What Parents Told Us About SFUSD Enrollment

In September 2026, SF Parents Coalition surveyed 300 San Francisco parents about what they want from SFUSD’s new elementary school enrollment system.

This was an informal, voluntary survey of parents in our network, not a scientific or representative poll. We conducted it to better understand what families value as SFUSD considers major changes to student assignment.

Question 1: What are your top priorities for a new enrollment system?

Parents could select more than one priority.

• 74% (223 parents) — Having a school close to home
• 36% (107 parents) — Knowing in advance which school my child will attend
• 28% (85 parents) — Having access to specialized programs, such as language immersion or K–8 programs
• 16% (49 parents) — Having socioeconomically and racially diverse schools
• 14% (41 parents) — Having the ability to choose from schools across the city
• 11% (34 parents) — Having my preferred school start time

Question 2: How important is it to have a school close to home?

• 69% (206 parents) — Very important
• 24% (73 parents) — Somewhat important
• 6% (17 parents) — Not very important
• 1% (4 parents) — Not important at all

Overall, 93% of parents said having a school close to home was very or somewhat important.

Question 3: When weighing proximity against choice, what would you prefer?

• 55% (166 parents) — A guaranteed school close to home, even with fewer choices
• 34% (103 parents) — I would want a balance between the two
• 14% (41 parents) — More school choices, even if I don’t know in advance where my child will be assigned

A note on responses: This question allowed respondents to select more than one answer. Ten parents selected two responses:

• 8 selected both “guaranteed school close to home” + “balance between the two.”
• 2 selected both “more school choices” + “balance between the two.”

No respondents selected both “guaranteed school close to home” and “more school choices,” and no one selected all three.

Question 4: What else should we know?

Parents were also given an opportunity to tell us, in their own words, what else mattered to them about SFUSD’s enrollment system.

Their responses touched on neighborhood community, differences in school quality, specialized and language programs, start times, before- and after-school care, transportation and commute needs, siblings, diversity and segregation, predictability, and the ability to choose another school when a family’s neighborhood school isn’t the right fit.

The comments add important context to the numbers: many parents want the security of knowing there is a school close to home for their child while still having the ability to look elsewhere when another SFUSD school better meets their family’s needs.

What Parents Said

Below are the substantive responses to our open-ended question, shared anonymously and verbatim. We have not corrected spelling, grammar, capitalization, or punctuation. Blank responses and responses without substantive feedback have been omitted.

