SF School Board Could Put School Closures Back on the Table

San Francisco’s school board could set a timeline on a plan to close schools, a year after a botched push to shutter up to 11 campuses left staff and district families reeling.

At a meeting earlier this week, members discussed a new resolution that would require Superintendent Maria Su to put forward proposals to reorganize schools and implement a new geography-based school assignment system, as soon as August 2026, and by the next fall’s enrollment fair at the latest. If passed, these changes would go into effect ahead of the 2027-2028 school year.

While still in early stages, the conversation foreshadows an uphill battle to get either the school reorganization or the assignment system to the finish line.

When Su was appointed superintendent by then-Mayor London Breed last October, she shelved a plan to close up to three schools and merge up to 16, which had been plagued with delays, data issues and equity and transparency concerns.

She turned to addressing SFUSD’s massive budget crisis, and is now in the second of a two-year plan to eliminate a structural deficit by slashing more than $150 million in district spending.

The “Strong Schools Resolution,” introduced Tuesday, appears to outline her next directives from the board.

It details the district’s continuing enrollment decline and unequal demand for classroom seats across San Francisco neighborhoods and programs. While some schools, especially those with language immersion tracks, have long waitlists, others are half-empty and stand to lose more students in the coming years.

“Expanding some schools and consolidating others will ultimately allow all of our schools to be stronger by reinvesting in teachers, programs, and facilities and making the best use of our real estate portfolio, so that we can continue to improve academics while maintaining our financial stability long term to better serve students,” the draft resolution reads.

It echoes the district’s reasoning for pursuing closures last year, which failed to garner community support and ultimately led to Superintendent Matt Wayne’s resignation under fire.

Families, the teachers’ union and some board members accused the district of not communicating effectively why closures were necessary, using the budget crisis as an excuse despite determining that the closures themselves wouldn’t yield significant savings. SFUSD was also criticized for not engaging schools in the process, a lack of transparency in determining which should shutter and trying to push the plan through on a tight timeline.

The timing also put board members up for reelection in a tough position: discussing the potential closure of voters’ schools weeks before election day. Tuesday’s resolution would set up a similar timeline, putting a vote on any closure plan Su brings forward next fall, around November’s general election.

Overhauling the district’s enrollment strategy is likely to be more popular, since there’s broad alignment that the current system is dysfunctional, stressful and bad for stabilizing enrollment. But there doesn’t appear to be consensus that a zone-based system approved in 2020 is the right solution.

That December, SFUSD passed legislation that would transition from a school assignment lottery, which allows families to request any campus across the city, to a system that assigns students to one of a few schools closest to their homes. It was meant to go into effect for students entering elementary schools in the fall of 2023, but has been put off for years due to the pandemic, possible school closures and the ongoing budget crisis — and because the district has found it nearly impossible to implement equitably.

Board member Alida Fisher said Tuesday that the plan was opposed by community advisory committees, which warned at the time that the assignments would disadvantage children in the Southeast part of the city, where schools faced years of underinvestment, ailing facilities and less robust staffing.

The district also ran into issues creating maps that ensured access to language immersion and special education programs, and balancing three key factors laid out in the legislation — predictability, proximity and diversity.

Board member Matt Alexander said he wanted to see more concrete steps from the superintendent, like asking the board to pick two of those three factors to prioritize. He questioned why the resolution was necessary and why the superintendent didn’t just bring forward a proposal for a vote.

The late-night discussion yielded little concrete progress toward either goal and more questions than answers.

Fisher posed chief among them: “What is going to be different this time?”

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” she said.