The made headlines in 2014 when it eliminated the curriculum for eighth graders in an effort to bolster struggling kids’ performance by allowing them more time on foundational classes — and to address inequities in which students got fast-tracked for advanced high school math.

Board members did not respond to emails seeking comment, but the superintendent, Maria Su, in a statement on the �徱���ٰ�������’s website said she welcomes the change. 

“We’re excited to offer Algebra I to our eighth grade students as part of our goal to help more students succeed in math, working to increase the number of students meeting grade-level standards from 42% in 2022 to 65% by 2027,” she said. 

Critics say eliminating 8th-grade algebra robbed capable students of that early, first step in a math sequence that allowed them to take calculus their senior year — a prerequisite for some top colleges and, arguably, for careers in lucrative STEM fields. 

A backed up these claims, showing participation in Advanced Placement math initially fell 15% while “large ethnoracial gaps in advanced math course-taking remained.” 

Residents in 2024 supported a ballot initiative to bring back the course and it became available to some students through a pilot program: The district served 3,827 8th graders in 2024-25 and 1,030 of them took Algebra I that school year, according to state data cited by researchers.

Rex Ridgeway, along with several others, to restore the course in 2023. He told ����Ӱ�� this week the change was overdue. He said it will prevent students like his granddaughter, Joselyn Marroquin, who was deprived of the course in her middle school years, from having to take it elsewhere. 

“During this period of time, students, like my granddaughter, had to either take a summer algebra accredited course or double up in the 9th grade and take both Algebra I and geometry in order to be on track to take calculus in the 12th grade,” he said. 

A retired stockbroker, Ridgeway tutored his granddaughter from first to ninth grade, filling in what he considered deficiencies in the �徱���ٰ�������’s math, English and science instruction. Marroquin is now a freshman at San Jose State University, her grandfather said, majoring in business administration, corporate accounting and finance — and minoring in economics.

The Board of Education narrowly approved the algebra measure Wednesday night in a 4-3 vote. According to the school district, Algebra I will be offered in eighth grade as an expanded math course at 19 of its middle and K-8 schools. 

Students who meet the academic criteria will be automatically enrolled in both Math 8 and Algebra I — but can opt out of Algebra I if they choose. 

Those who don’t test into the course can still enroll in it as an elective and students’ whose test scores reflect strong ability in the subject can take only Algebra I.

Thomas S. Dee, a professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education and an author of the earlier , said he celebrates the board’s move: He and co-author Elizabeth Huffaker, as part of a second study currently in the works, found that 8th graders who took Algebra I along with Common Core Math 8 as part of the pilot program experienced substantial learning gains. 

Dee said, too, he supports the automatic enrollment of already proficient students, saying the tactic should “ensure that those gains will be broadly realized among all the students ready to take algebra — regardless of their other circumstances and background.”

But Dee’s enthusiasm is tempered: He said his research reveals the need for the district to improve math curriculum for students prior to 8th grade so they are better prepared for algebra. 

“Broadening algebra access without addressing the uneven patterns in algebra readiness will increase achievement gaps,” he said. 

And, allowing parents of students taking Algebra I to opt out of Common Core Math 8 will deprive them of a chance to advance, he said.

“Our results indicate that families that make this choice will leave truly substantial learning gains on the table and increase their child’s risk of having to retake algebra in 9th grade,” Dee said. “I viewed the board’s insistence on this issue partly as a reflection of a legacy of distrust that was created through the community’s experience with earlier generations of district leadership.”

Huffaker, an assistant professor of educational leadership and policy at the University of Florida, said automatic enrollment “nudges students who are likely to succeed in algebra into the course” and notes that the �徱���ٰ�������’s plan will also increase math instructional time at most campuses. 

But she, too, has concerns about families opting out of one of the two simultaneous courses. 

“We completely understand why a family might value an additional elective that allows their child to take art, for instance,” she said. “But the learning gains from the expanded math option are really worth taking seriously, especially because they extend even to the most high-achieving students. There wasn’t really a cap on who benefited.”

Melodie Baker, executive director at ImpactSTATs Inc., and a Women in AI Fellow at , said the real question isn’t when students take algebra, but whether the pathway makes sense at all. 

“A sequence designed as a pipeline to calculus was built for a different era,” she said. “Meanwhile, students need data fluency, computational thinking and applied math for an AI-driven economy.”

Automatic enrollment policies are valuable, she added. 

“But expanding access to an outdated curriculum only gets us partway there,” she said. “True progress means rethinking what we teach, not just who gets access. Math should be a foundation for the future, not a relic that sorts students into winners and losers.”

The San Francisco teacher strike was a harbinger. As school budgets tighten, the gap between union demands and what districts can responsibly afford is widening. How leaders respond in moments like this matters — not just for their districts’ long-term fiscal health, but for children they serve today, and for years to come.

As in San Francisco, unions will make demands that benefit their members. District leaders, wanting to avoid a high-profile labor conflict, will fold. 

The consequences come later.

To balance the budget, districts will issue pink slips, cut some electives, Advanced Placement classes and sports, eliminate supports for high-needs children, freeze hiring and close schools. 

Some families will leave. Enrollment will drop. Revenues will fall. The districts will begin a downward financial spiral. 

High-poverty schools will suffer the most. With more junior staff, they’ll be first on the list for pink slips. And with higher turnover rates, a hiring freeze could leave a senior French teacher teaching math (earning $140,000 after a raise that delivered double the cash to veteran educators).  

With so much of their budgets tied up in union negotiated agreements, districts won’t be able to compete with charter schools. Even more families will leave. The cycle will continue.

It’s a dire forecast. And completely foreseeable.

The problem isn’t so much with unions — they’re doing exactly what they are supposed to do: advocate aggressively for the interests of their voting members. 

Rather, districts need to learn to play their corresponding part — aggressively pursue what’s best for students amid constrained dollars. 

Those. Are. Different. Roles. 

Many district leaders, including those in San Francisco, appear uncomfortable with the head-to-head conflict that comes with labor negotiations, especially when unions align with their political sensibilities. That’s understandable. But discomfort is not an excuse for abdicating the �徱���ٰ�������’s responsibility in labor conflicts.’

San Francisco board commissioner Matt Alexander misunderstood his role entirely when he praised the strike, saying he was “proud of these educators for standing up for what is right.”

When districts, like , offer the public little rationale for their proposals during a strike, they cede the narrative to unions that frame their demands as being “.” Unions, in contrast, work hard to win over parents and media, knowing that the strike works only as long as the public stays on the union’s side.

But with more strikes likely on the horizon, district leaders need to ensure that the public hears the other side. What does that look like? What should leaders do?

First, be clear about who controls revenues. It’s not the districts. Want more money in the system? Unions should take that up with their state legislature or with local voters. 

Explain tradeoffs. In West Contra Costa, California, a December strike resulted in $105 million in new costs and a massive budget gap. With some 80% to 90% of district spending on labor, the district will have no choice but to . San Francisco faces the same pressures — adding is the equivalent of reducing jobs for about 800 employees. That’s just the math. It means that schools could lose electives, AP classes and added .

Be crisp with numbers. San Francisco teacher salaries range from about $67,000 to $131,000, depending on experience and credits. The union’s ask was another $12,000 for senior teachers — and $6,000 for junior ones. Where the , district leaders can and should say so.  

Keep students at the center. Demands for would require whose families those same benefits. And it means more employees could be let go. The �徱���ٰ�������’s job is to teach kids to read and do math, and in places like San Francisco, only about half of students are at grade level in math. If leaders believe that investments in counselors, social workers and specialists matter, means trading away these children’s future.

Expose gaps in union narratives: Unions claim larger raises would retain early-career teachers of color. But the resulting costs could trigger reductions in force — and under California’s , it is those same educators who would be laid off first.

Address long-running contract terms that don’t serve students. District leaders often lament that their hands are tied by decades-old provisions. But those contracts didn’t materialize on their own; districts signed them. If they are no longer serving students, or are actively constraining districts’ ability to do so, leaders have an obligation to address them.

Some district leaders mistakenly think federal labor law prevents them from being blunt with the public, and it is true that the California Public Employment Relations Board prohibits bargaining directly with employees outside negotiations. But it does not bar districts from publicly making their case or challenging union claims.

None of this is to suggest that district leaders should be mean, rude or dismissive, even when union rhetoric goes there. They can be firm and professional, remembering that families need to trust them to do what’s best for their children.

District leadership is not about avoiding hard conversations. It’s about having them — clearly, publicly and with an unapologetic focus on students. 

Correction: An earlier version of this op-ed misidentified the organization overseeing the labor negotiations in San Francisco. It was the California Public Employment Relations Board that governed the talks.

On a chilly morning at Leonard Flynn Elementary School, first graders played with jump ropes and hula hoops outside while reading tutor Lillie Reynaga set up her materials at a table in the hallway nearby. One by one, kindergarteners came to her table and practiced blending sounds to make one-syllable words.

“We’re going to make words and they’re all going to rhyme because they’ll all end with at,” Reynaga told 5-year-old Violet, who kicked her legs back and forth on the low bench. 

For the next 15 minutes Violet repeated at-at-at and read mat, rat and fat.

“Now, do you have any guesses and what S and at come together to say?”

“Sat!” Violet called out.

“How did you know that this word is sat?”

“Because it starts with s!” 

The benefits of high-impact tutoring are on full display at this Spanish immersion public school on the edge of San Francisco’s Bernal Heights and Mission District neighborhoods. Flynn introduced the program last year and saw almost immediate results.

Among the second graders who received tutoring in first grade, nearly a third started this school year reading at grade level or above, while more than half of students who did not work with tutors last year started second grade reading at a kindergarten level.

This year, those second graders are getting the support they missed out on in first grade, along with other Flynn students from kindergarten through third grade. Tutors trained and paid by provider Chapter One visit Flynn every day to deliver short bursts of high-impact tutoring in word recognition and language comprehension.

It’s not the first reading intervention Flynn has tried, said principal Tyler Woods, but it’s having the most impact.

“Literacy interventionists would provide intensive interventions but only serve 20 or 30 students across the school,” he said. “This is a lighter touch but focused on the areas that we know our kids really struggle with, and it just reaches a lot more students.”

High-impact tutoring — a intervention characterized by its frequency, duration and alignment with school curriculum — has been so successful in San Francisco that district officials recently expanded the program to serve more than 2,700 students across 20 priority district schools. 

“This is the single most effective literacy intervention we have,” said Ann Levy Walden, CEO of the San Francisco Education Fund, which helps to fund and implement the program in partnership with the school district. “This expansion allows us to do what we know works.”

Nearly half of students in San Francisco Unified schools . A year ago, the district set a goal that specifically targets third grade proficiency: By 2027, 70% of third graders will meet state standards, up from 52% in 2022. High-impact tutoring is one of the targeted supports the district is using to meet the benchmark.

“Ensuring students are proficient readers by the end of third grade is one of our most important student outcome goals,” said district superintendent Maria Su. The district also adopted a curriculum based on the science of reading last year — the first reading curriculum change in the district in a decade. This change, along with expanding tutoring, are meant to help “focus resources on the grade levels and school communities where high-impact tutoring can most effectively accelerate literacy development,” Su said.

The cost of high-impact tutoring is $500 a student, which includes up to four sessions a week, assessments, individualized tutoring plans, progress monitoring and integration with classroom instruction. The Education Fund raises money continuously, but a year of high-impact tutoring in San Francisco costs about $2 million. This year, the district contributed $830,000. 

The district expanded high-impact tutoring after seeing results last year. After working with Chapter One tutors for five months last year, the number of students district-wide who met grade-level reading standards more than doubled, from 24% to 54%. At Sanchez Elementary in the Mission District first graders reading at or above grade level went from 15% to 59%.

At Guadalupe Elementary, in the city’s Crocker-Amazon neighborhood, the share of kindergarteners reading at grade level jumped from 39% to nearly 68%, after students participated in the tutoring program.

“It’s an early literacy gain that we have never seen before,” said principal Raj Sharma. Nearly 70% of students at Guadalupe are English learners, and about 10% are newcomers to the United States, Sharma said. “Sometimes our students don’t have any school experience at all.” 

Sharma said he specifically chose to bring high-impact tutors in to work with very young students because he believed the impact for them could be so substantial. 

“Once your foundation is strong, you can build the house on there,” he said. “Family or socio-economic status matters, but in our situation we saw that it’s beyond that. We can make a difference.”

A big challenge for school leaders is how and when to connect tutors with students. At Guadalupe, tutors meet with every student in a class either individually or in small groups in their classrooms. This approach is less disruptive for students, Sharma said, and allows for more continuity in their learning experience.

“They are just one of the small groups and others are with the Chapter One tutor, and then they can rotate,” he said. “They are not missing any instruction that’s given in the classroom. At the same time, they’re getting the reading foundations.”