Parent comments

• While giving people less choice tends to be unpopular, I think it’s generally expected/preferred to be guaranteed a choice from neighborhood schools with option to set your residence as your office location if you’d rather have a school close to work. Like a 2 mile zone or something.
• Some way of guaranteeing neighborhood spot for families who want it, but maintain CTIP ability to have more choice. (But update what’s designated at CTIP to minimize areas that have become wealthier with families taking advantage)
• Buses. Why is this not obvious to everyone why the lottery doesn’t actually work?
• Option 2. Kids flee public when assigned an unsuccessful school or school far away.
• The board needs to consider the current system with small changes as well.
• I appreciate the current lottery system and highly value school choice. The only change I would support is reevaluating the CTIP tiebreaker. That is based off of old census data, and feel the CTIP tiebreaker needs to be updated in a more frequent time period. Before making changes to the enrollment system, I want SFUSD to update its portfolio of schools. If schools are going to consolidate or close, let’s do that before redesigning the lottery. I also want the portfolio of language programs updated. Perhaps we combine biliteracy and dual immersion programs into their own facilities. Personally, I do not want to be assigned to my neighborhood school if it means sharing campus with language programs. I do not want my only choice to be at a school with only one GE class per grade. If we’re moving back to neighborhood schools, then I want GE programs to be comparable.
• proximity
• Schools have different start times/end times and very different before/after care programs, with different costs, hours, and programming. Some families may prefer a school that’s close to work or a grandparent/other family member. Some after school programs also have a foreign language component and currently SFUSD doesn’t consider these as district-wide even though some families choose these schools for these programs.
• Neighborhood schools are community hubs– they bring parents and kids together to enrich walkable, family-friendly, vibrant, safe SF neighborhoods. The more parents can rely on living within walking distance of their kid’s elementary school the better that works, and neighborhood school assignments do that. Citywide lotteries for special programs are great but only as a supplement to guaranteed neighborhood school placement. We were so lucky to live within walking distance of our son’s elementary school– we want that for all SF families!
• Value of strong neighborhood schools.
• Location
• Make sure that the variety of available programs is equally available for families all over the city! More spanish programs on the westside and mandarin on the eastside, etc
• Guarantee everyone an AA slot before you do anything else.
• You HAVE to invest in neighborhood schools that aren’t currently doing so well! The unlimited choice of lottery only makes it seem like there are UNDESIRABLE schools – which does not have to be the case! Don’t sell some schools short, invest in the schools that need it most to lift every school up. Being able to go to a solid school near your home is a right every student should have in SFUSD.
• I want my third child, who won’t get sibling priority, to still be able to attend our neighborhood school like her siblings did. Beyond prioritizing access to neighborhood schools, I think the system should be simpler. Having toured 8 or 9 elementary schools within 2 miles of the Inner Sunset when my oldest daughter enrolled in kindergarten, I was struck by how similar the schools are. There are a lot of great elementary schools. I don’t know if I benefitted at all from the ability to rank many similar schools. It would have been less stressful and time consuming and would have resulted in the same outcome if I had a guaranteed spot at my neighborhood school and the ability to apply to a meaningfully different school (e.g. a language school or maybe a school close to work for families for whom that would work better).
• Proximity is an absolute must. I would never be willing to commute my kid across the city for school every day. I would move out of the area instead.
• How much stress the current system is causing on families and the kids. They should pick a choice that diminishes the uncertainty and stress on families. And for children that need special programs allow the family to have access to the programs.
• Balance between predictability and choice. Guaranteed school close to home, option to apply to City-wide programs or other schools
• close to home
• They should consider seeing if there is a correlation by area/zip code between distance from home and attendance and academic outcomes esp with regard to race and socioeconomic status (i.e., do kids who live closer to school have better attendance and therefore better outcomes? do kids who go to further schools have better or worse outcomes (i.e. since they got to choose, they are more motivated to attend)? do kids who come from wealthy families do well wherever they go or is distance or school “quality” a factor? do kids who are SED do better when they go to schools in wealthier neighborhoods or is it the same ratio or do they do worse if they live really far? Attendance for black kids are lower than for other races, is distance from school a factor or the neighborhood of the school? For example, at APG, a great MS, the attendance for black kids is lower than for white and Asian kids and their outcomes % is lower. Are the kids who aren’t doing well also kids who have worse attendance and/or live far? Are similar kids who attend school closer doing better or is it the same or worse? The number for just APG are too small to extrapolate but perhaps the researchers working on the enrollment problems can look to see if there are any trends in looking at neighborhood, distance, attendance, and outcomes to see if it would inform decision making.) Basically, does choice lead to better outcomes or do we just need to fix schools in other ways (such as concentrating needed resources at sites that need them if needs can be grouped by neighborhood))
• Ability for families unhappy with their AA school reasonable opportunity to enroll in other nearby schools. Improve school bus availability.
• Sibling preference MUST be preserved until the currently enrolled students move on to middle-school. Forcing families to take their kids to two different elementary schools is cruel.
• I want to be able to attend a school near me BUT I do not want that to become rich schools in rich neighborhoods and poor schools in less affluent neighborhoods and the segregation we NEED to end.
• People leave the city over this enrollment system. It was a noble experiment, but we have the data we need to conclude that it didn’t create the desired outcomes and has worsened a lot of things. It’s time to eliminate it.
• schools close to home with more diversity and equity
• Actually getting something changed instead of endless debates and “engagement” meetings
• Accurately summarize the anticipated impact of any changes to the enrollment system, lots of bad information going around out there.
• we were lucky and got into the school we wanted. there should be an option to just go to the school down the road from you
• The schools are not equal in resources, opportunities (pta funds), and academic success. This needs to change. I don’t want to send my kid to schools where we live because they are under resourced and not performing as other school on the west side. This change will affect kids living in cheaper areas having access to opportunities and academic success.
• How little the current system has changed the socioeconomic diversity of schools. How we still have schools with 100k.
• I feel that option 2 is the fairest. We can’t help where we live with the rental prices the way they are. We still need choices and there aren’t enough city wide choices and city wide schools have very limited spots
