12/16/25 BOE Meeting
The big takeaways:
- Superintendent Dr. Su confirmed at the meeting that the District identified money to keep Social Workers at all schools in next year’s budget.
- The budget plans presented over the last couple of weeks were DRAFT, but the district apologized for not being more clear about this with the community and not sharing more analysis and information
- The Board of Education unanimously rejected the District’s presented Fiscal Stabilization Plan, citing that the district needs to do more community engagement first
Discussion of Draft SY 2026-27 School Staffing Model
Link to Draft model. Link to presentation, including timeline of Staffing Plan.
Early on in the conversation, Superintendent Dr. Su got ahead of the problematic rollout of this DRAFT school staffing model, admitting that she & the district should have communicated more ahead of the plan release. She also emphasized that this DRAFT model was the worst case scenario, though it is still frustrating that this wasn’t better communicated when the model was first released.
Throughout the initial discussion of the model we learned that:
- The District will provide a Supplemental Hiring Guide (which sounds similar to last year’s) to explain how to funds can be used to pay for additional T10s, Instructional Coaches, APs, and Paraeducators (per Slide 8)
- School allocations will be sent to principals and school leaders in January; the District will meet with site leaders at all 125 schools; then leaders will engage with parents in January / School Site Councils
- The budget will be revised in January in line with the Governor’s budget and enrollment updates – the staffing model will be revised, then finalized in June
- District funding 6 periods of instruction doesn’t mean that sites can’t offer 7 periods (due to how school leadership can build schedules with 0 periods), and apparently only 16% of 12th graders have 7 classes currently. Math instructional time will increase by changing to 6 periods. Still lacking clarity is how the availability of electives will be impacted by these changes.
In the Q&A portion with the BOE, the student delegate asked the most salient question: “How likely is the worst case scenario?” Dr. Su answered “We’re not near the worst case scenario,” but there are 3 unknowns:
- Do not know CA budget (end of January for preliminary)
- Do not know Enrollment (end of January)
- Do not know final labor contracts and related increases (hopefully January)
The other 3 most illuminating comments from the discussion
- Commissioner Alexander was contacted by a number of principals, not one of whom was in support of the staffing model, one saying it was “not possible to run a school with this plan.”
- Deputy Superintendent Chris Mount-Benites shared that last year’s Guidance to school sites was overly restrictive, and the district lost significant money from grants
- President Kim asked how the staffing plan supported Vision 2027, and Dr. Su shared that they hadn’t yet mapped the model to that
Adoption of the FYs 2025-2028 Fiscal Stabilization Plan (FSP)
Link to presentation, link to plan.
Background (from last week’s Cheat Sheet):
SFUSD’s FY 2025-26 First Interim Report showed an improved “qualified” budget certification (meaning it may or may not be able to pay its expenses) after several years of “negative” budget certification (will not be able to pay its expenses). CA Department of Education requires districts in “qualified” or “negative” budget certification to submit a Fiscal Stabilization Plan specifying how they intend to address their fiscal issues.
The Board was asked to approve the proposed Fiscal Stabilization Plan (FSP), which offers multiple strategies to be taken in the next 3 fiscal years to address SFUSD’s current Unrestricted General Fund deficit of $48 million and Restricted General Fund deficit of $54 million:
Deputy Superintendent Chris Mount-Benites took the board through the presentation, reminding everyone of our declining enrollment, and the situation as outlined above. He shared the plan which starts in earnest on slide 13, and did his best to make it clear that these were things that could be cut, not that they necessarily would, and tried to assuage the BOE of any fears that they were actually passing these cuts.
Despite the positioning by Mount-Benites, the board felt uncomfortable voting to approve the FSP
- Commissioner Ray asked how the District could get more community input in forums outside of a few community meetings and the constrained BOE meetings
- President Kim stated that, “regardless of what happens with FSP, he wants this to better reflect community engagement / input that is given.”
The board voted “No” 6-0 (Alexander, Ray, Huling, Kim, Gupta, Fisher voting no) on the FSB.