SF School Board Set to Make Maria Su the Permanent Superintendent for City Schools

San Francisco’s interim superintendent of schools, Maria Su, is set to become a permanent district employee on Tuesday, more than a year after she took the reins amid a leadership and budgetary crisis last fall.

Su will be selected as the permanent Superintendent of San Francisco Unified School District, and have her contract term extended through the 2027-2028 academic year, under the agreement expected to be passed by school board members on Tuesday.

Su said her hope is to build on the trust she’s earned with families during her tenure, while continuing to stabilize the district financially — a goal that means more budget cuts, and potentially school closures, in the coming years.

“I’m excited that the board and I are going to continue to commit to ensure that we stay focused on stability, stay focused on our students [and] stay focused on the basics of what SFUSD and school districts should be all about,” she said. “We actually did some really, really hard things last year … where we took very bold steps to reduce our budget by $114 million to help stabilize us. We now need another year of cuts so that we can finally get full control of our budget, so that we can stand on our own two feet.”

Su was tapped last October to head SFUSD after the exit of embattled Superintendent Matt Wayne during a botched rollout of a plan to close and merge schools.

Then-Mayor London Breed released her from her position as head of the city’s Department of Children, Youth and Their Families and loaned her to the school district under a temporary agreement that maintained her status as a city employee.

When she stepped into the role, Su shelved the school closure plan and turned to the district’s massive budget deficit. The district was able to make $114 million in cuts without laying off teachers, instead relying on hundreds of early retirement buy-outs, a strict staffing model and administrative cuts.

Meredith Dodson, who runs the nonprofit parent organization San Francisco Parent Coalition, said it feels like the district has moved away from chaos under Su’s leadership.

“We’re not out of the woods yet with the budget and it sounds like the district is starting to talk about potential closures again, but regardless, what this new superintendent has been able to do over the last 12 months … she did start to make some significant decisions that put the district back on track and we’ve started to see some progress and some stabilization,” she told KQED.

School Board President Phil Kim said the district’s work over the last year has ensured greater fiscal and operational health for SFUSD.

“The board looks forward to working with Superintendent Su to continue on these efforts to bring greater stability and continuity to SFUSD,” he said.

This year, the district will need to identify another roughly $48 million in ongoing expenses to cut from its annual budget, which Su said will be harder with all of last year’s cuts already in place. The district is currently holding a series of town hall meetings at schools to decide where best to direct the funding cuts.

The board has also warned that the district needs to resume its conversation around school closures — a proposal bound to be widely unpopular regardless of the process.

At an Oct. 28 meeting, board members said they would likely direct Su to present plans that address the enrollment decline and budget constraints that sparked talk of school closures in 2024. That plan proposed closing 11 schools, merging many of them with other campuses.

“Conditions have not changed: Declining enrollment, increased costs, empty seats in our school buildings, these are things that we continue to struggle with that we absolutely need to address in order to ensure long-term sustainability,” he told KQED. “We believe that that work is critical.”

Su said there are some schools in the district that have less than 50% of seats filled.

The district is closing one small high school, The Academy, this spring, and moving its dual enrollment program with City College to Wallenberg High School, but Su has said the decision wasn’t indicative of a wider school closure conversation.

Thus far, she’s strayed away from the topic, instead floating a repurposing of existing school sites as dedicated early learning centers, expanded special education services or specialized schools, like a forthcoming K-8 Mandarin immersion program.

That process, though, could mean current school operations would have to change.

“We need to make sure that we look at all of our schools and ensure that we have a balanced school portfolio that meets those needs,” she told KQED. “And yes, we might have schools that we will have to close and that will be part of the reorganization.”

While the board and some parents seem pleased with Su’s first year, others have expressed concerns with the district’s expansion of transitional kindergarten and certain ethnic studies course materials.

And the city’s teachers union said it believes someone with more of a background in education should be at the helm.

“Maria Su is not an educator,” United Educators of San Francisco President Cassondra Curiel said. “We feel that it is irresponsible of the board to continue to a contract for this for multiple years.”

“We do think it’s critical that the highest decision-maker in our district has a perspective of how schools run,” she continued.

But Su said she brings other experience, including 20 years running a city department, and is hiring a deputy superintendent of educational services to oversee instruction and student services.

“I bring lots of other things and a lot of other skills to the table,” she said. “And I look forward to bringing that here within SFUSD, and I look forward to continue to work with our educators and our administrators.”

Board members will vote on the new contract during Tuesday night’s school board meeting. If passed, it will maintain her salary of $385,000 for the first year and add a potential 2% raise in her second year, based on a performance evaluation. Kim said the change in status from a city to district employee won’t impact the cost of her employment to the district.

KQED’s Billy Cruz contributed to this report.