Sharma and other principals said that the way high-impact tutoring is being delivered in San Francisco stands out, because tutors are trained and paid and because principals get help integrating the program into their schools. The San Francisco Education Fund partners with the San Francisco Literacy Coalition to help school leaders to develop schedules and determine which students will receive tutoring.

“The scheduling of it has been really seamless, which is not always the case when you’re trying to pair any type of extra support or intervention,” said Woods of Flynn Elementary. “Many of our students are needing support from the moment they join our school and in the past, we just haven’t had the scope of support to provide some meaningful development. This is third time we’ve been able to say, let’s figure out who needs the intervention and everybody gets it.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified a literacy organization. It is the San Francisco Literacy Coalition.

The union fully-funded health care and an 8.5% raise over two years for classified staff including paraprofessionals. Teachers will get a 5% raise over two years. It’s a compromise between the �徱���ٰ�������’s original offer of 2% and the union’s demand of an increase between 9% and 14%.

Improving special education working conditions was also a key demand for the union. The includes caseload reductions, increased pay for added duties and requirements to ensure students receive special education services in a timely manner.

United Educators of San Francisco began its first strike in nearly 50 years on Monday after 11 months of failed negotiations with the district. Schools were shuttered for roughly 50,000 students as thousands of educators flocked to picket lines. More than 250 principals, office clerks and custodians in two other unions went on a in solidarity. 

“None of this would have been possible without the thousands of you who have shown up to our board actions, signed petitions to commit to our campaign, written letters to our Board of Education, and — in the last four days — shown up in the rain to support your big bargaining team in the streets,” the union said in a . “This strike has made it clear what is possible when we join together and fight for the stability in our schools that many have said was out of our reach.”

While staff reported to work on Friday, students will return on Feb. 18 after two previously scheduled holidays. Superintendent Maria Su said in a that the agreement marked “a new beginning.”

“I recognize that this past week has been challenging,” she said. “Thank you to the (district) staff, community-based partners, and faith and city leaders who partnered with us to continue centering our students in our work every day. I am so proud of the resilience and strength of our community. ”

Other contract wins include limits on the �徱���ٰ�������’s use of artificial intelligence, according to the . The district and union also agreed on a proposal to classify schools as for immigrant students, staff and families. The policy bars federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from entering school grounds or obtaining records without a criminal judicial warrant. Staff will also receive three hours of training to enforce these policies.

The union said information about the contract ratification process will be announced in the near future and leaders are planning to host town halls. The agreement still needs to be approved by both the union and school board. 

“We know our work is not done,” the union . “While we didn’t win everything we know we deserve, this strike allowed us to imagine our schools and classrooms as they should be with staffing levels high enough that our students can learn and thrive.  This is a foundation for a stable district.”

The 6,500-member union has been negotiating for nearly a year with San Francisco Unified School District, which has roughly 50,000 students. The district closed more than 100 schools on Monday as the union solidified a strike roughly a week after members approved a walkout in two rounds of voting. More than 250 principals, office clerks and custodians in two other unions also went on a in solidarity. 

Negotiations stalled because of disagreements over pay raises, health care coverage and working conditions for special education teachers. 

“What this contract represents is stability for San Francisco Unified for years to come, and its commitment to us and coming to an agreement immediately will secure the schools that San Franciscans deserve,” said union President Cossandra Curiel at a outside Mission High School. “You can expect to see strong picket lines until that agreement is achieved.”

The union is sticking to its for a 9% and 14% pay raise for teachers and paraprofessionals, respectively, over the two-year contract. The current starting for a teacher with a bachelor’s degree is $73,689. The paraprofessional hourly is $31.52. 

Union officials are also asking for 100% health care coverage, along with caseload limits and more time for administrative tasks for special education staff. 

After multiple hours-long bargaining sessions this weekend, the district with a 6% raise over two years. It proposed implementing the union’s demand for a new special education workload model as a pilot program at five schools through June 2028. Curiel said Monday that district officials offered 75% health coverage.

San Francisco Unified officials have a $102 million budget deficit makes it impossible to meet the union’s demands. The union said the district can cover the increased costs with its budget reserve. 

“We understand that they are under a form of strain from the state, or that’s what their excuse has been up to now,” Curiel said. “We see that they have a reserve of almost $400 million. We believe that today’s dollars are for today’s students.”

The district the $400 million is not in reserves, but is already budgeted to prevent layoffs and address the deficit. 

“Using a one-time fund balance for permanent raises creates a funding cliff,” the district said in a . “Once the one-time money runs out, the district would be forced to make even deeper cuts to classrooms and lay off more staff to cover the ongoing cost.”

San Francisco Unified does have $111 million in its reserve fund, but the district said that money is for emergencies.

Superintendent Maria Su said in a that the �徱���ٰ�������’s proposal “provides fiscal certainty by matching spending to available resources” and “keeps the district on a clear runway to exit state oversight.” The state started in 2024 because of projected budget deficits.

“Let me be clear, I do not want a prolonged strike,” Su said in a Sunday night. “I do not want a strike at all.”

Curiel said the district and union did agree on a proposal to classify schools as for immigrant students, staff and families. The policy bars federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from entering school grounds or obtaining records without a criminal judicial warrant. Staff will also receive three hours of training to enforce these policies.

Teachers protested in front of several schools Monday morning and hosted a rally in the afternoon that featured Randi Weingarten, president of American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second-largest union for educators. On the in front of Mission High School, social studies teacher Cindy Castillo said she’s striking to improve school stability.

“Stability means that we can retain our educators of color and our students and families of color. It means we can fully staff security, who can build relationships with our students and prevent violence and harm,” she said. “It means our students and families feel safe and supported.”

Matt Alexander, president of the San Francisco Unified school board, he supports the strike and believes it’s a necessary step.

“I am so proud of these educators for standing up for what is right,” he said. “A strike for the first time in half a century takes courage. It takes sacrifice. It was not what these educators wanted, but they’re willing to do what needs to be done to create the schools our students deserve.”

If San Francisco educators walk out, it will be the city’s first teacher strike in nearly 50 years. United Educators of San Francisco approved a walkout with the second of two nearly unanimous votes last week. Its bargaining team is to decide within 10 days whether it will strike. 

United Teachers of Los Angeles, which represents more than 35,000 educators in California’s largest school district, has been in negotiations since February 2025. Both parties clashed over pay raises and in December. A strike vote passed with a member approval on Monday. 

With 6,500 members, United Educators of San Francisco has been negotiating with the district since March. The union asked for a 14% pay increase for support staff and 9% for teachers over two years, along with improvements to health care coverage, special education teacher workloads and family housing. 

“We remain prepared to hear any real solutions the district may formally bring to the table that will stabilize our district for our students, educators and families,” the union said in a Tuesday. 

The San Francisco Unified School District has a 2% yearly increase, totaling 6% over three years. It on Saturday that a $102 budget deficit makes it impossible to meet the union’s demands.

“Any raises above the current proposals from the district will force further cuts at school sites that will impact the �徱���ٰ�������’s ability to serve all of its students long-term,” the district .

The union that San Francisco Unified recently allocated $111 million to its rainy-day fund, “money members say needs to be directed back to classrooms and school sites.”

In Los Angeles, the union is an 18% immediate pay raise with a 3% bump the second year of the contract. Los Angeles Unified two consecutive raises of 2.5% and 2% and a one-time payment of 1% of an employee’s salary. A strike deadline has not yet been set.

Cheryl Coney, the union’s executive director, wrote in a to the district that drastic raises are needed because more than 20% of members qualify for low-income housing and roughly one-third leave Los Angeles Unified by their fifth year on the job. 

The union the district can afford pay increases with a $5 billion reserve, but officials budget constraints recently worsened because of enrollment declines, the expiration of pandemic aid and increased operating costs. The district’s projects a $1.6 billion deficit by the 2027-28 school year.

“We recognize the real financial strain on educators and staff but must make difficult decisions to preserve classrooms, student services and long-term stability within finite resources,” the district said in a Jan. 31 . “This moment calls for collaboration between all parties to reach a sustainable resolution.”

The Los Angeles and San Francisco superintendents joined representatives of five other school districts in a Monday that asked advocates, nonprofits and lawmakers to help campaign for more funding from the state. 

“Educators and staff deserve to feel valued and supported, and districts recognize and respect those realities,” the letter says. “At the same time, school systems cannot spend resources they do not receive, nor can local negotiations resolve statewide enrollment trends or the loss of temporary federal funding.”

The strike votes in Los Angeles and San Francisco come amid a by the California Teachers Association, focusing negotiations in 32 districts statewide around : wages, staffing and student stability — meaning fewer layoffs and school closures. The also aims to pressure the state to improve school funding.

A from the statewide union found that 88% of educators identified insufficient school funding and low pay as serious issues for 2026.

Several California teachers unions already walked out of the classroom this school year or are close to striking. United Teachers of Richmond, located north of San Francisco, staged a in December. Five unions — Natomas, Twin Rivers, Rocklin, Woodland Joint and Washington — are at an impasse, along with Madera Unified Teachers Association in central California and Berkeley Federation of Teachers.

More than 90% of San Diego Education Association members recently a one-day unfair labor practice strike for Feb. 26. The union said it’s protesting as San Diego Unified’s repeated contract violations regarding special education staffing caseloads.

Some 3,000 teachers, paraprofessionals, office staff and cafeteria workers in Richmond, California, reported to a picket line instead of their schools Thursday in the West Contra Costa Unified School District. 

Members of the United Teachers of Richmond and Teamsters demanded the district of 26,000 students hike wages to address increasing staff vacancies, but West Contra Costa has said a steep budget deficit made that impossible. At least seven other California teachers unions are at an impasse with their districts during contract negotiations. On Wednesday, United Teachers Los Angeles announced an impasse, while United Educators of San Francisco completed the first of two scheduled strike votes. 

West Contra Costa Unified, located in the San Francisco Bay area, has been since February. The district initially proposed no raises for teachers, while the union requested a 5% annual pay hike for the next two school years. Following an impasse in August, the district recently , but the proposal was rejected.

The �徱���ٰ�������’s Teamsters union, which represents paraprofessionals along with office, cafeteria, maintenance and security workers, on Tuesday. Its members joined the teachers on the picket line Thursday.

United Teachers of Richmond said in a that 70 classrooms are currently without permanent, credentialed teachers and 1,500 educators have left the district in the past five years. 

“These vacancies also mean that our students receiving special education services do so from outside contractors, some over Zoom,” the union said in the statement. “Inability to staff our schools also results in overcrowded classrooms, overworked teachers and diminished learning environments.”

Superintendent Cheryl Cotton, who was hired six months ago, said in a that the district already needs significant budget cuts. In a November fact-finding , an arbitrator said West Contra Costa has a deficit of $16.9 million, but the union claimed the budget projections are incorrect and leave out millions in revenue.

“I heard the real frustration of our educators regarding pay increases, health benefits, special education, fully staffed schools and several other key issues,” Cotton said. “Compensation increases only increase the size of the financial reductions our board must make this year.”

Classrooms remained open Thursday as the strike began. On Tuesday, the Richmond City Council approved $50,000 in to expand community center hours and provide programming for children during the strike. 

The union completed a , with 90% of members casting ballots in favor. That pressure caused West Contra Costa Unified to offer a 14.5% raise over two years, and the strike was avoided.

School districts across the nation are struggling to afford teacher contracts amid financial strains caused by loss of state and federal funding, underenrollment and other issues. 

Several California teachers unions have recently declared an impasse during negotiations, including Los Angeles, Berkeley, Madera, Twin Rivers, Natomas, Oakland and San Francisco. The next step in the bargaining process is often hiring a third-party mediator, but a strike can occur if an agreement isn’t reached. 

More than 99% of United Educators of San Francisco members Wednesday after nine months of bargaining with San Francisco Unified. It’s the first step in a two-vote process before the union can finalize a strike date.

The union, which has 6,500 members, has for a 14% pay increase for support staff and 9% for teachers over two years, along with improvements to health care coverage, special education teacher workloads and family housing. 

After initially offering no raises, the district a 2% increase in September. The union rejected the offer, and both parties declared an impasse and entered mediation in October. 

A in 2023 resulted in a $9,000 salary increase and an additional 5% raise last year.

The district of 50,000 students has a for the next school year. In 2024, it went through several reductions in expenses and jobs and still has . Just like in Richmond, the union the district of mismanaging the budget and failing to present accurate financial figures. 

“The superintendent’s perspective [is] that there is no money and that more cuts will stabilize the school district budget,” the union said in a . “Every year, we have been in negotiations with the district, they have claimed the same thing. This is despite the facts … year after year, San Francisco Unified closes its books with millions in surplus cash, they send out pink slips but start the next year with empty classrooms, they put families on a long waitlist to enroll their students while forcing underenrollment at schools.”

San Francisco Unified that it’s committed to securing an agreement with the union, but it’s also dealing with fiscal oversight by the state and is in the process of making millions of dollars in budget reductions.

The San Francisco Unified School District announced that it is rolling out a new math curriculum for grades K-8 this school year.