• I don’t like the idea of zones, even small zones, if it means we aren’t guaranteed a school that’s in our own neighborhood. As an example, even the example small-zone map would have students near Ulloa potentially being assigned out of the Sunset entirely with no guarantee of getting their nearby school. I know it’s not an actual map proposal, but this failure mode seems inevitable no matter how they draw the maps.
• Part of the school is the community. I feel like being in a school close to where you live allows you to be involved in the community near your school much easier.
• the benefits of local schools that kids can walk or bike to and that allow for strong local neighborhood communities
• Diversity in schools balanced with making things easier for families
• only make enrollment changes that will make the district more financially viable
• PTA fund pooling, equality of supports, match capacity of afterschool programs to the demand, ensure teachers use Phonics based instruction at all schools (apparently using a curriculum is optional?)
• Language pathway organization and colocation with general ed. Maintaining colocation where it fits seems to inprove socioeconomic and racial diversity, which I believe is a priority.
• Predictability for families.
• Close schools and upgrade the remaining ones
• Choose carefully. Taking away choice will be the death knell for SFUSD. 50% of parents I know in SFUSD will drop out immediately if choice is taken away.
• Certainty of assignment. Parents shouldn’t have to worry about which school they will be assigned. Other cities have systems that there is predictability of which school you’ll go to based on your address.
• staffing schools more fully and appropriately rather than outsourcing teaching to technology; providing significant art, music, drama and other creative expression courses for all students at all schools; standardizing elementary school schedules, and getting rid of the 7:50 start time schools, it’s way too early
• Please make sure having a guarantee for a school close to him actually means close to home. Looking at the small zones map, it looks like schools in a zone would not actually be that close to home. I would also allow some choice and not force families to a school close to home if they don’t want it.
• I want SFUSD to rename/rebrand “the lottery” because that implies that some people win and others lose
• Chinese language is a non negotiable requirement for us
• If you made all the schools better and more equitable we wouldn’t have to use a lottery system. Ensure there are equal opportunities at every elementary school an folks won’t clamor to be in a GOOD one.
• SFUSD needs to put its focus on the education and students’ learning. It is not place for certain groups to spread their values or beliefs. Send surveys to the families who left SFUSD
• Walkable schools
• simplicity
• Guarantee for enrollment in neighborhood school
• What problem is SFUSD trying to solve?
• Resources, reputation of each of the schools. Some are better funded via PTA than others i.e. more resources more programs
• Making public schools attractive to the most number of families to increase enrollment
• While racial & economic diversity is a worthy goal, the school district’s attempts to achieve it despite residential segregation causes even worse problems.
• The connection between neighborhood schools and strong local community. My kids attend an SFUSD school a block from our house, where most other kids who attend also live within walking distance of the school. It has become one of the defining features of our neighborhood that everywhere we go during out-of-school hours, we see school families and friends and that our kids can walk to each other’s houses and walk home from school together. It is so rare and special! Even turning the system here into a “small zone” system would be a big change– it might not the school all that much, but it would negatively impact the neighborhood’s sense of community. On the other hand, steering people in other neighborhoods toward their neighborhood school could have a really positive impact on those communities that parents might not anticipate.
• Give equitable access to to language programs for all students, including a preference for native speakers, INCLUDING families who do and do not choose to send their children to TK!
• make everyone’s commute shorter – less traffic and better for the environment – prioritize schools kids can walk to
• Everyone likes and appreciates predictability.
• Fairness
• The implications of their choice on total enrollment for SFUSD. SFUSD is not the only education provider in SF. If they get this wrong, many more families will walk away from public schools. Also think more about the actual enrollment user experience and software. It’s not all policy. A lot of it is implementation and software/form experience.
• Having more than one choice within a close radius as that is how it is many places and makes the most sense
• Guaranteeing TK students a spot in kindergarten is prompting many families who don’t need subsidized pre-K to compete for a TK spot. I strongly support moving to K placement based on 1) sibling then 2) home address. Placing students in schools close to their home fosters community ties and independence as they grow older.
• The elementary schools are completely different from each other today, independent of the program differences between schools. Neighboorhood schools is our family’s strong preference, but it requires investment in funds, staffing and communication at schools that does not exist today in order to be successful. I want to know how SFUSD is adjusting school investment as required with any change in enrollment process.
• Predictably
• A school that is close to home that’s also diverse.
• Not changing anything until it is thoroughly researched and vetted.
• Making it possible for kids to walk or bike to school reduces climate impact, makes streets safer, reduces traffic, increases student confidence, and saves parent time. Local schools are better for everyone – make everyone’s local schools better.
• I want SFUSD to realize that a full city-wide choice system has created perverse incentives that prevent high quality and safe schools for all students. Choice has made it easier for wealthy parents to choose private schools and low-income parents to leave their neighborhood schools, abandoning the least privileged in their communities. If SFUSD wants equity, it needs to find a way to fully staff and resource all schools and bring back in families who chose private schools. Lastly, I encourage SF Parents not to stymie the process by calling for endless community engagement. Recognize that this process has been going on for more than a decade–the district needs to be held accountable to actually implementing the policy they vote on. It is likely that any decision is going to anger a large portion of the SFUSD community. A fair process does not mean there will be consensus or full community trust. Trust comes when they actually implement the policy successfully.
• I wish the schools would all start later, at 8:40 or 9:30. 7:50 is extreme for young kids.
• I think more families will stay in SF if they know for sure that their child will go to one specific neighborhood school
• People should be guaranteed to have access to their closest school
• Close to hime enrollment
• Sibling already in SFUSD but the school is not nearby
• More certainty for incoming families, I think this would increase families debating between private and SFUSD. Make it easy for them to go SFUSD.
• good local schools help build strong communities
• Logistics, so schools close to home. We spend so much time driving kids all over.
• Actual income instead of zip code
• The school district cannot address a diversity problem with the lottery for a city that cannot address its own diversity problem
• Diversity and community needs especially socio economically and geographically