School Site Councils and PTAs are in full-on parent recruitment mode. If you haven’t already thrown your hat in the ring, contact school leadership today! And while SSCs are perhaps the lesser known parent/community body to get involved with, you might be amazed at the influence and impact you can have when you join yours. SSC’s number one job is to tie the school budget to student achievement plans. Pretty important stuff. New to your SSC? Don’t miss our three-part series all about School Site Councils; this week check out: What do SSCs decide?
Literacy instruction improvement update. As you know, SF Parent Coalition has been focusing parent and community attention on literacy curricula, instruction, outcomes, and the changes needed at SFUSD. This past May, SFUSD shared a report from TNTP, the outside auditor of SFUSD’s K-5 literacy instruction. The analysis identified major gaps in curricula, instruction and materials, and recommended that SFUSD shift to new research-based materials in order to improve reading outcomes for students. We are hearing that SFUSD is on the path towards developing a curriculum adoption process, and appreciate that they are being thoughtful and focused ensuring that process will involve teachers and community, starting with elementary pilots possibly as soon as this spring.
Board of Education approves the Boring Procedures Policy–and we couldn’t be happier. Once again President Lam led a short-and-sweet meeting, on Tuesday September 6th. The major topic of interest was the conversation and consideration of revisions to board rules and operating procedures. The new policies commit the board to a more effective governance model where they spend less time talking about non-student related issues, and more time focused on student learning. It was passed unanimously after Committee Chair Lainie Motamedi gave an overview of how these policies will enable greater transparency and focus on our students. “The purpose is to refocus the board on student outcomes,” she said. “We know the focus needs to be on our kids and our schools, and rebuilding trust with our community.”
SFUSD approves contract with crisis management consultant to fix remaining teacher pay challenges with EMPower. The teacher pay crisis has continued for far too long, and teachers, parents, and community are fed up. We hear that it’s still being worked on each and every day, and that even the state fiscal team experts have been doing a deep dive to analyze the operational challenges. Parents stand with our teachers continuing to call for a final and complete resolve to this crisis, and we hope that the new consultants being brought in for $2.8M are able to fix the remaining obstacles, once and for all.
All about consolidations. We’ve been hearing about fall budget and classroom consolidations, which has parents, teachers and community more than a little worried again. It’s not a comforting way to start the school year, having classrooms shifted suddenly and unexpectedly. Fortunately, we are hearing that SFUSD is trying a different budget fix to possibly allow them to avoid consolidations at this time. That said, we all know SFUSD has a massive structural deficit affecting our district, and that at some point, hard decisions are going to have to be made again. We just hope that they are made in the most careful and thoughtful way that *minimize* negative impacts to students and classrooms. In the meantime, read our Policy Explainer on consolidations, why they happen, and what you can do to prevent them.
