The San Francisco Unified School District is seeking community input on school closures and mergers. This weekend, the last two in a recent series of community events were held.
Around 30 people, mostly parents, braved the torrential rain and nearby roadworks to attend a community meeting at Redding Elementary school in San Francisco on Saturday morning.
Superintendent Matt Wayne opened the discussion:
“Our agenda is to ensure across the district we can follow through on our commitment to equity and excellence. This is an operational and financial decision, and our circumstances have changed, our school portfolio has not. We're asking your help right now to help us to determine the criteria of which schools will remain in our portfolio, which schools will be closed, located, or immersed.”
The session was part of what the district is calling a “Resource Alignment Initiative” – to involve the community in the process to address school closures due to declining enrollment.
Dr. Wayne noted that through his participation on the national “Council of Great City Schools” – many large urban districts are facing similar challenges.
The district has an aggressive timeline for these conversations -- hoping to have the school board vote on recommendations in early 2025.
Some of the session participants had questions about the plan. Here's Rooftop parent Dan Simmons:
“I think all of us have a concern about the time frame and also how it's being rolled out.”
Meredith Pearlman, a parent at Yick Wo elementary, had this to say:
“There's a difference between equality and equity, it lifts the boats for everybody if you do it correctly. I think they need to make some hard decisions, and I think they have the chance to really make an impact long term if they do it right.”
School board commissioner Alida Fisher had a unifying message for this difficult conversation:
“This process can't be pitting school against school, family against family. We're in this together. How do we take what we have and use it to bring all students to the outcomes that we want.”
Before he headed out to the afternoon meeting at Mission High, Superintendent Wayne said:
“We're still very interested in hearing from the community we're still collecting surveys and we actually extended the deadline”
You can participate in the survey until noon on May 8th. You can go online to SFUSD.EDU (https://www.sfusd.edu/sfusd-resource-alignment-initiative)