According to a statement from the district, the newly adopted materials focus on three key areas: solving math problems accurately; understanding the “why” behind the math; and learning how to apply math in everyday life.

San Francisco Unified has set a goal of increasing the percentage of eighth grade students meeting grade-level expectations from 42% in 2022 to 65% by 2027. This new curriculum was piloted last year by 84 middle school teachers and 160 elementary teachers. Early results were promising, the district said.

“San Francisco’s public schools are focused on helping every student build confidence and competence in math to be set up for lifelong success,” Superintendent Maria Su said in the statement.

SFUSD’s math curriculum had received heavy criticism and was even the subject of a ballot measure last year. Voters supported an effort to teach algebra in eighth grade. Previously, the district pushed algebra to ninth grade in  into different math paths at the middle school level.

A attempts to untangle the policy pendulum swings and provide states and districts with concrete evidence for what’s most effective. But to really understand what’s at stake, consider a history lesson  – more a cautionary tale, really – set in San Francisco schools.

Nationally, only 16% of eighth-grade students took Algebra I in the mid-80s — and as one might imagine, the well-resourced schools that offered the advanced math subject in middle school overwhelmingly catered to wealthy white students. The 90s was marked by efforts to address those inequities and increase access to Algebra I, which was seen as a gateway to academic success and college access but one that often . 

Swept up in California’s “Algebra for All” push in the late 1990s, San Francisco schools shifted away from placing high-achieving students on advanced math tracts and attempted to enroll all eighth-graders in Algebra I. But the results were lackluster at best. By significantly increasing enrollment, including students who were not academically prepared for the subject, achievement plummeted. Some research even suggests a harmful backsliding for the lowest-performers, who often had to repeat the course. 

So, San Francisco course-corrected once again. In 2015, they rolled out new and rigorous math standards, but took away the ability for students to take Algebra I in eighth-grade, making it a ninth-grade subject. Then, after a wave of criticism from parents fearing their kids weren’t being challenged or properly prepared for more advanced mathematics, they reintroduced Algebra I to eighth-graders this year, piloting three different ways of offering the subject in middle school to pinpoint the most effective way to do so. 

San Francisco isn’t alone in its Algebra I pendulum swings — not by a long shot. Today, the subject has become a bellwether for equity and college access, and unexpectedly, one of the most hotly debated topics in American education. 

With district and school leaders clamoring for more meaningful guidance about who should take the class, when, and with what types of support, a new report from and the tackles those issues head-on.

“Over the past few decades, the research that has come out of those policy swings — from everyone should take it in eighth grade to no, we should make everyone take it in ninth grade — has kind of shown that that one-size-fits-all uniform push to algebra one is not meeting the needs of all students,” says Elizabeth Huffaker, a fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Education Policy Analysis and author of the report. “A lot of states and districts are experimenting with new models, and we wanted to bring to bear what we do know as states and districts try to do that.”

Here’s what the report found and what state, district and school leaders should examine as they think about the most effective ways to set students up for success with Algebra I and beyond. 

How to Determine Algebra Readiness

In deciding who should take algebra, districts should attempt to strike a balance between expanding early access to the subject in 8th grade and ensuring students are academically ready. The goal should be to broaden participation while preventing course failure, disengagement, and long-term setbacks. 

shows that long-term academic success is higher when students are enrolled in Algebra I based on academic readiness rather than grade level. But whether schools should embrace acceleration among students with uncertain readiness depends on the level of academic support a district can provide as well as the proportion of students considered borderline ready. Enrolling too many students who aren’t fully ready can be disruptive and ineffective, whereas a small number who are also bolstered by tutoring programs, for example, would likely be successful.

Students who are not academically ready need significant support to be successful.

When it comes to making placement decisions, shows the best way to do so is with a combination of test scores, rather than relying solely on subjective referrals or a single test score. This has been shown to improve participation and achievement, especially for historically underserved students. For example, when schools in Wake County, North Carolina, replaced subjective placement factors with a cutoff score based on multiple academic measures, it led to increased enrollment, especially among Black, Hispanic, and low-income students. 

Tracking v. Mixed Classrooms

“Tracking,” the practice of assigning students to courses based on their proficiency level, is controversial since it assumes students have fixed academic abilities. That’s a narrative that’s particularly harmful for low-income students and students of color who come into K-12 with far less access to advanced coursework. 

Yet the practice is widespread, especially in older grades and for placement in advanced classes: Nationally, about 25% of 4th graders and 75% of 8th graders attend schools that use tracking. Supporters argue that it improves learning by targeting instruction to students’ individual needs, and seems to bear that out, with classrooms grouped by proficiency levels allowing more targeted instruction.

However, research also shows that tracking tends to benefit higher achievers while also widening achievement gaps and increasing segregation. Moreover, students in lower tracks are typically aware of their placement, which can hurt confidence, motivation and effort. 

Meanwhile, mixed-proficiency classrooms offer all students access to rigorous coursework, but risk discouraging lower achievers by introducing material that’s too advanced while also slowing progress for high achievers because the material isn’t advanced enough. And while differentiated instruction can benefit all students, effectively supporting a wide range of academic abilities requires teachers to have advanced skills.

Evidence-Based Strategies to Help Kids Catch Up

The best approach is to provide extra support to students who aren’t quite ready for algebra through tutoring, offering two periods of math each day (also known as “double-dose”) or providing summer programs, research shows. 

Tutoring, especially when delivered in small groups, multiple times per week, and during the school day, is one of the most effective short-term and long-term academic interventions. A of 21 randomly controlled trials found that math tutoring generates about a 10 percentile learning gain, on average, which is a large effect for an educational intervention. 

“Double-dose” algebra gives students two math periods a day and has been shown to improve outcomes. When Chicago Public Schools required underprepared 9th-grade students to take two periods of algebra instead of one, student test scores increased. It also led to longer-run gains in college entrance exam scores, high school graduation rates, and college enrollment rates.

also shows that summer bridge programs help students build the study skills and confidence needed for success in algebra. One 19-day Algebra I bridge program in California raised the share of algebra-ready students from 12% to 29%.

Where to Go From Here

Increasing enrollment in Algebra I in middle school involves nuanced decision-making that includes evaluating the readiness of students and educators and the capacity of the district to provide support.

What districts should avoid, the research shows, are policy shifts that either delay Algebra I for all students or accelerate them without strong, integrated support, and enrollment policies that rely on one static test score or subjective teacher recommendations.

“There should be an emphasis on raising the floor, not lowering the ceiling when we’re thinking about balancing access and achievement,” Huffaker says. 

Most recently, districts have been turning to auto-enrollment policies, which allow students to opt out and support those who may not be academically ready with either tutoring or a second math class. Research shows that it increases participation and completion rates, particularly among underrepresented students. 

Bottom line, Huffaker says, is that there are always going to be trade-offs when it comes to how and when to introduce Algebra I. 

“We always say that supported acceleration is a great way to get all or most of your students on an advanced pathway. And it sounds really great to have everyone kind of on that early Algebra I one trajectory. But districts face significant resource constraints and staffing. So I think our real goal here was to provide a framework where districts could come in with their local priorities and resources mapped and see what’s realistic for them.”

Acknowledgement, apology and atonement are the three keys to , said California Assemblymember Corey Jackson during a panel at the CalMatters Ideas Festival on June 6.

The panelists discussed how to solve ongoing issues within the Black community, such as housing, health care and mass incarceration. Joining Jackson on stage were Policy Manager Kristin Nimmers, and CEO of the  Fred Blackwell.

A  released last year by a statewide task force is about far more than just giving out cash to the descendants of enslaved people, Blackwell said. It’s about correcting a system of racism and discrimination.

“The focus on cash payments and the way that it is being framed, is clickbait. It is to get eyes on payments and eyes on screens,” Blackwell said.

Turning the more than 200 recommendations from the reparation report into law would not be possible without the hard work and dedication of the reparations task force, Blackwell said. To start, state legislators in the Black Caucus are introducing a 14-bill package, Jackson said. 

“There is no doubt that their work was top notch and well regarded. The task force members have turned their work into something that is now sacred to us,” Jackson said. “We are now a part of a sacred mission to fulfill the dreams and aspirations of our ancestors.” 

According to Nimmers, one of the most important recommendations is amending the California Constitution to prohibit involuntary servitude of those who are incarcerated.

“The Constitution says that slavery or involuntary servitude is allowable so long as it is for the punishment of a crime,” Nimmers said. “And so that results in forced labor, which often results in profit for those in control of the prison industrial complex.”

Providing reparations for Black people can also provide a blueprint for offering similar services to Native Americans, Japanese Americans and others who have been treated inhumanely in the history of California, Nimmers said. 

“It is important that it is not only there for Black people but also for our non-Black allies,” Nimmers said. 

Out of the more than 200 recommendations in the reparations report, two stood out to Jackson.

“Number 1 is that we need to have free higher education for our people,” Jackson said. “Number 2 is that we need to have the opportunity along with the assistance to be able to own our own homes, so that we can begin to create generational wealth.” 

In order to get a better view of what issues are impacting Black people across California, the Black Caucus is partnering with the  to go on a , Jackson said, starting June 15.

“We’re going to six places throughout California that have large African American populations and small African American populations to educate them on what the data says people are going through right now. We are going to Sacramento, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Fresno, Oakland, Moreno Valley,” Jackson said.

This was originally published in

Answer: When it $1.3 billion. 

This macabre joke is all-too real for San Francisco Unified, where this spring a state oversight panel took control of all budget decisions until the district balances its spending. After reviewing the district’s budget, the that the locally elected school board no longer has full authority over, “any action that is determined to be inconsistent with the ability of [the district] to meet its obligations for the current or subsequent fiscal year.” 

According to an independent fiscal , the district has a number of budgetary problems: 

• It paid for employee positions using one-time federal relief funds and will need to lay them off or find other revenues or savings;
• It has not adjusted student enrollment projections to account for continued declines;
• It does not track monthly attendance data and, as a result, overstates average daily attendance in projecting future revenues; and
• Its budget office is understaffed, leading to inadequate control over its  and problems tracking employee overtime costs. 

Some parts of this story make San Francisco unique. For example, it spent in a failed effort to fix its payroll processing system. And, to avert a strike last fall, the district agreed to large salary increases — over two years for teachers and for service workers. 

California is also unusual in that it has a powerful oversight agency. The Department of Education’s Fiscal Crisis Team reviews district budgets to ensure they are financially solvent, and it can take over budgeting decisions if the need arises. 

Through these reviews, San Francisco was first put on “qualified” notice in December, which shifted to “negative” in May. The auditor in charge of San Francisco’s review that the district now spends more money than it brings in, and with that will come added scrutiny over all its budgetary decisions until the district can demonstrate that its books are in order.

That’s a different and more active oversight role than exists in many states. 

Still, in many ways, San Francisco is a canary in the coal mine for much of the country. There are a few common factors to look out for: 

Does the district have underenrolled schools? 

San Francisco has 4,000 fewer students than it did a decade ago and it will lose another 4,600 by 2032. In those same projections, the district leadership noted that nearly all schools in all grades had unfilled seats.  

And yet, despite the enrollment declines, the district has not closed schools, and the city’s teachers union has for that moratorium to continue. But by delaying those hard decisions, the district has spread itself thin, because it’s harder to provide a full range of services at severely underenrolled schools. 

California schools have suffered bigger enrollment declines than other parts of the country — and those are projected to get worse in the coming years. Still, more than two-thirds of public school districts nationwide have fewer students than they did pre-pandemic. 

Are the district’s staffing ratios financially sustainable?

San Francisco actually looks better on this metric than many other parts of the country. While three-quarters of districts nationwide have lowered their student-to-teacher ratios over the last few years, San Francisco has not. 

The district has also kept its total staffing levels in check. Unlike many others, it did not hire a host of new administrators, paraprofessionals, school counselors or other support staff. 

However, that’s not for lack of trying. In December, one of the first steps the San Francisco school board took to reduce its long-term budget deficit was to . This month, the district agreed to impose an immediate freeze on new hiring. 

Media last fall decried San Francisco’s teacher shortages and the number of vacant positions the district had. But with a stroke of a pen those “vacant” positions went away once the district realized it could not afford to hire more people.

In fact, San Francisco’s actions are what make it such an important warning for other district leaders across the country. Many districts haven’t faced the same external pressures that San Francisco has, and yet, too many places are overstaffed and underenrolled. That combination could make for painful budget discussions in the coming years. 

SAN FRANCISCO — It was two days before the start of the school year, and Lauren Koehler shrugged off her backpack and slid out of a maroon hoodie as she approached the blocky, concrete building that houses the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) Enrollment Center. Koehler, the center’s 38-year-old executive director, usually focuses on strategy, but on this August day, she wanted to help her team — and the students it serves — get through the crush of office visits and calls that comes every year as families scramble at the last-minute for spots in the city’s schools. So when the center’s main phone line rang in her corner office, she answered.

