According to a recent report, officials in San Francisco’s public school system have been quietly preparing a significant plan to close schools, a move that even caught the city’s school board by surprise.
The San Francisco Unified School District is considering shutting down an unspecified number of schools by the year 2030. This decision aims to address approximately 14,000 vacant seats resulting from a steady decline in student enrollment. Last month, the district shared this information with parents through a memo.
Similar to other urban school districts throughout California and the nation, San Francisco has experienced ongoing decreases in public school enrollment. This trend is attributed to factors such as lower birth rates and demographic shifts influenced by increasing living costs, population migration, and other socioeconomic changes.
Superintendent Maria Su is slated to reveal the details and schedule for these school closures at tomorrow’s school board meeting. However, board members expressed frustration to a local news outlet, upset that the news was leaked to a newspaper before they were informed.
The impending closures were disclosed by Su in an article by Jill Tucker, a veteran education journalist, published in the San Francisco Chronicle nearly two weeks ago.
Su expressed confidence in the necessity of the plan, stating to the Chronicle, “We are ready for this. And it’s about time. We’ve been trying to do this for many years now.”
The article states that Su spent the past 18 months getting the district ready for closures, but it doesn’t say why she’s only gone public with the plan recently, or why she gave the news to the paper before she shared it with the board.
Board members considered the decision to release the timeline to the public before the board a “slap in the face,” and wondered if it was an intentional move, The San Francisco Standard reported.
More districts in California and across the country have moved to close schools in recent years as enrollment shortfalls and budget deficits threaten school operations. School closures are often unpopular and have prompted protests and even hunger strikes.
But growing numbers of empty seats have rendered closures an unavoidable challenge to be faced by major California cities including San Francisco, Oakland and Los Angeles.
It’s not easy. A 2024 plan to shutter under enrolled schools in San Francisco backfired when intense backlash force the district to halted the plans, leading to the resignation of Superintendent Matt Wayne.
Su told the Chronicle this time will be different.
“We’ve spent the last 18 months trying to stabilize the district and thankfully we have,” she said.
San Francisco’s 120-school district has already dished out a massive serving of hell for the city’s parents this year when the city’s schoolteachers closed the district’s schools for four days straight in the district’s first strike in half a century.
“The reality of declining enrollment is happening across the state and across the country,” Su told the paper. “San Francisco is not immune to it.”
