SF Board of Education Halts Decision on School Closings

by Jacob Schneider, 2006-01-13

Bowing to overwhelming public pressure, the San Francisco Board of Education voted last night to put off a controversial decision on school closures as city leaders scramble to avoid displacing thousands of students next year. At issue was a proposal to close five schools and merge or relocate nearly two dozen others to balance the San Francisco Unified School District budget. The schools were selected because of low enrollment or proximity to other schools.

Last year, San Francisco schools lost around 1,000 students, a loss of $5 million in funding. Thursday evening’s special meeting at Everett Middle School was to be the last venue for schools to state their case before the board made a final decision in time for new parents to begin selecting schools in next year’s lottery.

The board’s decision followed more than five hours of emotional testimony from opponents of various aspects of the consolidation plan. Much of the testimony from parents, teachers, and students focused on statistics and anecdotes reflecting what students and parents continue to assert are quality schools. The raucous, standing room-only crowd employed a plethora of creative methods to implore the board to save their programs, including colorful signs, t-shirts, multi-lingual presentations, and local celebrities.

The meeting came to a standstill for several minutes when San Francisco Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, a vocal opponent of school closures, came to the podium with an offer from the Board of Supervisors of a loan to allow the school district to take more time to consider its options.

“We are orphaning schools on the east side,” he said, adding that a condition of the loan is that the district never again undergoes such a widespread school consolidation process. The large crowd responded well to his speech, delaying the meeting with a cheer of “Save our schools!”

Angry parents urged the board members to consider the impact of closures on students.

“The families I work with can’t drive their kids across town,” said Star Miles, a community liaison at Bayview/Hunter’s Points’ Malcolm X Academy. “Tardies will turn into absences. By middle school, it’s juvenile hall records you’ll be measuring instead of test scores.”

Rev. Amos Brown, president of the San Francisco chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People said that the proposal violates the San Francisco schools’ integration process.

“We have an unfinished agenda,” Brown said. “For us to have a closure of schools that disproportionately impacts one ethnic group does not represent inclusion.”

Other concerns ranged from safety to accommodating special programs. Immigrant students from Newcomer High School said that they would not feel safe if their school moved to the gang-ridden Mission as proposed. In addition, Tania Weissman, a special education teacher at George Peabody Elementary School—one of the schools on the chopping block—said that disruptions hurt her students.

“Our program was moved just four years ago,” she said.

Community members also derided the board for failing to provide support to failing schools.

“Why are we going through this year after year?” asked Eva Cleverson, a parent at Rosa Parks Elementary School, which may merge with another elementary school Rosa Parks also was considered for consolidation last year. “When a school survives the list, you have to give it time to improve.”

Karen Shorofsky, who came to the meeting to support the Edison Charter Academy, of which she’s a neighbor, said that the SFUSD has turned into an unmanageable bureaucracy. When she tried to enroll her daughter in San Francisco schools last year, she wasn’t placed in any elementary school, so Sharofsky signed her up for a private school.

“That’s for families with resources,” she said. “I can only imagine what it must be like to be stuck in the system.”