SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — San Francisco Unified School District students head back to school on Monday with around 120 teacher vacancies and a cloud of uncertainty looming.
“Overall, we’re stretching our resources too thin,” Matt Wayne, Superintendent of SFUSD said.
Superintendent Matt Wayne says because of declining enrollment, they have the capacity to serve an additional 14,000 students across their 102 schools.
“That means it’s harder to staff our schools and that schools would need to share a social worker rather than have one who’s there full time,” he said.
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That’s why the district is planning to close a number of their schools to better realign their resources.
While they haven’t said how many, they said the recommended list of schools will be released by September 18.
“Part of this will be changing our enrollment policy to also establish more neighborhood schools and we’re making sure that families will have a choice near where they live to send their students to schools and ultimately, it will mean more resources at each school by having fewer schools that their student will be able to take advantage of,” he said.
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Vanessa Marrero is executive director of the non-profit, Parents for Public Schools of San Francisco.
She says historically, when there are school closures, research shows there is a displacement of students of color.
“Specifically, in San Francisco, it would be students who are black, students who are within the Latino diaspora and then students who may have IEP’s or disabilities and students who are in foster care,” Marrero said.
In particular, she’s worried about schools in working class neighborhoods.
“The more working class and lower income communities are more on the Bayside and that side is where we’re concerned that there’s going to be extensive school closures,” she said. “That means that the morning meal goes away, the afternoon meal goes away, extended afterschool goes away.”
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The district heard those concerns and will be working with independent third-party researchers to do what’s called an “equity audit” on any portfolio scenario the district comes up with before anything is approved.
“We’re making sure as we develop our plan that we’re not disproportionately impacting any one community,” Wayne said.
The SFUSD school board is expected to vote on the recommended list of school closures by December 10.
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