Where did it go wrong? Here's how San Francisco Unified's issues led to school closures

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — The San Francisco Unified School District announced Tuesday which schools will have to close due to budget concerns. Now, many are asking at what point did things begin to unravel for a district that was once financially stable.

To understand the chaos throughout San Francisco’s School District, let’s start with the central office, the people who run the day-to-day business operation. At a recent Board of Supervisors meeting information was given on how things are not functioning efficiently.

SFUSD releases list of schools that will potentially close

“All of those systems, they are right now unfortunately run by one or two senior people. They don’t have enough staff there,” said Maria Su, who is on the School Stabilization Team. Su was recently appointed by Mayor London Breed to lead a city team that would help stabilize things at the district.

What we do know is that during the pandemic, some senior staff left or retired.

Susan Saunders, a principal who retired in June 202, told us some of the district’s problems stem from what many refer to as a disconnect between the schools and the central office.

“I think it’s just trust and I think it’s still there, that lack of trust is still there. I think what people at the school sites are asking for is, make us part of the conversation too. Let’s be solution-oriented and work together,” said Saunders.

An example is the lack of information when the district chose to delay the announcement of school closures.

“I think we need to do a better job of explaining our budget crisis and then why school closures fit into our picture of addressing the budget crisis,” said SFUSD Superintendent Dr. Matt Wayne.

This budget crisis is due, in part, by some families deciding to leave San Francisco Public Schools through the years, meaning schools continue to miss out on millions of dollars from the state.

“We wouldn’t be in this financial crisis if we hadn’t lost so many students. Now, I think a lot of that has to do, as a parent who went through this process, with how long it took to reopen schools after COVID,” said San Francisco Supervisor Hillary Ronen during a recent meeting.

Current Superintendent Matt Wayne was not there at the time, Vincent Matthews was.

Instead of getting schools to reopen safely, some on the school board were focused on other matters they considered important like trying unsuccessfully to rename schools and tearing down historic murals that some deemed insensitive.

Former school board commissioner Gabriela Lopez was one of the school board members eventfully recalled.

SF mayor’s office steps in to help as school district faces $400M budget deficit, closures

“If I could have done anything to make that faster to improve the timeline so that we could ensure schools are safe, I would have but because it was the pandemic and there’s such a bureaucratic process, it’s difficult to make those moves and then we balanced that with the other discussions that were top of mind for a lot of people,” said Lopez.

That delay also hurt the recruitment of teachers, adding to the shortage that already existed.

A San Francisco civil grand jury found that according to 2020-2021 data, “SFUSD does not employ an adequate number of credentialed teachers to afford a quality education to all San Francisco students.” Only 77 percent were credentialed.

Karen Kennard was the foreperson of that grand jury.

“We compared it with all of the Bay Area school districts and the Bay Area district generally have about 82 percent, clean credentialed teachers so San Francisco was lagging behind all of the other school district in the Bay Area except for Alameda,” said Kennard.

Another major revelation, SFUSD administrators were initially tight lipped.

“Their administrators dodged us, refused to return phone calls, refused to return emails and we finally had to go to get the city attorney involved,” said Kennard.

Then came a flawed payroll system that cost the district $35 million and another $20 million to implement a new one which should be up and running by July 2025.

And now the latest example of a mismanaged system is an additional $30 million that was needed to hire more special education teachers for this year. $30 million that was not initially in the budget.

A crisis, that even the district admits, was created by the central office.

“Principals were trying to hire these positions and the budget money was not there,” said School Board President Matt Alexander.

As a result, when schools started last August, the district could not hire the extra special education teachers needed because the funds were not in the budget.

“We failed our students at the beginning of the year,” said Superintendent Wayne to member of the Board of Supervisors.

SFUSD facing 120 teacher vacancies amid looming school closures

The district has since found the money to hire some special education teachers using one time funds, but there are still vacant positions.

Supervisor Ahsha Safai has asked the city controller to investigate the matter.

“We need to know who made that decision and who broke the law on behalf of the school district because there needs to be accountability,” said Safai.

Now, also unsettling is the city’s proposal to use $8.4 million left over from the Student Success Fund, to begin stabilizing the district.

That did not sit well with some members of the Board of Supervisors.

“That money is supposed to be used to get students achieving academically and healthy in their minds, body and spirit and the precedent that that is setting, is scaring the life out of me,” said Supervisor Ronen.

But Su suggested that that money would go toward hiring much-needed paraprofessionals and helping families whose schools will be closing.

“Could we use some of these dollars to support schools and young people, children and families who are going to transition from a closed school to a welcoming school. I feel all of these things fall within the scope of the student success fund,” said Su.

The question now is how can families ever trust the district to finally get things right?

“We’re working incredibly hard to rebuild the trust with our community. So I think we’re doing what we can to lay out, here is the situation we’re facing and let’s work through it together,” said Dr. Wayne.

“And more importantly how do we never get to this place ever again,” said Su.