Yet-to-open elementary school’s future is uncertain as SFUSD plans closures

As the San Francisco Unified School District prepares to close school sites by fall 2025, the future of the still-under-construction Mission Bay School is uncertain.

SFUSD’s Bond Program Communications Director Kate Levitt shared concerns that Mission Bay could be among the schools on the chopping block while speaking at a Commission on Community Investment and Infrastructure meeting last week, at which district officials were asked to give updates on the project’s enrollment planning.

“Are we concerned that [Mission Bay] is one of the schools up for closure?” Levitt told commissioners. “Absolutely. Districtwide, there’s a lot of concern around the impact this will have.”

Funded by a 2016 voter-approved bond, construction at the school is set to be completed in time for 550 students in transitional kindergarten through fifth grade to attend classes at the 2.5-acre site beginning in August 2025.

The project, a rare opportunity for the district to build a school from the ground up, aimed to meet an influx of new students due to housing growth in the area, according to a 2020 demographic report commissioned by SFUSD and the district’s facilities master plan.

But those reports, cited multiple times throughout the project’s timeline, contained inaccurate information on enrollment projections. District officials have recently pivoted to saying that enrollment is likely to decrease over the next several years, a phenomenon affecting many public-school districts in the state.

Decreasing enrollment and financial mismanagement forced the California Department of Education in May to step in and provide fiscal oversight for the district, necessitating school closures, mergers and relocations by the 2025-26 academic year.

Levitt said that district officials are waiting for SFUSD to decide what schools will close or merge as it faces a $420 million deficit next year. Those decisions will affect how many students can be admitted to the new Mission Bay elementary school and how many employees the district will hire there, she said.

“Some of those decisions are really dependent on the resource-alignment process,” or the criteria for how the district will consolidate school sites, Levitt said. Superintendent Matt Wayne is expected to discuss school closure decisions at a Board of Education meeting Tuesday.

The Commission on Community Investment and Infrastructure holds land use, development and design approval authority for The City’s major land development projects, including Mission Bay, Hunters Point Shipyard and Transbay. Its chair, Bivett Brackett, said concerns remain over inaccurate data provided by the district.

“If you’re saying you’re closing schools throughout The City because there aren’t enough students, and you’re building a school based on inaccurate data that says enrollment is going up, we have a problem here,” she said.

The last report SFUSD gave the committee regarding updates on the Mission Bay school was in 2022. Brackett said the basis for building the new school at the time was its possible enrollment, but “being that there are three different numbers submitted to three different public entities, that’s very concerning,” she said.

“The report sent to [the commission] was categorically different from the report used in the master facilities plan, which is being used as the underlying basis for the [2016] bond, as was the report sent to the [California Department of Education],” Brackett said. “All three numbers for enrollment were absolutely different.”

That follows the greater conversation of school closures, she said.

“There have been inaccuracies with the district’s budget, as well as information it shares with public entities, which causes greater concern for this project,” Brackett said. “For us to start on a project for students who may not even be there, that’s a concern for the public — and especially this commission — that we aren’t getting accurate information from SFUSD.”

It also leaves the future of SFUSD’s upcoming $790 million bond measure, which the district plans to present to voters in November, hanging in the balance. The facilities master plan — which contained the inaccurate enrollment numbers at the onset — dictates where 2024 bond funds will be directed and addresses the need for mechanical, electrical, plumbing and air-ventilation systems in all schools, as well as other major facility repairs.

Levitt said that the state’s fiscal oversight of SFUSD won’t affect bond expenditures, including the Mission Bay School project.

“Bond funding is restricted and the oversight that the state has is specific to the school’s operating budget,” she said. “Bonds have a separate audit and oversight process, and additional accountability measures. The funding for Mission Bay School is secured. [Funding from the 2016 bond] will be sufficient to complete the school.”

Levitt said that, despite changes in enrollment reports, “the district still has a commitment to providing access to a school within every neighborhood and community.”

“There has been a lot of development and growth in that neighborhood, so SFUSD’s commitment is to provide a school [for those students],” she said.