10/28/25 BOE Meeting Headlines:
- KIPP Charter Renewals Approved: Board votes to renew KIPP Bayview Elementary and KIPP College Prep.
- Curriculum Adoption Still Lagging: SFUSD remains off track on districtwide adoption of new K-8 literacy and math programs.
- Instructional Coaching Gaps Highlighted: Board questions lack of coaches at middle and high schools.
- Decision-Making Framework Advances: New draft clarifies which decisions are Board vs. Superintendent-led.
- New Community Engagement Committee Launching: Commissioner Alexander to lead Ad-Hoc Committee on Progress Monitoring—first meeting Nov. 6.
Meeting Summary
After a breezy public comment period (it concluded well before 8pm!) where the most prominent voices were against the closure of The Academy, the BOE then voted to approve the charters of Kipp Bayview Elementary and Kipp College Prep. In this discussion, Commissioner Alexander noted that, while he wished KIPP was unionized and part of SFUSD, since KIPP schools are pre-existing charters, there is no new budgetary strain to SFUSD, and the board’s job is to judge the academic quality on the institution. [Note: Commissioner Alexander sent one of his children to an SFUSD charter school.]
Interim Guardrail 3.1 Progress Monitoring
Presentation link
As we noted in our BOE Cheat Sheet, the purpose of Interim Guardrail 3.1 is to ensure high-quality Tier 1 instruction in math and language arts by auditing the adoption of the new literacy and math programs. Based on September classroom walkthroughs by external evaluator, TNTP, SFUSD remains off track in ensuring that all students receive standards-aligned, grade-level content.
- In literacy, HMH curriculum adoption has increased in classrooms from 73% in the Spring to 77% now – still short of 85% goal, but showing progress, especially in light of teacher turnover at many schools
- In math, 65% of observed classrooms are using the new curriculum; because this is the first year on the curriculum, there is no comparable prior data point, though perhaps the 73% adoption observed for literacy in the first year is a fair benchmark
It is disappointing to see more of a lag with the math program adoption, so far. Staff offered the following Plan for improvement in both areas:
- Coach site leaders and instructional coaches (elementary only)
- Learning Walks
- Professional Development (more)
All of these are important. There were speculations about why the new programs haven’t been adopted more fully, for example about systemic factors (new principal, no instructional coach) that seemed to line up to more challenges withadoption, but we would have loved to see more teacher perspectives in the conversation.
For example, we’ve informally heard from some teachers that initially the new math curriculum was off-putting because there was no dedicated homework book, but some teachers then realized that some pages could be torn out from the math book to serve as additional home practice.
President Kim also challenged why we only have instructional coaches in K-5/K-8 schools, but not Middle Schools and High Schools, and asked rhetorically whether or not we are investing in instructional coaches, and urged the board to think about this as we move into hard budget discussions..
Types of Board Decisions
Framework table Link
The Board continued its conversation from the last meeting on how decisions are made across SFUSD with a goal to improve transparency, accountability, and consistency in decision-making. The linked table is a proposed framework for decisions from the Board’s perspective, dividing decision-making roles between the Board and the Superintendent. Since the last meeting, concrete examples of what constitutes a Strategic Decision, etc., have been added to the table.
The table is still just illustrative. Curriculum was brought up as an example, where adoption of new Curriculum would be a Superintendent-led, Board-decided Management decision, but purchase of standard materials would fit under Superintendent-led.
President Kim reminded the board that the spirit of this framework is to keep the board focused on Strategic Decisions, and it seemed that things are starting to head in the right direction on this front.
Ad-hoc Committee on Progress Monitoring
Commissioner Alexander is heading up this committee, and announced that the first meeting of the committee will be 11/6. It sounds like this first meeting will be community-focused, delivering on the hope that families will have more authentic, less check-the-box engagement opportunities with the district moving forward. We applaud this news and look forward to more information to come out about this meeting shortly.