“Good morning! Thank you for waiting,” Koehler chirped, her Texas accent audible around the edges. “How can I help you?”

On the line, Kelly Rodriguez explained that she wanted to move her 6-year-old from a private school to a public one for first grade, but only if a seat opened up at Sunset Elementary School, near their house on San Francisco’s predominantly white and Asian west side. Koehler told her the boy was fourth on the waitlist and that last year, three children got in.

“We will keep our fingers crossed,” Rodriguez said, sounding both resigned and hopeful.

Stanford professor Thomas Dee predicted this. Not this specific conversation, of course, but ones like it. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, public school enrollment in the United States had been , thanks to birth-rate declines and more restrictive immigration policies, but the decreases rarely exceeded half a percentage point. But Dee said, between fall 2019 and fall 2021, enrollment declined by 2.5 percent.

At the leading edge of this national trend is San Francisco. Public school enrollment there fell by 7.6 percent between 2019 and 2022, to 48,785 students. That drop left SFUSD at just over half the size it was in the 1960s, when it was one of the largest districts in the nation.

Declining enrollment can set off a downward spiral. For every student who leaves SFUSD, the district eventually receives approximately $14,650 less, using a conservative estimate of state funds for the 2022–23 school year. When considering all state and federal funds that year, the district stood to lose as much as $21,170 a child. Over time, less money translates to fewer adults to teach classes, clean bathrooms, help manage emotions and otherwise make a �徱���ٰ�������’s schools calm and effective. It also means fewer language programs, robotics labs and other enrichment opportunities that parents increasingly perceive as necessary. That, in turn, can lead to fewer families signing up — and even less money.

It’s why Koehler is trying everything she can to retain and recruit students in the face of myriad complications, from racism to game theory, and why educators and policymakers elsewhere ought to care whether she and her staff of 24 succeed.

Answering calls in August, Koehler had a plan — lots of little plans, really. And she hoped they’d move the needle on the �徱���ٰ�������’s enrollment numbers, to be released later in the year.

Koehler arrived at SFUSD in May 2020, which also happens to be when most believe the story of the �徱���ٰ�������’s hemorrhaging of students began. During Covid, the �徱���ٰ�������’s doors remained closed for more than a year. Sent home in March 2020, the youngest children went back part-time in April 2021; for of middle and high school students, schools didn’t reopen for 17 months, until August 2021. In contrast, most private schools in the city ramped up to full-time, in-person instruction for all grades over the fall of 2020.

It was the latest skirmish in a long-standing market competition in San Francisco — and the public schools lost. The �徱���ٰ�������’s pandemic-era enrollment decline was three times larger than the national one.

“My husband and I are both a product of a public school education, and it’s something we really wanted for our children,” said Rodriguez, the first caller. But her son ended up in private school, she explained, because “we didn’t want him sitting in front of a screen.” It was a conversation that has played out repeatedly for Koehler these past few years. But public schools staying remote for longer is not the whole story, not even close.

Remote schooling accounted for about a quarter of the enrollment decline nationally, Stanford’s Dee estimates. The bigger culprit, especially in San Francisco, is population loss. Even, the city  the fewest 5-to-19-year-olds per capita of any US city, about 10 percent of the population, which is roughly half the.

Then, starting around the time Koehler arrived, fewer new kids came than usual and more residents moved to places like Florida and Texas. A recent Census found 89,000 K-12 students in San Francisco, about 93,000 in 2019. That decline represents more than half of SFUSD’s pandemic-era drop.

It’s difficult to pinpoint how many children migrated to private school in response to SFUSD’s doors’ staying closed, since many did, but at the same time, some private school students also moved away. But Dee’s research shows that private schooling increased by about 8 percent nationally. (Homeschooling numbers also grew, although the number of kids involved remains small.)

And these aren’t the only reasons Koehler’s task can seem Sisyphean.

“You guys should be able to find out how many spots are open!” a father sitting outside Koehler’s office said, frustrated after visiting the enrollment center once a week all summer.

Koehler nodded sympathetically and told him his son was sixth on the waitlist for Hoover Middle School and that three times that many got in last year.

Since 2011, families have been able to apply to any of the city’s 72 public elementary schools, submitting a ranked list of choices. The same goes for middle and high school options. When demand exceeds seats, the enrollment center uses “tiebreakers,” mandated by the city’s elected school board, that try to keep siblings together, give students from marginalized communities a leg up, and let preschoolers stay at their school for kindergarten. After that, living near a school often confers priority. A randomized lottery for each school sorts out the rest, which leads to the entire system being referred to locally as “the lottery.”

Sixty percent of applicants got their first choice in the lottery’s “main round” in March 2023. Almost 90 percent were assigned to one of their listed schools. That makes for a lot of happy campers. It also makes for parents like the father with a wait-listed son, holding out for a better option.

Though she responded to him with unwavering calm, Koehler was frustrated too. She knew a seat would be available for his son, but state law prohibited her from letting the boy sit in it until an assigned student told the enrollment center they wouldn’t attend or failed to show up in the first week of school.

“I appreciate your patience,” she said, scrawling her cell number on a business card.

To avoid this bind, Koehler and her team have been experimenting with over-assigning kids, the way airlines overbook flights. New, too, is Koehler’s transparency about wait-list standing. In fact, at the beginning of August, every wait-listed family received an e-mail sharing its child’s standing, plus how many kids on the list got in last year. Koehler and her staff hope promising data will encourage parents to hang in there, while a disappointing forecast will open their minds to another school in SFUSD.

Overbooking and transparency represent incremental change. “I annoy some people on my team to no end by being like, ‘Well, I don’t know if we’re ready for this really large step, but let’s take a small step,’” Koehler said. “Let’s put as many irons in the fire as we can.”

Koehler’s next caller said, “The students are not getting their schedules until 24 hours before school starts, which is completely absurd!” Her voice fraying, the mother shared her suspicion that this was true only for kids coming from private middle schools, like her son. Koehler explained that the policy applied to all ninth graders, but still, she said, “I’m sure that’s stressful and annoying.”

Another caller had her heart set on Lincoln High School, down the block from the family’s home. But her son had been assigned to a school lower on the family’s list and an hour-long bus ride away. Koehler suggested several high schools that would have been a short detour on the woman’s way to work south of the city, but the mother began to cry. She had no interest in “Mission High or whatever,” even when Koehler pointed to Mission’s the highest University of California acceptance rate in SFUSD.

Family and friends are most influential in shaping people’s attitudes about schools, research specific to SFUSD shows. So if they’ve heard bad things, Koehler’s singing a school’s praises often does little to change their minds. Parents also turn to, which  push families toward schools with relatively few Black and Hispanic students, like Lincoln, which currently scores a 7 on GreatSchools.org’s 1-10 scoring system, while Mission rates a 3.

As the mother on the phone grew increasingly distressed, Koehler responded simply, “I hear you.” And then, “I know this is really hard.”

She learned these lines from her therapist husband. Before they met, Koehler was an AmeriCorps teacher at a preschool serving kids in a high-poverty community. By her own admission, Koehler was “a totally hopeless teacher,” and she couldn’t stop thinking about “all these systems-level issues.” When her pre-K class toured potential kindergartens, she said, “The schools were just so different from each other.” She realized, “Where you are assigning kids — and what their resourcing level is — matters.”

After getting a master’s in public policy at Harvard, Koehler took a planning job with Jefferson Parish Public School System in New Orleans and then became a director of strategic projects with the KIPP charter school network in Houston. She moved to the Bay Area in 2018 to work for a different charter network, and that’s when she met the handsome, “uncommonly honest” school counselor. When she joined SFUSD in 2020, her husband struck out into private practice. “I feel like I get training every day,” quipped Koehler of his reassurances at home.

Now, she has her staff role-play parent counseling sessions, practicing skills picked up during trainings on de-escalation, listening so that people feel heard, and other forms of “nonviolent communication.” They try to make families feel understood and give them a sense of autonomy and control.

Often, they succeed. Often, they fail.

When phone lines quieted, Koehler began to call parents from the waiting area back to a sunny conference room featuring two massive city maps dotted by district schools.

The first family told her they live in Mission Bay, a rapidly redeveloping area where a new elementary school isn’t  until 2025. They were excited about a school one neighborhood over, until they tested the two-bus commute with a preschooler. Then they realized that the city’s recently opened underground transit line goes straight from their home to Gordon J. Lau Elementary. Koehler wasn’t optimistic about there being openings; it’s a popular school.

When the computer revealed one last spot, she squealed à la Margot Robbie’s Barbie, “You are having the luckiest day!”

But the next parent, Kristina Kunz, was not as lucky. “My daughter was at Francisco during the stabbing last year,” she told Koehler. The sixth grader didn’t witness the March 2023 event, but when the school was evacuated, she thought she was about to die in a mass shooting. Once home, she refused to go back. Kunz told Koehler the family would have left the district, but they’d already been paying Catholic school tuition for her brother after he’d felt threatened at another middle school a few years earlier. “That was literally the only option,” Kunz said, “and we absolutely can’t afford it this year.”

Koehler read Kunz the list of middle schools with openings, all in the city’s southeast, which has a higher percentage of Black and Hispanic residents than other parts of the city. “Huh uh,” Kunz said, “none of those.” She’d take her chances waiting for a spot to open at Hoover on the west side.

The next parent, a woman who’d recently sent a vitriolic e-mail to the superintendent, said, “There’s no seats open in middle schools.” When Koehler rattled off the schools in the southeast that still had openings, the mother shrugged, as if those didn’t count.

Koehler closed her eyes and quickly inhaled. What she didn’t get into, but was perpetually on her mind, is what she’d read in“,” by Rand Quinn, a political sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania.

San Francisco segregated its schools from its earliest days. In 1870, students with Asian ancestry were officially allowed in any school, but often weren’t welcome in them, leaving most Asian American kids to learn in community-run and missionary schools. In 1875, the district declared schools open to Black students too, but nearly a century later, in 1965, 17 schools were more than 90 percent white and nine were more than 90 percent Black. A large system of parochial schools thrived alongside a handful of nonreligious, exclusively white private schools.

Public school desegregation efforts began in earnest in 1969 with the Equality/Quality plan, which, though modest, involved busing some students from predominantly white neighborhoods. An uproar followed, and the district, which had more than 90,000 students at its 1960s zenith, saw its numbers drop by more than 8,000 students between the spring and fall of 1970 as families fled integration. Over the next dozen years, SFUSD’s rolls decreased by more than 35,000, owing to white flight and also to the last of the baby boomers aging out and drastic public school funding cuts in the wake of a 1978 state proposition that largely froze the property tax base.

After 1980, enrollment bounced back a little, but then for years it plateaued at roughly 52,000 students. During the 1965–66 school year, more than 45 percent of the �徱���ٰ�������’s students were white. By 1977, just over 14 percent were. Today, that number is just under 14 percent. All of which is to say, when white families left in droves, they never really came back.

There have been about half a dozen similar initiatives since Equality/Quality — with names like Horseshoe and Educational Redesign — and each time, some west-side parents mounted opposition. Quinn quoted a former superintendent, Arlene Ackerman, who said at the outset of one of those “neighborhood schools” campaigns in the early 2000s: “They’ve said racist things I hadn’t heard since the late ’60s…talking about ‘in that neighborhood, my child might be raped!’”

It’s not just white families who object to their kids being educated alongside a significant number of Black children, said longtime Board of Education Commissioner Mark Sanchez. “You see that in the Latinx population and Asian population as well.”

In nearby Marin County, home to some of the nation’s most affluent suburbs, private schools opened one after the other in the 1970s. At least another 10 independent schools popped up in San Francisco proper, stealing market share from both SFUSD and the city’s parochial sector and pushing overall private school enrollment for the first time. Today, approximately 25 percent of San Francisco’s school-aged children attend private school, compared to 8 percent  of California and similar shares in many large cities. A November San Francisco Chronicle found that at least three independent schools have applied for permits to expand or renovate their campuses in order to make room for more students. At one private school, enrollment is projected to more than double.

When Americans think of , they think of the South, said Sanchez, but San Francisco has long had its own. In part because the city didn’t offer quality schooling to children of color. “You’ll see a lot of second-, third-, fourth-generation Latinos that will just only put their kids in Catholic school.”

These personal decisions have a ripple effect beyond decreasing SFUSD’s budget. Research  that advantaged, white families’ turning away from public schools sends a signal to others about their quality. Other studies reveal that when private schools are an option, recent movers to gentrifying neighborhoods  more likely to opt out of public schools. And it is well-established that segregated environments breed people who seek comfort in segregated environments.

“It’s kind of a chicken-and-the-egg thing,” Sanchez said: Private schools are there in part because of racial fear, and racial fear is perpetuated in part because private schools are there.

In 2015, in the southeast part of the city, SFUSD opened Willie Brown Middle School, that includes a wellness center, a library, a kitchen, a performing arts space, a computer lab, a maker space, a biotech lab, a health center, and a rainwater garden, in addition to light-filled classrooms. With small class sizes, bamboo cabinets, few staff vacancies, and furniture outfitted with wheels, it could easily be a private school.

