SFUSD Wants to Fix Its Lottery System, Then Look Again at Closing Schools

San Francisco’s superintendent of schools is putting a new timeline on two major changes for the district: an overhaul of its embattled “lottery” enrollment system and a long-delayed plan to close some schools.

In a message to families on Thursday night, Superintendent Maria Su said a new school assignment system should be in place by fall 2028. The district confirmed it plans to complete any school closures or mergers two years later, by fall 2030.

The San Francisco Unified School District board put both initiatives at the top of Su’s list when it made her the permanent superintendent last fall, and neither is expected to be a light lift.

In fall 2024, a botched plan to close or merge more than a dozen schools led to the resignation of former Superintendent Matt Wayne — and Su’s appointment as his replacement.

While school closures are almost always contested and emotional for families, Wayne’s proposal was criticized for lacking transparency and engagement, and for disproportionately affecting Chinese and immigrant students.

Replacing the SFUSD lottery will likely be far more popular. Families, the teacher’s union and the school board have long supported overhauling the system, known for long waitlists for the most desirable schools, instability and confusion for families.

The district started looking to scrap the system in 2018 and proposed a geographical zone-based replacement in 2020, but that was put on ice during the pandemic.

In the fall, it seemed like the two initiatives might move forward in tandem — and more quickly.

The school board discussed a draft resolution that would have required Su to bring proposals for school closures and mergers, as well as a geography-based assignment system, by next fall’s enrollment fair, to go into effect by the 2027-2028 school year.

But Su said the district was “taking the time to get it right,” calling the steps part of a multiyear plan to build a “stronger future for our students” and make the district “stable and sustainable for the long term.”

“We also have to be honest about how quickly we can complete this work given our limited resources,” she wrote in the message to families.

Su’s plan would set a deadline for her to bring the school board a new student assignment proposal by the end of April 2027, to be implemented in the fall of 2028.

It’s not yet clear whether that will be some version of the geography-based zone plan the board previously discussed.

Some board members had raised concerns about whether that plan would be able to balance key goals like proximity, diversity and predictability in school assignments, and whether the zones could be drawn to ensure all have access to language immersion and special education programs.

Meredith Dodson, who leads the SF Parent Coalition, said some version of the geography-based plan could “check off all the boxes” that the group has heard parents request, including “some predictability of identifying a school, getting assigned to a school within a certain proximity from where they live, and then having some aspect of choice and options within that proximity.”

She said she hopes the district’s outreach to the community over the next year will also extend to local families who decided not to send their children to SFUSD schools.

“Part of this is probably the focus on: How do we drive enrollment back up? How do we make sure all families see SFUSD as the best option for their kids?” she said.

The other major point that is likely to spark debate is equity, especially if the new enrollment system assigns students to schools based on neighborhood.

Last fall, board member Alida Fisher pointed out that community advisory committees raised concerns that the geographical zone plan would disadvantage children in the southeast part of the city, where schools faced years of underinvestment, ailing facilities and less robust staffing.

The district is likely to run into similar concerns as it takes up school closures the following year.

In 2024, the district looked to merge or close schools based on a scoring system that looked at enrollment, academic performance, school culture, use of resources and equity.

Vanessa Marrero, who heads the nonprofit Parents for Public Schools of San Francisco, said that many of the factors overlap — schools with fewer resources might then have lower enrollment, since parents might choose to send their students to a school with more special programs or academic options.

It’s not yet clear how the district will approach deciding which schools it could merge or close, but Su said in her message that her “priority is to make informed decisions that center the needs of our students, and support our staff and families along the way.”

The district confirmed it plans to complete that process during the 2028-29 academic year, which would be after Su’s current contract, through summer 2028. SFUSD would implement any closures and mergers in the fall of 2030.

Marrero said that in both the enrollment and school closure processes, the district will need to build trust with families to succeed.

“You can outreach, and you can have ad hoc groups with the [school] board and all this stuff, but if you don’t have the trust, you don’t have the credibility,” she said.

She suggested that the district could rely on community-based organizations it partners with across its school sites — many of which host its after-school programs and offer supplemental enrichment for students — to lead the engagement process.

“If they give the power to the community leaders, then they will be able to do a whole lot more with parents and families than they’re doing now,” she said. “We’ve had a lot of false starts in SFUSD over the years, and that has been our biggest downfall.”

Su is expected to introduce her plans for the assignment system and school closures at the Board of Education’s May 12 meeting.