Junipero Serra Annex Early Education School will close at the end of the school year, according to letters from San Francisco Unified School District officials sent to parents this fall.
In the first letter emailed to parents and staff on Sept. 15, the school district said it would be “transitioning classrooms to Mission Education Center and John McLaren Early Education School beginning in Fall 2027.”
Junipero Serra Annex, located in Bernal Heights, is an extension of its namesake Junipero Serra Elementary School and presently serves about 80 transitional kindergarten and preschool students.
Matt Colley, whose 4-year-old daughter is currently enrolled in pre-K at the school, said parents and staff were blindsided by the decision.
“None of the teachers know where they’re going next year,” Colley said. “I’m frustrated about the lack of community engagement and community involvement.”
Kristina Finnegan is a transitional kindergarten teacher at the school. She decided to leave her previous job of eight years teaching in the East Bay to start working at Junipero Serra Annex a year ago. Now, she does not know where she’ll be teaching next.
“We’ve had one meeting about the process,” said Finnegan. “But, it’s still not exactly clear when things will happen. We don’t even know what the options are yet.”
Finnegan said she had heard rumors for months about a potential closure. But the September letter was the first official notice any teachers received. She said the district did not involve faculty in any of the decision-making.
The school district in that September letter wrote to parents that the current facility housing the Junipero Serra Annex, located at 155 Appleton Ave. a stone’s throw from Holly Park, is not owned by the SFUSD. In order to remain operational, the letter states, the facility would require $1.5 million in repairs.
The district wrote that, “given the scale of those repairs, we are prioritizing investments in district-owned buildings where we can ensure long-term stability, safety, and quality learning environments for our youngest students.”
The district has been discussing a “relocation” of the school site since at least late May, when district officials gave a presentation to the school board about districtwide plans to expand early education and transitional kindergarten.
That May 20 presentation outlined a “potential relocation” of the two transitional kindergarten and three preschool classrooms at the Annex’s Bernal location to other school sites, due to “capital improvement needs” at the school’s current site.
Colley, the parent of the 4-year-old student, said that he and other parents are upset over what they call a lack of transparency. He has been a parent at the school for two years and said the letter in September was the first time he received any notice of the plan to, in the district’s words, “transition” the school.
It’s a term he considers misleading.
“That’s actually not what’s happening,” Colley said. “The staff at the school has done a tremendous job of building such a strong community and for the district to just kind of like come in and wipe that out with no family involvement, no discussion, and then to kind of pretend it’s not happening by calling it a ‘relocation’ and a ‘transition’ is evasive and frustrating.”
In 2024, the district announced that school closures for the 2025-2026 academic year would be suspended. But, starting in 2027, closures can resume as long as the district follows best practices as outlined by the California Department of Education, which include:
- a California Department of Education-certified fiscal analysis,
- an independently verified equity audit,
- robust, meaningful community engagement,
- an accessible and thoughtful transition plan
- and a thorough analysis of student (re)assignment policies.
The state specifically requires school districts considering closures to create a committee composed of parents, district staff and nearby community members, among others.
That committee must meet and examine a set of criteria including enrollment, demographics, operating costs, and more. Then the committee submits a report to the board about whether the school should close or not.
The district’s spokesperson, Katrina Kincade, said the district is not undergoing a formal closure for Junipero Serra Annex. Rather, the district said this decision was made over concerns for student safety.
“The building is not up to code — it needs aggressive repairs,” Kincade said. “This is not a school closure for portfolio reasons.”
According to city documents, the district has completed at least three renovation projects at the school site, going back to 2010. The most recent repairs were done in May 2025.
But Kincaid said the current facility issues are too significant to justify the costs.
SFUSD School Board President Phil Kim said he believes the board was not required to make the final call on the closure of the school because the Annex is simply an extension of its adjacent namesake elementary school, Junipero Serra Elementary School.
In a second letter, sent to parents on Oct. 20, the district notified parents that they would have some say in choosing where their students go to school next. The last day of school at Junipero Sera Annex is slated to be June 2 for transitional kindergarten and June 4 for pre-kindergarten.
