San Francisco officials, including Mayor Daniel Lurie and Superintendent Maria Su, cut the ribbon at the opening of a new special needs school today.
The Extensive Support Needs School is small, only two classrooms. It’s for kids with autism and intellectual disabilities in grades 5–12. Families have to be invited to enroll.
It’s taking over the Edwin and Anita Lee building, which has been vacant.
And it may feel a little lonely right now — the school opened with only one student, a high schooler.
An SFUSD representative said two more will join on Monday and a few others have outstanding offers.
The school has capacity for 16 students and offers specialized resources like speech and occupational therapy.
Melanie Bauzon, a parent of a child with a disability and the chair of SFUSD’s Special Education Community Advisory Committee, spoke at the ribbon cutting this morning.
" This school is a promise from our district that our kids matter, that they belong, and they deserve the very best support right here in San Francisco," she said.
Right now, many high-needs students have to travel far from their homes to schools outside of the city because the district hasn’t been able to meet their needs. There are 133 students in these nonpublic schools, a district representative told KALW.
This is inconvenient for families and expensive for the SFUSD, which foots the bill, which includes $180,000-$200,000 in tuition per student.
To join the Extensive Support Needs School, families need district approval. This includes a behavior specialist visiting the student’s current school to assess fit, after which the family can tour the school and make their final decision.
The district plans to double the school’s capacity to 32 students spread across four classrooms by next school year.
