Dear SFUSD Champions and Supporters,
We hope you, your kids, and teachers are having a strong start to the school year. As we all settle into the new year, it’s time for our back to school reality check: What’s actually happening in our classrooms, and where do we still need to push for our 49,000 students?
As many of you know, SF Parents exists to keep families informed, engaged, and empowered as advocates for our city’s public school kids. Our newsletters keep you up-to-date about what’s happening at SFUSD, and how you can make a difference through our current campaigns (SF Kids Can’t Wait and Fix the Budget, Fund the Future) and other ways. Keep reading below to learn the latest.
As the new school year starts up, SFUSD is reporting the highest percentage of staffed classrooms they’ve seen in recent years (79% in 2023/24 → 92% in 2025/26). This is great news and SFUSD principals and Central staff worked so hard to get to this point. However, we are well aware that staffing levels are extremely uneven and inequitable across SFUSD, with the remaining vacancies disproportionately impacting young children (especially PreK and TK), Special Education, and high school core subjects like math. We also know vacancies disproportionately impact our city’s schools that serve predominantly low-income and historically underserved students. No amount of classroom vacancies feels ok, and we still want to see each and every student start the school year with a full-time, qualified teacher.
We’re congratulating SFUSD on progress while simultaneously asking how they are expediting HR processes and matching credentialed teachers to vacant classrooms ASAP, especially in the priority areas described above. We’re also wondering how opening up school supplemental hiring again–despite eager anticipation for this moment–might inadvertently pull teachers away from the classroom into specialty positions. We’re continuing to monitor all of this. Thank you to parents in our SFUSD Families Forum on Facebook for bringing some of these concerns to our attention.
BACK-TO-SCHOOL NIGHTS & CURRICULUM UPDATES
Elementary back-to-school nights are this week! (Middle school 9/11; High School 9/18). Do your homework before back-to-school night to understand the district’s new K-8 math program and its continued rollout of the new-as-of-last-year literacy curriculum. As someone coming from a family of educators, I know how hard it can be on teachers when new programs are adopted without a clear vision, district-wide commitment, or critical supports. Early signs suggest the Central Office is doing a great job on implementation so far, but you tell us: Are teachers receiving the support and resources they need, including compensated time to plan new lessons? Are kids seeing the new materials in their classrooms? Parents and teachers are welcome to join our SF Kids Can’t Wait campaign to engage in this important advocacy, or to RSVP for our 9/11 community meeting to hear more from SFUSD’s Curriculum and Instruction Department with updates on how it is going this year so far.
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OVERALL OUTLOOK: CAUTIOUSLY OPTIMISTIC
Things are much calmer than last fall’s chaos around school closures, superintendent drama, and an ongoing financial crisis. Today, the district has better finances, there is a stronger focus on student outcomes, and the Board is staying out of headlines. After five (!) years of parent advocacy with a focus on the basics—math, literacy, career and college readiness—we’re finally seeing things settle down for SFUSD. Thank you to all parent advocates who helped move the district in a strong direction for our students. This is what sustained pressure looks like.
Continue reading on to find more news about SFUSD and ways to get involved. Thank you for your advocacy on behalf of SFUSD’s 49,000 kids.
In community,
Meredith & the SF Parents Team
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The SFUSD Board of Education (“BOE”) is the elected governing body responsible for overseeing our public schools. The seven-member board sets district policy, approves staff-presented budgets, hires the superintendent, and makes decisions that directly impact the classroom. They meet twice a month hearing presentations from the superintendent and cabinet staff, and have already kicked off this school year with two meetings in August, plus a full-day board retreat on good governance.
SO WHAT’S THE LATEST?
DELAYS ON FISCAL STABILIZATION. An unexpected delay for this agenda item–a progress monitoring session focused on staffing, budget stability, and payroll system updates–was pushed back from the 8/26 BOE meeting to September without explanation. While we know there is always other business, we wonder about this deprioritization of SFUSD’s focus on these critical updates.
DELAYS ON KEY HIRES. Also pushed back from the 8/26 meeting, the BOE was expected to approve the hiring for a new Deputy of Curriculum and Instruction, A.K.A. the superintendent’s “righthand” person. After the former Deputy (Karling Aguilera-Fort) announced his retirement last spring, a search for this crucial role began at the end of the 2024-25 school year. Given that our superintendent does not have the typically required education administration background, this position is critical to ensuring a strong educational vision and implementation at SFUSD. Another concerning vacancy at the cabinet level: we’re still seeing an opening for the Head of Special Education. With the challenges facing our special education department, this position should also be top priority to fill with an exceptional candidate.
CHARTER DENIAL AND UNEXPECTED NEW MANDARIN OFFERING. For the first time since 2018, a charter school proposal landed on the desks of the BOE this spring. San Francisco is a city that is ideologically opposed to charter schools, so it wasn’t surprising to watch this one–Dragon Gate Academy–fizzle out. The interesting parts were two-fold: 1) the charter school founders compiled a weak application and proposal, and weren’t ready to defend its shortcomings at the 8/26 BOE meeting and vote, and 2) the district responded to the increased demands for more Mandarin immersion by committing to expand the existing program in the near future.
ETHNIC STUDIES APPROVED. The Board of Education has officially voted to implement a new Ethnic Studies curriculum called Voices for this school year. You may have noticed we stayed relatively quiet on this topic over the summer while other groups weighed in extensively. As we’ve consistently maintained, SF Parents believes Ethnic Studies is valuable for all students when implemented effectively. Valid concerns were raised this spring by parents, teachers, and district officials about content in the previously taught course. While SFUSD’s approach to addressing these issues shifted over the summer, the district has now moved forward with delivering this course across all SFUSD high schools by trying out the Voices curriculum.
RENEWED FOCUS ON GOOD GOVERNANCE? At the Board of Education’s annual retreat, their good governance consultant, A.J. Crabill, led them through a training on Student Outcomes Focused Governance strategies. Due to some recent questions around how board meetings have been conducted, the retreat focused on how the commissioners can work better together, more productively, with their eyes on the prize: 49,000 thriving students.
WHAT’S YOUR TAKE?
We share our newsletters directly with the BOE commissioners, but the most important voices they hear from are YOURS. We encourage you to join us at the September 9th Board of Education meeting to participate in public comment calling for a strong focus on student outcomes. We will meet at 6:00 pm in the lobby of 555 Franklin – if you can join us, we’ll have a burrito and t-shirt waiting for you! But you have to RSVP:
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Back-to-school is a great time to plug in. Parents and teachers help decide how district dollars are spent, which programs get prioritized, and what supports show up in classrooms. Here are two ways you can step up your leadership this fall:
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Run for your School Site Council (SSC). Help set your school’s priorities and budget, and keep parent voices at the table by running for your School Site Council (SSC). The SSC is an elected group including school staff, parents, and in secondary schools, students. Learn more about SSCs and how to join yours.
- Apply to an SFUSD Advisory Committee. If you’re a current parent/guardian serving on your school’s SSC or ELAC and you care about district-level impact, take your leadership up a notch this year: the Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) Advisory Committee helps inform how SFUSD prioritizes resources to improve student outcomes. Learn more and apply here, by 9/24.
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