Mission Local has learned that Matt Wayne, the beleaguered superintendent of the San Francisco Unified School District, has agreed to tender his resignation. The Board of Education will vote on Friday evening on whether to accept his negotiated resignation package at a 5 p.m. special meeting.
While not yet official, this all but certainly puts an end to the current version of the school closure and consolidation plan. The long-running mishandling of this effort — culminating in Wayne releasing a list of potential school closures and transfer sites on Oct. 8 that differed from what the mayor’s office, her school stabilization team and the Board of Education anticipated he’d release — appears to have been the final straw that will curtail Wayne’s two-year tenure. He has two years remaining on his contract.
Mayor London Breed on Tuesday called for an immediate halt to the closure plan, and expressed a loss of confidence in the superintendent. That sentiment was, demonstrably, shared by the Board of Education — and parents and students at schools slated for closure.
News of Wayne’s resignation broke while the superintendent was attending a meeting with parents, staff and children at El Dorado Elementary in Visitacion Valley.
“I just saw an article that the superintendent is probably resigning,” said District 10 Supervisor Shamman Walton to Wayne. “We have a roomful of parents and families talking to a non-decisionmaker. … I think that’s disheartening.”
Wayne took the baton from former superintendent Vincent Matthews in June 2022, a troubled time for the district. While the SFUSD’s problems are long-gestating — the result of ”more than a decade of status-quo decisions,” as Wayne put it earlier this week; his 26 months atop the district have been marked by a series of setbacks.
The district failed to hire legally mandated special education staff in an effort to save money, leaving vulnerable students in the lurch and putting the district in legal jeopardy. In a hiring SNAFU, the SFUSD offered jobs to scores of educators that it later had to rescind. Wayne did not expediently move to scrap the costly and disastrous EmPowerSF payroll system that underpaid and mispaid educators — more than $40 million has been burned to prop up a boutique system that was dysfunctional out of the box and spurred teachers to retire or seek employment elsewhere.
The district missed the planned Sept. 18 date to announce potential school closures due to concerns that the long-running process was methodologically suspect, opaque and lacked sufficient community outreach. Finally, when Wayne on Oct. 8 released a preliminary list of potential closures and transfer sites — on the cusp of the district’s enrollment fair — officials in the mayor’s office, the mayor’s school stabilization team and on the Board of Education were jolted that it did not match the list they thought everyone had agreed to release.
The Board of Education will vote tomorrow on whether to end Wayne’s service to the district. On Sept. 22 the school board considered doing this but held off, concerned that there was not a candidate ready to step into Wayne’s position immediately. The Board of Education at that time took the extraordinary step of appealing to the mayor’s office, which provided the school stabilization team to assist the district as well as the promise of some $8.5 million.
Mission Local has learned that the district’s succession plan is presently scheduled to be announced tomorrow evening.
Disclosure: Joe Eskenazi’s children attend a school on the Oct. 8 potential closure list.
As an El Dorado parent, I’m absolutely incensed.
Just like at the virtual town hall, the now-former superintendent didn’t have any answers to questions, couldn’t explain how the non-“objective” parts of the composite scores actually work or how the district came to calculate them, or even how and why this process produced results that look just like the inequitable criteria used in the past to close schools.
Even worse, because this guy had resigned, we weren’t even speaking to anyone who had any decision making power! I guess the board was occupied tonight, but as at-large representatives, WHY AREN’T THEY ATTENDING THESE EVENTS. The board should be coming to the families and the schools, not us coming to them.
The consultant the superintendent brought with him wouldn’t say who was paying him (allegedly not the district.) Anyone know?
How many hundreds of thousands of precious district funds is Wayne going to walk away with?
Who are we going to blame now?
London Breed
This is sad. I don’t the the community realizes that by ousting him, it puts SFUSD in prime takeover from CDE. Last time CDE took over a school district was 2012, Ingleside USD. They immediately lost 50% enrollment. Test scores dropped across the board in all schools. Parents, teachers, admin, organizations had ZERO say. After 10 years, they gave back control but one decade of damage has been done. This actually hurts our entire community, especially the low income families who have no choice. This is how you brainwash and control the general population, by making education worse.
Noone seems to care. They decided Wayne is the scapegoat and now ‘something has been accomplished’ by defenestrating someone who inherited a giant mess from do-nothing Matthews and worse-than-useless Collins, Lopez, and Moliga.
Nobody has a plan.