But Willie Brown remained under-enrolled, year after year, even after the school board passed a policy giving its graduates preference for Lowell High School, known as the “crown jewel” of SFUSD. Last year, enrollment jumped when Koehler’s Enrollment Center overbooked the school in the first round, parents decided to give it a shot, and kids ended up happy. About 20 percent of the student body is now white, yet still, spots remained open two days before the start of school this past fall.

To some observers, Willie Brown is just the latest iteration of a failed “if you build it, they will come” narrative in San Francisco. In the second half of the 1970s, the district created new programs and “alternative schools,” akin to other cities’ magnet schools, to attract back families that had fled. Later, Superintendent Ackerman promised a flood of investment in schools in the southeast, including new language programs. There was a small effect on enrollment, Quinn said, but only on the margins.

So when the parent said, “There’s no seats open in middle schools,” Koehler understood that lots of factors influence which schools work for a family and which don’t. But there was also an echo of 1960s anti-integration parent groups. 

“I’m sorry,” she replied, “I know this is really stressful.”

A 17-year-old newcomer to the US entered the Enrollment Center and sat across the conference room table from Koehler. She asked when he’d arrived in San Francisco.

���dz����Բ���.”

“Ayer?” Koehler asked. (Yesterday?)

“No, domingo pasado.” (Last Sunday.)

In New York City and other large cities, an increase in asylum-seeking families with stopping public school enrollment declines. Migrant children to San Francisco too, and Koehler’s team has tried to reduce the they and other families face when trying to enroll.

But Koehler would need to meet many more kids like this one to stave off school closures.

She’d also need charter school enrollment to stop increasing.

The next parent, also a recent immigrant, stepped into the conference room with a stack of papers issued by the Peruvian government and the conviction that her son needed to be placed in a different grade than the one specified by his age. She made it clear to Koehler that the family would jump at the first appropriate placement offer: SFUSD’s or at Thomas Edison Charter Academy. Koehler scrambled to get the boy assessed and recategorized.

Charter schools were first authorized in San Francisco in the 1990s. Though their share of the education market is smaller here than in places like New Orleans, charter enrollment has, with new schools often inhabiting the buildings of schools SFUSD had to close. Now, approximately 7,000 students attend charter schools rather than district ones.

On August 30, 2023, SFUSD families received an e-mail from the superintendent saying, “We are going to make some tough decisions in the coming months and all the options are on the table.”

Each time a student leaves the district, SFUSD has less money to operate that student’s old school. But the heating bill does not go down. The teacher must be paid the same amount. A class of 21 first graders — or even a class of eight — is no cheaper than a class of 22.

It stands to reason that closing under-enrolled schools and reassigning their students and the funds that go with them to different schools, as many districts across the country are to do, should produce better educational outcomes for all. But it often doesn’t, as experiences in ,  and  illustrate. Sally A. Nuamah, a professor at Northwestern University,  school closures as “reactive” and urged policymakers to focus instead on the root causes of declining enrollment, like the lack of affordable housing that drives families out of cities.

Koehler can control those things about as readily as she can dig a new train tunnel or decrease school-shooting fear. But she might be able to improve the �徱���ٰ�������’s reputation.

Her team started by modernizing marketing efforts, like going digital with preschool outreach, producing a video about each school, and rebooting the annual Enrollment Fair, a day when principals and PTA presidents sit behind more than 100 folding tables. Parents used to push strollers through the throngs to grab a handout and snippet of conversation; now, schools play videos and offer up QR codes too.

For two years, SFUSD has also worked with digital marketing companies. One “positive impression campaign” included social media posts pushed out by the San Francisco Public Library and the Department of Children, Youth, and Their Families. Images feature photos of smiling students alongside the names of the SFUSD schools and colleges they attended: For example, “Jazmine – Flynn Elementary School – Buena Vista Horace Mann K-8 – O’Connell High School – Stanford University.” In addition to online ads, the district has purchased radio spots and light-pole ads. It’s mailed postcards.

Koehler would like to increase the current outlay of about $10,000 a year, but it’s hard to spend on recruitment when instruction remains underfunded, even if increased enrollment would more than offset the cost. Especially since, at some point, marketing becomes futile. With a finite number of kids in the city, initiatives to increase market share become “robbing Peter to pay Paul,” Dee likes to say. (Private school-board members and admissions directors in San Francisco are also expressing alarm at population declines.)

And in San Francisco, any PR campaign contends with two major sources of bad PR: the press and parents. Koehler understands why journalists report on what’s  in SFUSD: It’s their job. But she sees loads of negative headlines and very few accounts of the many things that are going right. Readers are left with the impression that private schools in the city are objectively better at serving students, which just isn’t true.

Some parents have left SFUSD or refused to enroll their kids because of substantive complaints, like with the �徱���ٰ�������’s decision not to offer Algebra I in eighth grade (starting in 2014). There is also some real scarcity in the process, as in Rodriguez’s case: There simply isn’t enough room on Sunset’s small campus for everyone who wants to be there. And individual families have unresolvable logistical constraints, and in very rare cases, truly legitimate safety concerns. But a lot of it has to do with timing — and fear.

When David, a father of two, rang the Enrollment Center, it was with the air of a man who just wanted to do the right thing.

After touring SFUSD’s George Peabody Elementary, David and his wife decided the school would be a great fit for their incoming kindergartener. There was something special about it, and they wanted her to learn in a diverse setting.

But they also wanted a backup plan, having heard of the lottery’s vagaries. “We had two number-one choices,” he said: Peabody and a Jewish private school. They applied to both. In March, their daughter was offered a spot at the private school — and one at a different SFUSD school they liked less. “If we got into Peabody in the first round, we would have gone to Peabody,” said David, who asked that his full name be withheld to protect his privacy. Instead, they signed a contract with the private school. “We put our daughter on the waitlist” for Peabody, he said, “and then kind of forgot about it.”

When the family got an e-mail offering a spot, on the Saturday before school started, they were excited enough to click “accept,” even though they would have lost their private school deposit. Then they learned that Peabody’s after-school program was full. “There was just no way that we could have made it happen without aftercare,” David said. So he called the Enrollment Center to offer the spot to another family.

Hearing David’s story, Koehler sighed. If she had been able to place his child at Peabody in the first round, aftercare would have been available there, but in August the only programs with openings were located offsite. Because that didn’t work for David’s family, Koehler was left with a seat sitting open at a high-demand school.

Private schools can require open houses, interviews, and a tuition deposit to help screen out all but the most interested families and reveal information about their likelihood of accepting an offer. But SFUSD has tried to do away with hurdles like that, since they disadvantage the already disadvantaged. With no way of gauging intention to attend, Koehler has to hold seats from March until August for thousands of students who ultimately won’t use them. And she can’t just overbook aggressively, because there are always outliers. This year, one of the city’s biggest middle schools saw every single child who was assigned in March, save one, show up in August. Private schools can more easily absorb extra kids if they overdo it with admissions a little, but Koehler risks a massive fiscal error under the �徱���ٰ�������’s union contract. And overbooking risks leaving other SFUSD schools under-enrolled, something single-campus private schools don’t have to worry about.

It leaves SFUSD an unpredictable mess able to enroll fewer families than it otherwise would. And because the process is a mess, more families apply to multiple systems to hedge their bets and end up holding on to multiple seats, making it all more of a mess.

But change is coming. In 2018, the school board  a resolution to eventually overhaul SFUSD’s school assignment system. Starting in 2026, citywide elementary school choice will be replaced by choice within zones tied to students’ addresses. The task of sorting out the details has fallen to Koehler’s team, along with a group at Stanford co-led by Irene Lo, a professor in the school of engineering who has been trained to design and optimize “matching” markets like this one.

If Lo could start anywhere, she’d centralize the application process so that families would rank their true preferences: public, private, and charter. One algorithm could then assign the vast majority of seats in a single pass, largely eliminating delays like the one David’s family experienced. But private schools stand to lose ground by agreeing to that, and many public school supporters would argue that this condones and uplifts private and charter schools. So instead of centralization, Lo will start with prediction.

She’ll use AI and other modern modeling tools to anticipate what parents will like. Then there’s “strategy-proofing,” a term from game theory. Essentially, it means trying to set up a system that incentivizes parents to be truthful. Over the decades, families have taken advantage of loopholes allowing students to attend a different school than the one designated by their address. And not just a few families. In the late 1990s, it was more than half. To gain an advantage, they’ve also lied about their student’s ethnicity, “race-neutral diversity factors” such as mother’s education level, and their zip code. Any way each system could be gamed, it was gamed.

Lo said the new six or seven zones will be drawn so each comes close to reflecting the �徱���ٰ�������’s average socioeconomic status. Layered on top of that will be “” at each school, basically set-asides giving lower-income students first dibs on some seats to make sure diverse zones don’t segregate into schools with wealthier students and others with concentrated poverty. City blocks will be used as a proxy for students’ level of disadvantage.

It all sounds great. It also all sounds familiar. In the early 1970s, Horseshoe featured seven zones and assignment to schools so as to create racial balance. Educational Redesign relied on quotas to make sure no ethnic group exceeded 45 percent. The current lottery uses “microneighborhoods” to capture disadvantage.

What makes Koehler and Lo think the outcome could be different this time?

Lo admitted that they’re trying “another way of putting together the same ingredients.” It’s still guesswork, but with her cutting-edge tools it should be more accurate than the guesswork of the past. And while parents still won’t have complete predictability, they’ll have more than before.

“I understand this is really difficult,” Koehler said to the last parent of the day.

With the waiting room empty and back offices quiet, Koehler approached each member of her staff: “Go home, because I know this is going to be a really long week.”

It’s likely to be a very long year—and decade—for the enrollment center.

San Francisco was 40 percent white as of the last Census, but only 13.8 percent of its public school enrollment was. Even if Lo works the unprecedented miracle of getting schools to reflect the �徱���ٰ�������’s diversity, there is no hope that they will reflect the �����ٲ�’s&�Բ�����;without a major change in the way parents have behaved for decades. The data is clear: Without a critical mass of white students in a school, a significant number of parents won’t consider it.

Still, many families are choosing SFUSD, including some of those Koehler talked to in August. Kunz’s daughter got into Hoover off the waiting list. A few months into the school year, her mother said, she is thriving. Her older brother, the one who was pulled out of public middle school, chose SFUSD’s Ruth Asawa School of the Arts over a well-regarded Catholic high school.

Rodriguez, the mother who wanted to send her first grader to Sunset, learned a few days after her call with Koehler that everyone assigned had shown up, and her son wouldn’t be offered a spot. But Koehler’s team had another suggestion near the family’s home: Jefferson Elementary School. Rodriguez almost rejected it in favor of private school, but she’s relieved she didn’t.

“The community’s been very, very welcoming,” she said in October. “His teacher’s wonderful; she has almost 20 years of experience. It has a beautiful garden. The principal is really involved.” A few months later things were still going well: “Jefferson is just fantastic,” she said in December: “We’ve been really, really pleased.”

But Rodriguez said she’s still “recovering” from the enrollment process. “I also worry about the future of it, as we hear potential school closures, budget deficits,” she said. The family is considering selling their house, in favor of a place somewhere else in the Bay Area “where there aren’t so many of the issues that SFUSD is running into.”

In October, David said he and his wife wouldn’t necessarily send their second child to the Jewish private school: “I think we probably will look at Peabody again.” And if that happened, he said, they may even move their oldest over to SFUSD. But by December, his outlook was different. David said his family has been very happy with the private school experience.

Koehler knew about each of these outcomes and thousands more like them, and she hoped they would amount to a turned tide, with enrollment starting to creep up rather than down.

This fall, she and her team learned of SFUSD’s preliminary numbers: Enrollment increased from 48,785 to 49,143. That said, hundreds of those kids are 4-year-olds, sitting in “transitional kindergarten” spots newly added to a statewide specialized pre-K program. In essence, enrollment had flatlined.

Koehler felt nonetheless undaunted. The stable numbers mean “that our outreach is working,” she said. “We are not losing people at the rate that we otherwise might.”

And not all of her plans, her incremental tinkering, have come to fruition yet. “One of my random dreams is that we could do aftercare at the same time as we do enrollment,” she said. She also pointed to SFUSD’s efforts to realign program offerings with what parents want most, spread more success stories, better compensate teachers, and get a bond measure on an upcoming ballot. For the 2025–26 application cycle, her team would like to automatically assign families to multiple waiting lists, “which we hope will make at least the process seem less cumbersome and frightening,” she said. Add in Lo’s changes, Koehler said, and “we’ll draw people back who right now are frustrated by our process.”

“I have a sense that the future will be positive.”

This story about  was produced by , a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the .

