Parents Call For Transparency, Accountability, and Collaboration
Wednesday October 16th, 2024
Early last week, SFUSD released a list of schools for potential closure or consolidation, and the emotional toll on families since has been immense. It hasn’t helped that SFUSD botched major communications, including publishing incorrect school composite scores, and releasing information without consulting the school board or other city players. The district’s actions have been anything but smooth or transparent, and Superintendent Matt Wayne needs to be held accountable for this disaster.
So does the Board of Education.
Two weeks ago, the president of the school board and the superintendent published a joint statement sharing that they were–among other priorities–holding themselves accountable to reducing the number of schools across SFUSD. Following that, we learned that school board members went as far as to re-craft major aspects of the closure plan that they didn’t like, ranging from changing schools on the list to suggesting a “hunger games style” announcement that would name 12-13 schools but also that only 4 to 8 would close after a period of community engagement. Also thrown into the mix at this point was the city’s “school stabilization team,” who were new to the process and brought their additional ideas. There were suddenly too many cooks in the kitchen.
Fast forward to this past weekend, on Friday we learned that the Board of Education switched gears and pushed to halt the school closure process entirely and to immediately remove the superintendent. We then saw a public strategy unfold, from the teachers’ union to Mayor London Breed issuing statements yesterday calling for a halt to the closures and describing a lack of confidence in Superintendent Wayne. Crickets from the Board of Education, though they ignited the initial flame.
While the superintendent has handled the closure process poorly, we are deeply concerned by the school board’s meddling followed by their lack of accountability, creating even more chaos at such a fragile moment for our district. We’ve learned that SFUSD is at risk of not being able to meet payroll obligations by summer 2025. To avoid a state takeover, the district needs to submit a budget to the board in a manner of weeks that cuts $113 million (or 1/8th) of our budget, including draconian cuts to teaching staff and support staff that we have not seen on this scale in San Francisco for twenty years. While closures never were going to solve the budget deficit, the district and Board of Education had jointly committed to a school consolidation process to ensure that these drastic cuts would not leave SF’s public school students without librarians, teachers, social workers, and other key staff at their schools.
It is also our understanding that there is no coherent plan for replacing Superintendent Wayne with experienced leadership who can bring legitimacy and credibility to SFUSD right now. We’ve learned that senior staff at SFUSD were offered the interim role by school board members in the frenetic firing attempt, to which staff responded with a “no thank you” as well as by sending a joint letter of support for the superintendent to the school board.
Starting the budget cut process from scratch on the cusp of the state deadline without an experienced education leader is irresponsible at best. We don’t have confidence in this Board of Education or a potential interim administrators to be able to find $113 million in cuts—by next month—in a way that minimizes the educational impact on students.
We urge the Board of Education to prioritize honesty, collaboration, and transparency in all their actions moving forward, and we call for thoughtful leadership–at all levels–during this critical time. Our children’s futures are at stake, and they deserve more than political theater. They deserve a clear, unified vision for a stronger, more equitable school system and all adults rowing in the same direction.
Finally: Just yesterday, we sat amongst Jean Parker elementary families as they learned that next year–because of the extreme budget cuts coming–their 124-student school community will lose one of their core teachers (7 down to 6), will no longer have a nurse, and will lose their full-time social worker and instructional coach to only part-time support for kids. It’s easy for politicians to oppose school closures, which are undeniably tragic for our students and communities. However, none of them are addressing the harsh reality: San Francisco will soon face underfunded, barebones schools that make achieving our educational vision for the city’s 49,000 students nearly impossible.