administrative reductions, and program eliminations, all while being asked to do more with less. In a large city, turnover among educators—like nurses and other transient labor pools—is expected. Yet, this reality seems ignored in the district’s poorly conceived ‘Resource Alignment Initiative,’ which offers little short-term financial benefit and leaves long-term savings unclear. Closing schools won’t solve the district’s economic crisis; without a clear plan, this process will further undermine educational quality.
A positive first step would be to provide the Board of Education with access to extensive training on fiscal oversight, labor laws, best practices, and Education Code policies through professional guidance from nearby County Offices of Education, such as those in San Mateo, Alameda, or Napa. A third-party administrator would equip the board with the tools and expertise needed to make informed decisions and restore accountability while being more cost-effective during these financially dire times. The City must amend its charter to move the power away from SFUSD via the elected BofE and back to the California County Office of Education. We have 57 other county offices of education that could help our school district improve and succeed.
Hey Joe, this SFUSD teacher would like to thank you for the best education reporting in this city. Please keep shining a light even after your kid graduates. It’s been so tough reading Hearst paid “journalism” on education for so many years, so thank you for writing passionately and truthfully about the state of education in SFUSD.
They got their recall, yet somehow still more complaining and dysfunction.
Who is surprised.
Given the shrinking student population, consolidating schools makes sense from a resource allocation perspective and a cost savings perspective. Of course nobody wants to close schools. Fixed costs are fixed in the short run but not in the long run. There should be immediate savings in operating costs by reducing overhead and admin. However, since this is San Francisco, everything is much more complex than it needs to be and the union will resist any change unless it benefits them. I’m glad my kids graduated from SFUSD a few years ago. The Covid fiasco hurt my youngest. Remote learning for a year was stupid, completely unnecessary, and precipitated a stampede out of the district that was entirely predictable.
As parents of a child who just aged into the district this school year, we’re livid. The school assignment process was already a confusing, chaotic, living nightmare, but we learned the school we were ultimately assigned to is a shutdown candidate about a month in.
The presentation during a pta-style meeting included what were purportedly the scores for our school, but there was no way or information on how to get the scores for other schools. (We’ve got a strong suspicion that the low scored schools are all going to be concentrated in the same parts of the city.)
This whole process is absolutely unprofessional and irrational, and the districts’ disfunction has us planning on private school next year. Despite our strong preference, belief, and desire to have our kids in public schools, we just can’t deal with all this uncertainty and apparent defeatism on the part of an institution that’s supposed to be educating our children.
I do appreciate your coverage here, but I’d really like to know more about the backers of the various school board candidates – what do the various groups endorsing candidates expect they’ll do in office? Some of these big money groups have some alarming priorities with respect to governance and public policy, making the school board vote full of potential landmines.
They usually sell schools for sweetheart deals. See prior Frederick Burke Elementary turned into the personal development playground of SFSU-CSU while ignoring the impacts on workforce rental housing. See also McLaren Park school adjacent to a HOPE S.F. Sunnydale site or the SOTA flip flop so kids can be nearer to traffic and downtown problems on Van Mess and allow the mayor and real estate Trojan horses to set up a new place at miraloma canyon near glen park while ignoring traffic transit pools libraries and other ammenities lost… Holloway is now targeted on both sides for development that’s religious institutions and prior public land labeled prior rec and park but turned into summer hill homes for $$$. What’s the plot watch it thicken as special interests get those lands on the cheap for 100% affordable housing and mega tax breaks for housing developers on public lands… maybe a look at bank property single story buildings along west portal (3 or 4 last I checked if redeveloped add population and thus school sites needed.
This is an outrage and thank you for writing/getting this posted…the teachers at your child’s school greatly appreciate it!
The “I” statements in Wayne’s announcement are indicative of his hubris around the closures and SFUSD in general.
He not only spat in every parents’ face but SFUSD staff too. They were also blindsided by the news. On their weekend!
Thank you Joe, keep up the great work!
Joe,
The ‘Bomber’ already came and went.
Several times.
This is the song they play when they’re gearing up to sell District Property to developers and speculators like Richard Blum and another just as greedy will replace him.
Same reason they keep trying to close Laguna Honda.
Saner move would be to sell the buildings to City to use as Homeless Shelters.
Y’all just wait and see.
Go Niners !!
h.
‘Disgrace’, that’s touching a high bar in the normal function of bureaucracies in San Francisco. This is also why the thought of socialism in California, should fill any sane and thinking person, with abject terror. The same quality of people we see now, will be the ones administrating the misery.