The 83,916-to-16,105 March 5 tally, according to from the San Francisco Department of Elections, reflects public frustration with the �徱���ٰ�������’s decision to delay the course for all students until the 9th grade. Not only did it deny advanced learners an opportunity to challenge themselves with rigorous coursework — and put them on track for high school calculus  — opponents said, but it also did little to boost Black and Hispanic student achievement in the subject. 

There are in San Francisco. Turnout was roughly 21% on this Super Tuesday, which also included the presidential primary and the primary to fill the U.S. Senate seat of Bay Area Democrat Dianne Feinstein.

The algebra ballot measure is not binding and the school board had already to return the course to the middle school. But the results did drive home a lesson to a board that has for failing to perform to residents’ satisfaction. 

“The voters have made it very clear they want our public schools to teach as many kids as much as possible,” said Patrick Wolff, who had children in the district from 2010 to 2022. “The people of San Francisco understand that true equity and justice in our public schools never requires compromising academic excellence.”

Wolff, cofounder of Families for San Francisco, which was later absorbed into TogetherSF, said he wants the board’s vote — and the public’s — to bring lasting change. 

“I hope that our elected officials and public school administrators have heard the people’s message,” he said. “The only way to keep public school reform on track is for the people to keep being informed, engaged and involved.”

SFUSD’s struggle with algebra reflects a nationwide battle over when to introduce the topic. Student participation varies across the country. While some school systems, including Dallas, have crafted policies that have greatly increased students’ chance to take the course in middle schools, others use highly selective enrollment processes, which often leads to the exclusion of Black, Hispanic and low-income children. 

Rex Ridgeway, who, along with several others, regarding algebra last year, expected strong voter response. 

“This was the first time that the public was able to speak out publicly about Algebra 1 after 10 years of damage to our kids,” he said. “I was not surprised by how passionate people are on Algebra 1.”

The answer can’t be that the district simply returns to an earlier, failed approach, said one expert whose organization promotes math policies that support equity in college readiness and success.

“So, the prior tracking policy didn’t lead to equitable outcomes,” Melodie Baker, national policy director at Just Equations, told ����Ӱ�� before this week’s vote. “Detracking didn’t lead to equitable outcomes either. So it makes sense that they’re not sticking with it, but they’ll need to find new ways to implement eighth-grade algebra that ensure better outcomes for Black and Latinx students. Not just revert to what they were doing before.”

Meredith Dodson, executive director of SF Parents, said Wednesday that the public’s work to improve SFUSD is not over.

“In addition to finally bringing algebra back to middle school, our district also needs to figure out how to better prepare kids so more of them can access algebra in middle school and higher level math beyond that,” she said. “We know we still have a long road ahead to make sure that every student has the academic support they need coming from our district — and that starts early.”

The public will vote on the issue , though the effort is now largely symbolic: The school board, facing consistent pressure to reinstate the course, . 

“After 10 years of damage, the district did the right thing,” said Rex Ridgeway, who, along with several others, on the matter last year, casting doubt on the by removing the course from middle school. 

San Francisco is just one of many school systems nationwide that has grappled with when to offer algebra in a battle that has pitted equity against rigor. An earlier survey by ����Ӱ�� of the country’s largest school districts showed varied participation rates in the course at the middle school level with white and wealthier students often having greater access.  

Some education experts called algebra an unnecessary barrier to student success while others were trying to increase the number of children who can take it.

Dallas made advanced coursework at the middle school level, including mathematics, opt-out rather than opt-in, dramatically increasing participation rates among traditionally marginalized students — without seeing a drop in scores. , which nixed middle school algebra years ago, recently reversed itself after parents . 

While some groups, including the , praised San Francisco for its earlier decision to remove the course, parents quickly mobilized against it. They feared the plan would hinder students’ ability to take calculus in 12th grade. The impact, they reasoned, could follow them to college, jeopardizing their chance to enter lucrative STEM fields. 

Ridgeway, a retired stockbroker, tutored his granddaughter, Joselyn Marroquin, from first to ninth grade, plugging in what he described as gaping holes in math, English and science instruction. 

“Immediately, I saw she was not getting the type of education I would expect,” he said.  

Ridgeway paid $860 for Marroquin, now 16, to take an online algebra course the summer before her freshman year of high school so she could sail through the class in 9th grade — and double up on another course, geometry. 

But it was a challenge. 

“It was a little difficult because it was online,” Marroquin told ����Ӱ��. “I think I learn best in person.”

She said the course succeeded in preparing her for high school math, but that the time commitment ate into her other plans.  

“Although classes were in the morning, I had to complete homework and study for the next lesson,” she said. “Because of that, it was difficult to do other activities I enjoyed. I didn’t really have a summer vacation.”  

SFUSD moved to its current model to address the fact that few students were successfully progressing through its math sequence at the time: Just 19% of tenth graders — and only 1% percent of Black children — had passed the state math assessment and had not repeated math coursework across the 2011-12 and 2012-13 school years. 

Those pushing for the change also noted a lack of participation in advanced math courses among Black and Hispanic students.  

But a 2023 found “large ethnoracial gaps in (Advanced Placement) math course-taking did not decrease after the policy change.” Specifically, the percentage of Black students enrolling in any AP math course in high school remained the same while Hispanic student participation increased by just 1 percentage point.

Meredith Dodson, executive director of SF Parents, understands the school �徱���ٰ�������’s rationale for eliminating the course, but has long disagreed with the move.

“I think their experiment 10 years ago to delay algebra was well-intentioned, but in the end it had the opposite of the intended effect,” she said. “Kids who were supposed to be helped by that policy change were ultimately further harmed.”

Dodson said the disparity is stark.

“Parents around San Francisco are shocked when they hear algebra isn’t offered in middle school currently,” she said. “It’s time to bring it back, and we’re just glad that the district isn’t ignoring the data any longer.”

California public schools, like those in many other states, have to private schools and homeschooling post-pandemic. SFUSD’s student population alone shrank from to . District leaders just announced they will because of the loss. 

The �徱���ٰ�������’s reversal on algebra comes two years after three school board members were in a February 2022 referendum. The vote reflected the public’s enormous dissatisfaction with . 

Algebra will be piloted in in the district next fall. It will also offer an online Algebra 1 course next school year and a summer course in 2025. 

Patrick Wolff, cofounder of Families for San Francisco, served as the group’s executive director before the organization was absorbed into TogetherSF. Wolff, who had children in the district from 2010 to 2022, said its problems extended well beyond a single course.  

“SFUSD has done a terrible job of teaching kids math,” he said. “Kids who are capable of learning more math have been held back for no good reason and kids who need more support in order to reach their full potential have absolutely been failed in receiving the support and instruction they need.”

Wolff said there is nothing wrong with acknowledging that some students might excel in advanced mathematics at a younger age while others will not — as long as those who struggle are helped to improve. 

Melodie Baker, national policy director at , an organization that promotes math policies that support equity in college readiness and success, said the district can’t simply return to an earlier, failed approach. 

“So the prior tracking policy didn’t lead to equitable outcomes,” she said. “Detracking didn’t lead to equitable outcomes either. So it makes sense that they’re not sticking with it, but they’ll need to find new ways to implement eighth-grade algebra that ensure better outcomes for Black and Latinx students. Not just revert to what they were doing before.”

A released last month noted just 65% of U.S. principals said their elementary or middle school offered algebra in eighth grade — but only for some students. Twenty percent of respondents said it was open to all. 

Eighth-grade algebra was even scarcer in California: only 48% of principals said their school offered the course, and only to certain children. Eighteen percent said any child could enroll.

All three members facing votes — Alison Collins, Gabriela López and Faauuga Moliga — were unseated by margins exceeding 70 percent, with three-quarters of the electorate opting to remove López, who served as the board’s president. Each recalled member will be replaced by appointees selected by San Francisco Mayor London Breed. 

Tuesday’s results could serve as the high-water mark in a period of public dissatisfaction with school boards around the country. Parents demanding a return to in-person school have launched an unprecedented number of recall campaigns over the last year; in addition to complaints about school access and quality, many have been animated by the prospect of critical race theory practiced in classrooms, particularly in the last months of 2021. But the vast majority of those efforts have failed in the face of tough ballot requirements and low voter engagement. In San Francisco — one of America’s most liberal jurisdictions, where equity politics are broadly popular — recall proponents at last broke through.

Cyn Wang, a local parent who supported the recall as a board member of the , said in an email that she wasn’t surprised by the one-sided result.

“The voters spoke very clearly and loudly: We need our Board of Education to first and foremost focus on educating our kids.”

The sweeping ouster was preceded by years of growing frustration directed at the board’s governance, with special ire reserved for some of its decisions during the pandemic. Along with several other large districts in California, schools in San Francisco remained shuttered until late in the 2020-21 school year, even as students in local private schools . Offered the services of a philanthropically funded reopening consultant in the summer of 2020, the . 

The prolonged experience with remote schooling was aggravated by the perception that district leadership was dabbling too frequently in equity politics at the expense of focusing on the task of reopening and improving the city’s struggling schools. The board spent months deliberating on a proposal to rename dozens of schools, some named for widely admired figures like Abraham Lincoln and Paul Revere. 

In another episode, a set of New Deal-era murals at one high school were nearly painted over when board members decided that their depiction of Native Americans was racist. That effort was halted last year by , while the renaming campaign has been dogged by allegations that its processes did not adhere to open meetings laws. 

Rachel Norton, a former three-term board member and who once served as the body’s president, said in an email that the enthusiasm of parent groups supporting the recall was a key factor in its outcome.

“I think San Francisco sent a message — people were really angry about extended school closures and the perception that the board was paying attention to renaming and other issues that didn’t center students,” Norton said. “Of the four remaining members of the board, I think some understand this anger and some don’t.”

Moliga thanked his supporters in early Wednesday morning, saying that his service on the board had been an honor and that “many more fights” lay ahead.

Looking forward, San Francisco’s political class will need to chart a new course for the district. Mayor Breed, who in November, will select replacement commissioners in the coming weeks. In its reconstituted form, the board must also select a candidate to replace Superintendent Vince Matthews, who retired last summer. And public demand grows for a thoroughgoing improvement effort to turn around schools, which have shown some of the widest achievement gaps in the country. 

Amanda Kahn Fried, another local recall supporter, said that Democrats beyond California’s borders should take a lesson from the fate that befell Collins, López, and Moliga.

“I hope national Democrats — and [Gov.] Gavin Newsom — see that parents in the bluest city in America are frustrated, and need our leaders to prioritize our children.”

The campaign had been gaining momentum all summer, with green-shirted activists circulating a petition at local concerts and farmer’s markets to remove four members, including Holden. Their complaints stretched back to 2020, when some parents pushed back against the board’s commitment to virtual instruction during the pandemic. Two days before the deadline, at a public meeting in late August, they announced they’d met the legal threshold to trigger a recall election.

Afterwards, feeling “a little disheartened,” Holden went in search of diversion. A contractor by trade, he found it in a late-night remodeling project.

“Sometimes painting is very therapeutic, so I went to work after the meeting and just painted all night,” he recalled. “I grabbed a pan and a roller and a couple of beers, turned my tunes on, and went to town.”

Holden was still a newcomer to public service, winning election just after the first COVID wave largely passed over North Dakota. When he’d voted to of the local Woodrow Wilson High School last December over the 27th president’s racist misdeeds, he expected it would be “the peak of the political nature” of the job. Now, scarcely more than a year into his term, he considered the possibility that it might end much sooner than anyone had thought.

“Never in a million years did I imagine it would happen,” he said.

Holden isn’t the only one taken by surprise this year. According to the nonpartisan political site Ballotpedia, 2021 84 recall efforts targeting over 200 school board members. Those numbers are triple and quadruple, respectively, the average rates measured over the last 15 years, with attempts launched in large and nationally prominent districts like San Francisco and Loudoun County, Virginia.

Compared with better-known recalls, such as the unsuccessful attempt to unseat California Gov. Gavin Newsom, efforts directed at education officials have mostly stayed under-the-radar. The recall process is also a limited mechanism for political change due to its unwieldy nature: Unhappy constituents usually have to collect a large number of signatures; have those signatures be independently verified; and, if they manage those steps, prevail once an election is held. As a consequence, only one board member in the country has been successfully recalled from office this year.

But the increased willingness to trigger an unorthodox and rarely used process is a reflection of the unprecedented scrutiny directed at school boards this year, and parents’ outrage over COVID mitigation measures and the teaching of controversial subjects — a far cry from the miniature tempests that usually draw parents to board meetings — demonstrate how the themes of national politics have trickled down even to the local level. 

Joshua Spivak, a researcher at New York’s Wagner College , said that the “explosion” in attempts this year are the direct result of COVID-19. While state and municipal politicians of different types have faced public opposition to their pandemic response, the fundamental and long-lasting disruption to K-12 schools has made board members a particular target.

“The school board is maybe the most obvious candidate for a recall in this situation because their impact is very clear: The schools are shut down, or there are masking requirements, so the [effect] is right there,” he said. “And there are parents who are ready to be organized in a very real way.”

