San Francisco public school officials’ sneaky new plan for massive school closures was hidden even from the district’s furious school board, according to a new report.
The San Francisco Unified School District plans to close an unidentified number of schools by 2030 to deal with some 14,000 empty seats in the rapidly shrinking district, according to a memo sent to parents last month.
Like other urban districts in California and across the country, the City by the Bay has seen years of enrollment declines in public schools which reflect declining birth rates and other demographic changes blamed on rising prices, migratory shifts and more.
Superintendent Maria Su is expected to announce the outline and timeline for the school closures tomorrow at the district’s school board meeting, but members of the board told a local publication they’re peeved a newspaper caught wind of the story before they did.
Su broke the news of the upcoming closures in a San Francisco Chronicle story published nearly two weeks ago by longtime education reporter Jill Tucker.
“We are ready for this,” Su told the paper of her plan to close schools. “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.”
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