The RAI brought forth by Dr Wayne was forecasted to save $22 million (a figure that had never actually been substantiated) amid a $421m deficit. State control was never off the table even with these closures because it’s not even close to balancing the budget. Not to mention that school closures typically lead to a decline in enrollment, particular show when you try to mix schools with rival gangs or even more simply, schools with start times that don’t align with parents schedules. They need an actual plan to save money, starting with cuts from a bloated central office that rivals the size of much larger districts like LAUSD.
The state takes over only if the district needs an emergency loan. One of the state advisors has been quoted extensively raising concerns with the lack of fiscal analysis around closures and suggesting all the energy being spent on closures was distracting from necessary budget work. So I’m not sure how you came to this conclusion.
FCMAT audited SFUSD in 2022 and 2024. Matt was in charge for almost all of the time in between, and the report is significantly worse. I’d argue removing him, if anything, makes takeover less likely.
Can you elaborate on why you think firing Wayne makes a state takeover more likely instead of (a little bit) less likely?
Certainly it’s clear that SFUSD central administration is a mess, and firing this superintendent isn’t going to magically fix the mess. But that doesn’t mean that keeping him around would do any better at fixing the mess. Certainly it seems like people who have seen his work up close — like the board, and the two financial “advisors” from the state — have become pretty deeply unimpressed by his performance over the past year or so.
Yet – Wayne was highly regarded coming in .. Maybe the SFUSD administration is filled with incompetent lifers ?
The HR software, losing enrollment, increasing deficits, and 2x SFUSD staff all pre-dated him….
He was the Superintendent at Hayward Unified and did a horrible job!! I was shocked 😳 when he was hired by SF. Incompetence indeed!
Highly regarded by whom? Certainly not any of the educators in the district.
I know Mission Local has a tiny newsroom, but is there no one else able to report on this issue who doesn’t have such a glaringly obvious and late disclosed conflict of interest?
CH —
Are you implying that the fact my children go to these schools affected my coverage of Matt Wayne resigning? Do you think that if my children did not attend a school on the Oct. 8 list that Matt Wayne’s job would be secure?
Do you think that if my children’s school was spared that I would think that this was a well-run and well-handled process?
Can you find a single item in any of my stories that hinges upon my familial situation?
Yours,
JE
Yes, I think your ire about school closures impacting your family has focused your reporting on Wayne when he is far from the only bad actor in this saga. There is way more to the story.
Matt Alexander for example was campaigning on his close oversight of Wayne (weekly meetings specifically about RAI) until about 5 weeks ago.
Even a quick check of Cal Ed Code § 35028 seems to show that the new Superintendent appointee Maria Su does not have the credentials required to hold the Superintendent position in a substantive way.
You obviously have a lot of sources within SFUSD, but I think you need to dig deeper into what’s really happening and not just report whatever they’re leaking to you.
Hey Champ —
You don’t know me. You just think you do.
But, hey, thanks for telling me what’s “really happening.”
JE
Well, THAT will fix the budget. (To be clear, that is sarcastic.)
Is 26 months a modern SFUSD record?
No. Matthews was here five years.
SFUSD has lost the plot. I don’t see it recovering for decades.
10 years+ of mismanagement, $421 deficit, under-enrolled by 14,000 students and continuing to fall, 3 (or 7!) Board of Education Commissioners recalled after attempting to rename schools during the longest self-imposed public school “Covid” closure in the nation (and world!) and after 2 years of a Mayor appointed term to attempt to right the ship in even a small way and prevent a looming State takeover…the Superintendent is now pushed out. Good luck to any future Sup and if you don’t like this closure plan wait until the State takes over the district. Can’t make this up…
I’ve seen this same Routine at SFPD,
Chief Scott is nice guy but puppet of Mayor who appointed him.
Having not gone to a local Catholic High School, the SFPOA hates him and they are the real architects of what goes on in the streets not the DGO’s.
As for SFUSD, my old buddy Matt Gonzalez saw this coming 20 years ago.
The Class of 2000 was flush and voted to give 25m I believe it was, to SFUSD.
Gonzo voted ‘No’ and when I asked him why he said something like …
“Why not 50 million ? Why not 100 million ?”
“They should be a separate entity or some mayor will try to empire build into SFUSD.”
He was right.
Go Warriors !!
Cut and Run for Ten Large ??
h.
truth. regardless of the admin side, this is high politics in an election year. preceded by decades of being even less competent than the City side. the board failed. the mayor meddled and throws shade at the same time . it would only be more tragic with a bridge loan proposal a la chicago. maybe they can hire an attorney as supe, it worked for the PUC. i can’t even laugh anymore. sad for the kids and parents.