A 74 analysis of Ballotpedia’s recall data shows that over half of the would-be recalls are related to either the pace at which districts returned to hosting in-person classes or boards’ willingness to mandate mask-wearing in schools. A smaller percentage spring from allegations that districts are teaching “critical race theory.” The rest pertain to an array of local concerns ranging from financial mismanagement to board members’ trouble with the law.

Caught in the middle are the everyday people sitting on boards, who largely serve in a part-time capacity while juggling other personal and professional commitments. Tom Gentzel, an education consultant who served as the CEO of the National School Boards Association until 2020, said that the tough decisions typically facing board members might center on merging elementary schools or firing a football coach — not national debates about public health or civil rights.

“They’re not part of some larger agenda at work, and they’re not politicians. I’ve often teased school board members that if they’re planning a political career, school board is probably not a great place to start.”

Progressive outrage in San Francisco

San Francisco, where critics of the local school board election to be held in February, is one of a few places in the country that contradicts Gentzel’s characterization. It’s also located in California, the perennial leader in recalls around the country because of around the practice. Twenty-five recall attempts against school board members have been initiated in California this year. (Wisconsin took second place with 11 attempts so far, while Arizona has seen 10.)

Crucially, the city is home to a large district where K-12 politics can take center stage and education officials frequently climb the ladder to higher office. Two former commissioners of the San Francisco Board of Education now sit on the city’s Board of Supervisors, itself a springboard into state and national politics whose alumni include longtime Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Gov. Newsom.

Politics in San Francisco, a national byword for left-wing organizing, are also substantially influenced by national conversations within the progressive movement. In February, the board competitive admissions criteria at the prestigious Lowell High School, arguing that its entrance exam unfairly advantaged white and Asian-American students at the expense of their Hispanic and African American peers. For over two years, a majority of commissioners have also waged a controversial fight to either destroy or cover a set of murals commemorating the life of George Washington in a high school named after the first president. 

Rachel Norton, a three-term board member who declined to run for re-election in 2020, said that during the Trump presidency, “the national political climate really did spill into” local races to an extent that surprised her. Public anger directed at Washington , culminating in a further leftward swing in a city where Democrats already dominated the political scene.

“Voters in San Francisco wanted to send a message, and in a place where your politics are basically ‘blue versus bluer,’ it’s hard to send a message by punishing the red team,” Norton said. “So I think we ended up with an electorate that was willing to vote much further left, and much less moderate — by San Francisco standards — than we’d seen in the past.”

The increasingly activist bent of the new board became apparent in due course. Gabriela Lopez and Alison Collins, two members elected in the “blue wave” year of 2018, were chosen as the board’s president and vice president at the beginning of this year. A few weeks later, as the culmination of a process begun in 2018, to rename 44 schools throughout the district, including buildings named after Paul Revere and Abraham Lincoln.

The announcement generated local and national uproar, particularly after that the panel charged with leading the renaming process had committed historical errors after using Wikipedia to research school namesakes. Even Mayor London Breed excoriated the board for prioritizing the renaming process over developing a plan to reopen schools during the 2020-21 school year. By April, a vote was held to .

But the reversal to stop an attempt led by parents to initiate a recall election against three commissioners, including Lopez and Collins. Over six months into the campaign, the causes cited by its organizers extend past the renaming decisions. In March, Collins was discovered to have derogatory claims about Asian Americans, and after being stripped of her vice-presidency by the rest of the board, she opted to file an $87 million lawsuit to force the school district into state receivership. 

The medley of distractions represented “a testament to [the board’s] failure to prioritize and center students in their governance,” said Cyn Wang, a board member of the San Francisco Parents Coalition. Formed last year to advocate for safe reopening of city schools, the group has not been involved in organizing for the recall, but recently for causing “harm to our students and public schools.”

Wang said the coalition was composed of “San Francisco families with San Francisco values,” and that they believed in masking and following the recommendations of public health experts. But she added that the commissioners’ lengthy delays in allowing children to return to in-person classes — from hiring a reopening consultant last spring — had taken an academic and emotional toll on her daughter, who spent half of kindergarten and all of her first-grade year learning from home.

“I saw her plummet into depression,” Wang said. “I saw her staying in her room for long periods of time. I saw the impact personally, and we’re very lucky compared with some other families. That really propelled me to get involved in this issue, and it woke me up to the general dereliction of duty of this board.”

Earlier this month, that the petitioners had cleared a huge hurdle by submitting over 50,000 verified signatures of city residents in favor of holding a recall election; that automatically triggered a vote that will be held on February 15. Spivak said that the procedural challenges surmounted by the board’s detractors, along with the national political relevance of the campaign, made San Francisco perhaps “the most notable” school board recall in over 60 years.

The next test will be whether voters will actually cast enough ballots to remove board members elected just three years ago. The same three members facing the recall are scheduled for regular re-election bids next November, and Norton said the February vote will change education politics in the city no matter its outcome.

“I do think there’s a scenario that, even if all three of them or some number of them survive, there will be a big conversation in the city about who should be on the school board,” she argued. “Candidates that otherwise would have had trouble breaking through might get more attention because of the recall.”

‘Critical race theory’ erupts in VA

In Loudoun County, Virginia, the nationally publicized quest to remove five members of the local school board will not hinge on how the voters respond; state law holds that such fights are adjudicated by a circuit court once sufficient signatures have been submitted. But that quirk has done nothing to calm the local political waters. 

One of the members in question, Beth Barts, earlier this month after a judge ruled that her proposed removal could move to a full trial. Fight for Schools, the political action committee spearheading the attempt, it has gathered enough signatures to file removal petitions against two other members. 

The stated reason for the campaign is that the members in question participated in of “anti-racist parents” that strategized about how to combat racial inequity in Loundoun County Public Schools, the third-largest district in the state and one of the wealthiest in the country. The board’s detractors argue that without an announcement and the chance for public comment, that action violates the state’s open meetings laws and is grounds for removal. But the substance of their complaint reaches back to last summer, when many parents began to agitate for the 2020-21 school year to begin with a return to full-time, in-person learning.

Ian Serotkin, who is among the members targeted for removal, said that the public’s frustrations began to “bubble over” in late 2020. In a normal board meeting, he said, the public comment portion would attract 10-20 speakers. As the reopening debate wore on, that number swelled to the hundreds, with meetings stretching late into the night. Soon, viral videos began to circulate depicting enraged community members pleading with the board to bring kids back to school; raucous scenes from the proceedings became a reference point in media coverage of the anger and occasional intimidation being directed against school officials throughout the country.

Observers also noticed the volume of emails and speeches devoted to the controversy around how schools in Loudoun County addressed controversial subjects like race, gender, and sexuality. A dawning fixation on “critical race theory,” amplified by President Trump during last fall’s presidential race and repeated in conservative media, began to take over the conversation.

Serotkin said that critical race theory is not taught in Loudoun County, and the �徱���ٰ�������’s recent initiatives to address racial disparities in discipline and academic achievement — including paying to the California-based consultancy Equity Collaborative to help guide its efforts —  were being “intentionally conflated” with indoctrination in the classroom. Nevertheless, he said, critics had succeeded in harnessing the community’s existing anger.

“The conversation took a turn away from just being about COVID, and the organizers of these political efforts started capitalizing on that with a captive group of parents who were very engaged in school issues about COVID,” Serotkin said.

Whether or not the analytical discipline of critical race theory is literally being taught in the classroom, some members of the community have raised concerns about the �徱���ٰ�������’s actions over the last few years. After the board to change the admissions process of the �徱���ٰ�������’s esteemed STEM magnet programs with the intent of accepting more Hispanic and African American students, , claiming that the revision discriminated against Asian students. This April, a county teacher in the conservative Federalist website calling the �徱���ٰ�������’s equity trainings “leftist institutional racism.”

The effort to remove the board members began in March, after the existence of the private Facebook group became public. In a short-lived project that drew widespread condemnation and later from the county sheriff’s office, a few members of the group began to assemble a list of local parents who were part of an “anti-CRT movement”; that steps be taken to hack or otherwise infiltrate those parents’ websites.

Ian Prior, a former Trump administration official and Fight for Schools’ executive director, said that he objected to some aspects of the �徱���ٰ�������’s focus on social justice, but that his group’s real grievance was against what he described as bungled and biased leadership from the board. The prolonged closure of schools due to the pandemic, along with the close-up view that parents received once learning went online, had engaged many parents in local politics for the first time.

“The big picture, as I see it, is that this pandemic served to awaken parents to the need to be more engaged at the local level — certainly in elections but also in making sure their voices are heard and their elected officials are held accountable. For too long, we’ve seen people focus at the national level, on these big issues being debated on the national stage, and neglecting local issues.”

But what started as a clash among parents at the county level is now playing an outsized role in state politics. Virginia will elect its next governor tomorrow, and while Democratic former Gov. Terry McAuliffe has been considered the front-runner for much of the race, polls have tightened over the last month as his Republican rival Glenn Youngkin has focused more closely on K-12 issues. A successful businessman and first-time candidate, months ago to ban the teaching of critical race theory in Virginia classrooms on his first day in office. More recently, of both the Loudoun board and interim Superintendent Scott Ziegler over their handling of an alleged rape of a girl in a high school bathroom.

On Thursday, gave Youngkin an eight-point lead among likely voters. Among respondents who identified as parents, the Republican enjoyed a 14-point advantage. , released on Friday by the Washington Post, found McAuliffe one point ahead. Twenty-four percent of respondents said that education was the most important issue in the race — the largest share of any single issue, and a nine-point jump since September. The state of the high-profile contest, one of just two major statewide elections being held this fall, President Biden to campaign for McAuliffe personally. Another national figure, former Trump administration advisor Steve Bannon, on school board races as the opening skirmish in next year’s midterm fight for control of Congress.

Barts, whose resignation was welcomed by Prior, did not respond to a request for comment. In resigning, she joined of around the country who chose to quit in the face of possible removal. Their departure suggests that recall attempts, whether or not they succeed in their aims, can alter the focus of school boards and serve as a warning even to members who aren’t themselves targeted.

“I think that is absolutely something that happens: They might think, ‘Okay, I don’t want this to happen to me,’” Spivak said. “It could inhibit behavior.”

A return to normalcy in Fargo?

Both the San Francisco and Loudoun County recall efforts remain ongoing after months of work and thousands of signatures collected, which is somewhat remarkable in itself: Even in a normal year, the majority of recalls fall short of the ballot due to the considerable organizing demands of recruiting volunteers and activating ordinary citizens who often pay little attention to local politics.

Despite the “enormous amount” of attempts this year, Spivak noted that just one board member has been ousted so far, in a small district in southwestern Colorado. The source of the public’s disapproval came not from the man’s position on mask mandates or critical race theory, but rather .

Most would-be recalls instead follow the pattern that ultimately played out in Fargo. Less than a month after Seth Holden soothed his nerves with a night of home improvement, found that there were not enough valid signatures to bring a question to the ballot. North Dakota law stipulates that Holden and his colleagues cannot be subject to another recall effort for the remainder of their terms.

Jim Johnson, another member targeted in the campaign, said he wasn’t particularly concerned about the recall campaign. A vice president of business development at a Minnesota-based insurance brokerage, he won his seat in 2000 and has prevailed in five successive reelection bids. The current debates over COVID mitigation and cultural politics are the most contentious he can remember during that time, burning even hotter than past disputes over Common Core or No Child Left Behind.

Still, he added, while the emotional tenor both inside and outside of board meetings has been heightened over the last year, it has been more in the spirit of “North Dakota Nice”; generally cordial, with a few exceptions.

“There were a couple of board members in particular that I think had some false accusations hurled at them on social media, which is unfortunate,” Johnson lamented. “I reached out to them and said, ‘This is the nature of politics, just let it roll off your back.’ But the vast majority of the people, even those involved in the recall effort, were being pretty civil the entire time. It was just a handful of people who let their emotions carry them away.”

Some degree of public concern has abated over the last month, with the recall scuttled and students having long since returned to classrooms. The North Dakota legislature strictly limiting requirements around facial coverings — but since it only applies to state officials, it has not affected Fargo’s mask mandate, recently voted to keep in place.

For the moment, Johnson looks forward to turning to more prosaic issues. Enrollment at Fargo Public Schools is up slightly this year, and the board needs to consider whether to build a new facility to house the former Woodrow Wilson High School. Other decisions, related to staff salaries and the supervision of recess periods, await as well.

“We’re a growing school district, and we’ve got to figure out where to buy land for future buildings, figure out where we’re going to hire our next set of teachers, make sure we have a teacher contract we can get ratified every two years,” Johnson said. “That’s really my game plan. Eleven thousand kids came to school today in Fargo, and they need to be educated.”

Lead Image: People protesting against critical race theory being taught in schools in Loudoun County, Virginia, on June 12. (Getty Images)

But this year, with the busiest part of the 49ers EDU field trip season canceled because of the pandemic, the team called an audible to ensure that STEAM education remained relevant while students learned from home. And they turned what had been an on-site workbook into a digital playbook with interactive opportunities.

