Why SFUSD will weigh equity above all when closing schools

San Francisco public-school officials vowed Tuesday to avoid repeating the mistakes of the mid-2000s and prevent forthcoming school closures and mergers from primarily affecting sites that mainly serve Black and brown families.

Members of the San Francisco Board of Education said equity and inclusion will be weighed above all else when the San Francisco Unified School District decides which locations to close or consolidate next year.

Closures in 2005 and 2006 had a disproportionate effect on marginalized groups and “sped along the process of African Americans leaving The City ,” said Commissioner Mark Sanchez, who served on the school board during that time.

About 8% of San Francisco’s population was Black in the 2000 Census, compared to about 5% in 2020.

“That’s why we’re talking a lot about equity and access,” he said. “We owe it to everyone in this city to have a process that doesn’t affect Black and brown kids, and families the way it did in the early 2000s.”

SFUSD has not yet released a list of potentially affected schools, but Sanchez said “the proof will be in the pudding” once that list is finalized.

To decide which schools will close, merge or relocate, Superintendent Matt Wayne said Tuesday that every school site will be given a composite score based on equity, excellence and effective use of resources. The equity criteria consider the accessibility of a school and its programs, as well as whether the school serves a student population that is historically marginalized or socioeconomically disadvantaged.

“If the recommendations [for closures and mergers] are more significantly impacting our African American and Latino students ... I get a sense from this board that that will not be acceptable,” Wayne said.

Academic excellence and how school sites effectively use funding and resources will separately amount to 25% of the full composite score, while equity will be weighed more heavily at 50%.

Wayne said the weighted system came after discussions with the district’s District Advisory Committee, composed of SFUSD educators and parents. Members requested that equity be considered foremost.

District officials said Stanford University researchers will conduct a third-party equity audit before final decisions around closures and mergers are made.

Wayne said that, throughout this decision-making process, the district will learn from its “past mistakes.”

In 2006, the Board of Education voted to close and merge more than a dozen public schools to save money that the district lost due to declining enrollment. At that time, schools chosen for closure had fewer than 250 students and used less than 75% of their building capacities. The decisions included the closure of John Swett Elementary and relocations of Newcomer High School and Leadership High School.

In 2005, the board closed three schools in the Western Addition neighborhood, which served mostly African American and Latino students.

“We closed a lot of schools in a short period of time,” Sanchez, who tried to delay the school-closures vote at the time, said Tuesday.

Virginia Marshall, education chair for the San Francisco NAACP, said the local chapter “vehemently” opposes school closures and mergers.

More than a dozen June Jordan School for Equity parents and students voiced concerns at Tuesday’s board meeting that their school is being considered for closure because of its small size.

June Jordan is a high school of less than 300 students on the edge of McLaren Park that predominantly serves San Francisco’s working-class communities of color.

But Wayne said the decision-making process and community engagement that will follow is “about making sure that our resources are being used to fulfill our commitments to equity and excellence.”

“We need to have fewer, but better schools,” he said.