SFUSD Board Meeting Recap — May 26th, 2026
Item F.1 Goal 1 and Guardrail 3 Progress Monitoring (presentation link here, report link here)
As we stated in our Cheat Sheet:
SFUSD remains significantly off track in meeting its early literacy goals, despite being nearly two years into implementation of its new reading curriculum. The district’s report states that student outcomes have largely plateaued and that classroom instruction “appears to have weakened compared to last year.
The report also raises serious concerns about classroom implementation:
- Only 77% of observed Kindergarten classrooms and 87% of First grade classrooms were using the curriculum materials consistently.
- In many classrooms, students had limited opportunities to practice foundational reading skills.
- Use of decodable texts remained extremely limited.
For Interim Goals 1.1 – 1.2, Spring 2026 STAR test scores rose in relation to Winter 2026, but are still comparable to Spring 2025.
During the district’s presentation, the District emphasized heavy use of Amira, saying that there is a high correlation between its usage and STAR score increases. Commissioner Fisher pushed back on this, asking whether or not another strategy would be more effective, and also questioned whether 100 minutes a year makes a difference. Commissioner Ray agreed, also wondering how high dosage tutoring would compare in terms of effectiveness.
The district response on Amira was, “we need to implement it FULLY, then see if the data says it works.” (but then they confusingly said, “we know what works”)
In regards to the walkthrough data, Commissioner Ray also smartly asked “how confident are we in the information we are getting from the walkthroughs, given the small (n) sizes of the observations?” Essentially, if we are going to make decisions based on walkthroughs, should we be doing more of them so the data is usable and trendable, or will it never get to that point?
Assistant Superintendent Devin Krugman responded, in part, saying that the walkthrough data “is directional, should tell us what to focus on” but did not suggest the data is trendable. She also added, “Our hope is to collect learning walk data ourselves moving forward” (rather than use outside consultant TNMP) though did not address whether or not that would somehow allow there to be more learning walks.
Aside from Amira, the district recommended they:
- Focus instructional coaches on newer teachers (because they are more likely to listen to instructional coaches)
- Focus instructional coaches on 1st and 2nd grade teachers
The district also shared that newer instructional coaches are getting pushback from veteran teachers, some of whom may say or feel “we know more than you do.”
President Kim asked, “do we need more instructional coaches?” Superintendent Su answered that “every school site has a coach, and while we could have more, the bigger question is ‘how do we strategically deploy them?’” then added that there is a big turnover problem which slows down coaching/adoption.
Commissioner Huling suggested overhiring at schools with more focal population students, to help them make gains, and Dr. Su seemed to agree with the approach.
Item G.1 Major Decisions Update – New Special Education County Program for SY 26-27 and expanded in SY 27-28 (link here)
Context from the Cheat Sheet:
SFUSD is proposing a new special education program for students with significant behavioral and academic support needs. The program would be located at the Edwin & Anita Lee Building. Right now, many of these students attend specialized private schools outside of SFUSD because the district does not currently offer enough in-district programs to meet their needs. These placements are expensive for the district and often require long daily bus rides for students.
SFUSD estimates this new program could save the district about $3 million each year once fully operational. The district plans to open two classrooms in September 2026 serving 16 students in grades 5–12, with plans to expand the program the following school year to serve up to 32 students.
Generally the board was supportive of this facility, as it seems like a no-brainer given additional convenience for families and cost-savings to the district (cost per pupil is up to $200K/student if they are sent to Non-Public Schools). Commissioners wondered:
- How does this fit into our overall portfolio / enrollment strategy?
- What is our current usage of NPS (Non-Public Schools) as a district?
Superintendent Su commented that, “we have to go slow to go far, to make sure we can methodically and intentionally ramp this up in the future.” She also mentioned that principals have asked Dr. Su about opportunities to co-locate programs at their schools to leverage under-utilized space.
In the first year of this facility, 16 students will be served, then 32 students in the second year. The current count of students placed in Non-Public schools is 162, and as the maximum capacity would be roughly 88 students, co-locating at other schools may make sense in the future once the model is implemented and proven.