Before Kim’s Aug. 2024 appointment to the board, he helped run SFUSD’s school closure initiative. It was then shelved in Oct. 2024. He also spent 11 years as a teacher and administrator at KIPP NorCal, a charter school group, then as a director at KIPP’s national foundation. His endorsements include SF Parents Coalition, Mayor Daniel Lurie, and state Sen. Scott Weiner. Kim has a PhD in education.
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This interview is based on a live conversation and questions submitted via email. It has been edited and condensed for clarity and brevity. Asterisks indicate links that candidates provided.
SFUSD just pushed back its goals for academic improvement to October 2028. It also acknowledges stalled progress for reading and math. What is working and not working?
What’s working: we’ve seen real gains where we’ve made targeted, sustained investments. We have emerging data on the impact of [teacher] coaching and shared curricula.
We’ve also worked hard to protect classroom teachers through our budget reductions, and that stability matters. We have to ensure a sustainable workload so that they stay in our district. In-school factors like coaching impact that, in addition to things like salary, affordability, and housing.
As a board, we prompted the superintendent and her team to search for and recommend curricula. I also established the Ad Hoc Committee on Progress Monitoring last year. Now, how are we implementing resources we just invested in? Are we providing time and a schedule for teachers to internalize curricula and feel empowered, and enough minutes for students to engage with it?
What’s not working: the safety net that ensures struggling students get the right intervention at the right time is not yet fully implemented districtwide. We also need to be more consistent in implementing high-quality instructional material into every classroom, backed by coaching. Without those two things working together, progress will continue to stall.
Like all public school districts, SFUSD’s budget is tied to enrollment and attendance, both of which have been dropping for decades. How can SFUSD — and specifically the board — boost them?
In the short term, we have to get better at telling our story. SFUSD has extraordinary programs — language immersion, City College dual-enrollment, and more — that families simply don’t know about. Improving how we communicate with prospective families, starting with a more reliable and transparent enrollment experience, is something we can act on now.
What blocks people from knowing about these programs?
We’ve been talking about ways to improve community engagement for years. I established the Ad Hoc Committee on Public Engagement to best understand the role of the board. But the district should be doing that too.
Our district’s overall decrease in enrollment is somewhat offset by increases in applications in TK [transitional kindergarten]. But the drop off is [at] the entry of middle school and high school. To me that means that you have been in the system, and then you leave.
We have programs in high demand. Our Korean immersion is one of the oldest on the West Coast. There’s active demand for Mandarin immersion. The question is, are we able to meet that demand?
Safety, stability, and outcomes have to be real, not just promised. The board’s role is to hold the superintendent accountable. If we can get those right, I am confident enrollment will follow.
Last year, I worked with the superintendent and board to develop a matrix to set the major decisions that we are going to request the superintendent do: school reorganization and enrollment policy. We’ve done our part by saying these are major decisions. Staff and the superintendent now need to produce some sort of plan. We have yet to see that.
Where do school closures fit into the enrollment decline?
As a former teacher, I know that schools aren’t just buildings: they’re the heart of a neighborhood. Closing one sends ripples through a community that last for years.
The conditions haven’t changed. We have too many vacant seats across the city, and that imbalance costs us resources we could be using on teachers and programs. Avoiding that reality doesn’t make it go away, it just means fewer resources for the kids who are here.
I’m committed to doing this right, if and when we do it. That means genuine community engagement, transparent data, and an honest accounting of the tradeoffs. Closures without a compelling vision for what comes next will only accelerate the enrollment decline they’re meant to address.
Your experience running the district’s closure process in 2024 is important here.
One quick correction: I served in the Office of the Superintendent as executive director of school strategy and coherence from January 2024 to August 2024. I was then appointed [to the board] in August 2024, and was not on staff when the final list was developed. While I worked on the team planning our strategic efforts, I wasn’t running it — there were two staff members who were leading the portfolio initiative in 2024.
Editor’s note: When Kim joined the board, a City Hall press release said he had “provided leadership” to the closure effort; reports at the time, including ours, said he was hired to oversee or run the process. Kim did not respond to questions about what he would do differently now.
Some of your competitors believe the district is headed toward privatization, spurred by your charter school background. What’s your response?
I came to California by way of Teach for America, who happened to place me in a charter school. I do not support the expansion of new charter schools in San Francisco. Across our district, less than 12 percent of our students are in charter schools.
Editor’s note: According to state data, 12.2 percent of SFUSD students are in charter schools.
State funding, which accounts for 68 percent of the district’s budget, isn’t keeping up with costs. How can the board address this?
I recently reached out to [other] Bay Area school board members to send a direct message to Sacramento: the way California funds its schools is fundamentally broken.
The current system ties funding to daily attendance rather than enrollment, which means every absent student costs us money even though our costs don’t go down when a child stays home. Meanwhile, the governor’s proposed cost-of-living adjustment doesn’t come close to covering what we spend on teachers, benefits, transportation, and special education.
Locally, we have to be relentless about leveraging every available dollar: grants, philanthropic partnerships, and our community schools model. But the long game is Sacramento. Sustainable schools require sustainable funding. Fighting for that is part of my job.
School sites serving immigrants say they’re being systematically defunded. Some families and educators allege the enrollment office is routing them away from these schools. What is your response to them?
My parents came to this country trusting that American institutions would give their children a fair shot. That trust is sacred, and it is my job to make sure SFUSD honors it.
If families are being routed away from programs they have a right to access, that is unacceptable, and I want to know about it. The enrollment office exists to connect families to our schools, not to create barriers.
But how our budgeting and funding support newcomer students would be a question for the superintendent. We’re having ongoing conversations about resource allocation, but I don’t have access to the systems, processes, or databases internal to the district. I have asked. As board president, I continue to lift up these kinds of concerns.
More broadly, SFUSD is a sanctuary district. We do not cooperate with federal immigration enforcement, we do not require families to disclose information they want to hold private, and we do everything in our power to make every family feel safe walking through our doors. In this political climate, that commitment requires active vigilance, not passive reassurance.
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