— about 50 printed pages in its original format — was created in 2014, when the team’s STEAM lab opened its doors. More than 300,000 playbooks are already in circulation in the Bay Area, aligning the on-premises experience with concepts to explore beyond the field trip, giving students and teachers an activity book to use in school or at home.

“What we did was essentially re-created the whole thing using the same content,” says Jesse Lovejoy, 49ers EDU director, about the digital version. Its six full-time educators “are teachers, but we are also parents, some of us. We looked through the prism of what do we need to change in terms of the activities we create and the interactive pieces to make it relevant for at home. It doesn’t just work as a straight ‘put it online’ — we had to do a lot of thinking about the right way to support kids learning about the engineering design process.”

The football-focused theme remains the same — everything in the 49ers STEAM lab ties to the 49ers, athletics, the on-site 49ers museum or Levi’s Stadium — but is presented in a way to work in an interactive digital format.

Take the forces of football flight, for example — basically a physics lesson discussing what forces are in play when a ball travels. When students are on site, they run, throw, jump and handle footballs filled with various amounts of air. “It is a tangible way to feel and touch the forces,” Lovejoy says. “That is my preferred way to do it. In this sense, we had to say, how do we find another way to do that in an interactive textbook fashion?” What they landed on was an animation in which students see players moving and have to click to identify the proper force and movement. “You’ll see guys getting tackled and diagrams of a ball and how it moves,” he says. “We are having the kids look at that and push-pull, thrust-drag, lift-gravity. Normally, the book would be a supporting tool, and now it has to be the whole thing because we are not there to deliver it.”

The playbook covers the STEAM subjects — science, technology, engineering, art and math — in addition to touching on weather and environmental sustainability in relation to stadium design and water usage. Activities range from football physics to helmet design, and they even encourage students to get outside and time themselves doing speed and agility drills to understand various math concepts. They learn about how different weather conditions affect a kicker’s ability to make a field goal and how different cities with different environments create unique variables a team must plan for.

Lovejoy says March and April are the busiest time for scheduled visits. The 49ers subsidize travel costs for schools within 75 miles, with more than 50 percent of students receiving Title I funding, meaning that hundreds of schools from dozens of districts use the 49ers’ facility for free. The EDU digital playbook was sent to all educators whose trips were canceled and to previous visitors. The 49ers EDU team has used and connections with the Silicon Valley Education Foundation to push the content out to students.

“I know the content works, is compelling, and kids love it,” Lovejoy says. “The real exponential growth and usage will come from people who try it and recognize that and tell other people. We are starting to see that in usage figures, and I think that will continue to grow as people adapt to distance learning.”

The 49ers EDU has proved popular enough that it has spawned EDU Academy, a free service in which the six educators help other sports teams and museums create connections with their local communities. The change to the digital playbook has already yielded three calls from interested NFL teams. “After having seen the success,” Lovejoy says, “they are basically saying, ‘How did you do this? Can you please help us do it?’”

Along with the STEAM program, the 49ers partnered with Chevron, the Silicon Valley Education Foundation and the Santa Clara Unified School District to operate a six-year immersive STEM education program for students, the . This program, unlike the field-trip-focused aspect of the STEAM lab at Levi’s Stadium, was operated at Santa Clara High School and Cabrillo Middle School, with students joining a cohort in seventh grade and taking their math and science classes together in the schools and participating in 300 hours of extracurricular activity.

The first cohort, which started in seventh grade in 2014, is graduating with the Class of 2020. “These kids are the first,” Lovejoy says. “They are — I will start to get all weepy and sappy — I have known them for a long time, and they have been through everything with us.”

For years, the 49ers have been planning for the conclusion of that first cohort. But with schools closed, the team is pivoting to make the best of the situation and create a virtual experience that includes 49ers players, musical performances and messages of support from across the country.

The COVID-19 outbreak has kids contained in their homes, attending school online, minimizing face-to-face contact and missing their friends. In the age of social distancing, experts say, families need to pay extra attention to how kids behave on social media.

For Alex Paloglou, 17, a junior at San Rafael High School in the San Francisco Bay Area, the increased dependence on social media “hasn’t brought much of a change for me.” That’s mainly because Paloglou is also a student leader with , a national social and emotional learning nonprofit that promotes social connectedness, belonging and online kindness.

He was already using social media frequently, Paloglou said, and trying to behave exactly like he would if his onscreen peers were standing in front of him. That’s part of the etiquette he learned back in middle school from Beyond Differences’s Be Kind Online curriculum.

Such etiquette is needed now more than ever, said Beyond Differences founder Laura Talmus. The 10-year-old nonprofit creates free resources used by 6,100 teachers and student leaders in 50 states, Talmus said. The demand is driven by reports of bullying, sexual harassment and other risky behaviors online.

Those behaviors are always concerning, but the combined stress of flattening-the-curve measures, family financial pressure and anxiety over COVID-19’s onslaught could lead to more harsh words online, she said.

“We should brace ourselves for an onslaught of insensitivity,” she said.

The May 15 timing of the group’s Be Kind Online Day is fortuitous, Talmus said, as is the release of its latest Be Kind Online curriculum in the coming days. Beyond Differences sponsors two other days of observances to correspond with its key initiatives: Know Your Classmates Day in October and No One Eats Alone Day on Valentine’s Day.

Cruel and hostile behavior has risen with the spread of the disease. A group of Dutch students faced after dressing in stereotypical Chinese costumes and posing for a photo with a sign saying “Corona Time.” The New York Times last week that Chinese Americans are being spit on and yelled at. Criticizing the way others are responding to the outbreak online is common.

Even ordinary exchanges between teachers and students are becoming more strained as well, Paloglou said. Because students are now interacting with teachers online, he said, he’s using his Beyond Differences training to make sure his typed communications are respectful. It’s easy to sound entitled, critical and dismissive over messenger or text. He recalls advice given to him by a teacher years ago: “If you want to talk about your grade, never send it in a text.”

Numerous class discussions are now taking place via Zoom and other videoconference platforms, and Paloglou said the chat functions on those platforms, which allow muted members to send messages while others (like the teacher) are talking, lend themselves to short, snappy interactions. What is clearly goofing off in person might come across as malicious in writing. “We have to be mindful of our wording,” he said.

Chalkbeat recently , a word that didn’t exist a month ago, and which can range from students — or their friends with whom the Zoom link has been illicitly shared — flooding the text-message part of the platform to posting inappropriate photos.

“Zoombombing is no joke. I don’t think we were ready for that,” one New York City co-principal said.

Beyond Differences’s mission of reducing social isolation has special implications for homebound teens as well, Paloglou said: “The question is, ‘Who do I call or who do I text?’”

The Know Your Classmates and No One Eats Alone curricula teach students how to look out for each other and make sure that their peers are not being left out. Paloglou suggests reaching out to classmates who may have been socially isolated even before school closures and stay-at-home orders.

Be Kind Online curricula explain what happens to the middle-school brain when kids look at social media — whether they see themselves represented positively, negatively or not at all. The absence can be just as tough, Talmus said.

Tagging, liking and commenting with positivity and inclusivity in mind is something anyone can do to create a positive social media atmosphere, she and Palaglou explained.

Parents can help kids process all of this, Talmus said, and the free Beyond Differences curriculum can help.

As more teens connect via group platforms like , Zoom, , Google Hangouts Meet and Skype, new challenges and opportunities arise. The apps make it easier to include more people, which makes it hurt worse to be left out.

Some celebrities are leading the inclusivity charge by hosting digital parties, like the one on Instagram, or social media mini-concerts filmed in their homes, as and have done. Coupled with the scores of makers and artists offering classes and tutorials online — such as the wildly popular — generosity and solidarity are, as they say, trending.

Altruism via social media is, in many ways, a moment for today’s high school students to shine. But they still need genuine connection while they #stayhome — a need that existed before COVID-19, Talmus said.

Teens, especially the current Gen Z crop, she explained, are constantly trying to figure out how to bridge the gap between their desire to unite for a better world and the overscheduled, heavily mediated lives they were born into. Social media keeps their interactions managed and shallow in many ways, she explained, but at the same time, they rarely fully disengage. Adults have to model what deep connection looks and feels like.

“They love having adults hearing their voices and their ideas,” Talmus said. Being kept together at home by the COVID-19 protocols creates an opportunity for just such interactions.

Online conflict, of course, will come up, Paloglou acknowledged, and that could be more challenging. Normally, when friends “beef” online, he said, they see each other later at school and things calm down. Once they deal with each other face-to-face, with expressions, tone and social accountability restored, they are more likely to give each other the benefit of the doubt. Without that in-person reset, he explained, people will have to be more intentional to resolve matters.

One way to minimize conflict, Paloglou advised, is to remember that just as the screen does not protect others’ feelings, it also doesn’t protect your reputation. Many times, he said, students think that the screen “protects” them from the social consequences of their words.

“They’re just trying to be funny,” he said, but their online persona, which may be edgier and snarkier, always affects their real-world reputation.

Now is definitely the time, Talmus said, to give every text message and email one more read-through before sending. Take a deep breath, she advised, and consider the many stressors not just on you, the sender, but on the receiver. Ask: How’s this going to land?

Beyond Differences has developed another list of ways to reduce social isolation in the days of social distancing.

• Use the to create a fun group chat activity or post online and invite others to join in using the hashtag #IsolatedNotAlone.
• It’s your time to shine! Share your talents. Create a video or go live on social media and teach a new skill.
• Play online games with others. Encourage students to invite a new friend to play the game — maybe someone from school whom they haven’t yet had the chance to get to know very well.
• Come together on Zoom or FaceTime to play music together.
• Post a photo on Instagram or in a group text. Invite your friends to write a story together. Select the type of story (fairy tale, historical, fiction). Write an introduction sentence to prompt creativity, then tag a friend. Each person gets to add one line to the story and tag another friend. For students, the goal is to include everyone in your class.
• Take the Pledge to Be Kind Online. Complete the statement: and share on social media.

The full list can be found on the organization’s website, where Beyond Differences has free for middle-school-age students available to download immediately for use at home.

Due, in part, to San Francisco’s public school lottery system, which allows families to apply to any school in the district, we saw immediately that our enrollment was going to have an overrepresentation of middle- and upper-middle-class families — those who had access to information about our program, time to research alternatives within the city and privilege that enabled them to take a risk on a new school.

This trend has persisted even though our school has spent 100 percent of its recruitment and outreach budget — as well as time — in underserved communities. We have considerable demand and support among families who struggle financially: More than 100 students on our waiting list qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, and 90 percent of children from low-income households who are offered a spot at the school accept it. However, last year alone, we had more than 700 applications from families all over the city and across the income spectrum. With an open, public lottery, the law of statistics doesn’t work in favor of low-income children. And as the city’s demographics continue to change — and income disparities widen — we’ve seen an increase in applicants from all income levels. Without a preference in place for the most vulnerable students, the random lottery has meant that many end up on the waiting list rather than in our classrooms.

We knew a deliberate, bold and systemic change was necessary to give underserved students a shot at attending our school. So, a year after opening our doors, in the fall of 2016, we asked permission to revise our lottery process to guarantee a minimum of 33 percent of open seats for these children. This is something no other public school in San Francisco does.

We had to ask permission from the state because our charter was initially denied by the San Francisco Unified School District, though it was subsequently unanimously approved by the State Board of Education. But our request to revise our lottery process was denied. We tried, and were denied, again in 2017. And again in 2019.

We made this request for a fourth time, as part of our recent charter renewal process, and came to an agreement that reserves a minimum of 50 percent of our enrollment for low-income students, making The New School of San Francisco the only public school in the district with an explicit preference in its lottery and a minimum number of seats guaranteed for these vulnerable kids.

Why is this important? There was criticism at our renewal hearing, and in subsequent statements by some opposed to our renewal, that our student body does not resemble the overall demographic makeup of children who attend San Francisco public schools.

Yet the hard truth is there is no public school in San Francisco whose demographic makeup comes meaningfully close to the demographics of the district as a whole. The �徱���ٰ�������’s public school lottery system has long advantaged well-resourced families and, combined with the private-school-style selective admissions employed by a number of district-run schools, has created an increasingly segregated public education system where options for students from historically underserved communities are incredibly limited.

Systemic change, like the one we sought for more than three years, is necessary to improve educational opportunity for San Francisco children. But even when our school reaches its capacity of about 450 students in the next few years, we will be able to accommodate only a fraction of the underserved families who desperately need access to high-quality schools.

It is our hope that our systemic change can spark an honest conversation about the limits of hard work and good intentions when it comes to creating an integrated school system with equitable opportunities for all students. We’re proud to be the first public school to put this type of enrollment preference in place. It is our hope that all public school educators in our city will join the conversation and take bold action to upend the status quo.

Emily Bobel Kilduff and Ryan Chapman are the co-founders of The New School of San Francisco Charter School.