Next week, the San Francisco school board will vote on the city’s first attempt since 2018 to open a charter school.
The idea for Dragon Gate Academy comes from a group of parents fed up with the district’s limited Mandarin-language immersion offerings. They say they can open the K-8 school next fall and serve 154 students in the first year, even though they don’t yet have a site, then grow to nearly 400 students by the fifth year.
Like other San Francisco Unified School District schools, charters are public and tuition-free. The district currently has 13. Charters have more flexibility to create academic programs and don’t have to hire union staff, one reason the teachers union and others deeply oppose them.
The Dragon Gate effort suffered a blow last week, however. San Francisco Unified School District staff issued a report listing problems with the proposal. It recommended that the school board vote no.
Dragon Gate vowed to appeal to the state if rejected by the board. But at an appearance Thursday in front of SFUSD headquarters, its leader Brian Hollinger, a parent of kids in the district’s current Mandarin program, didn’t go as far. He suggested the board members expected to vote no might vote yes.
Whatever the outcome Tuesday, SFUSD will find itself under even more pressure. The district only last year stabilized a long-term enrollment decline.
Update, 8/26/25: The school board voted unanimously against Dragon Gate. Hollinger turned down the opportunity to present at the board meeting but answered questions from board members.
In July, soon after the Dragon Gate backers unveiled their idea, the school district made a surprise announcement: it too would start up a Mandarin K-8 immersion school in 2027. They have $60,000 from a private donor to pay for a consultant, and they’ve pledged more recruitment and training to ensure there’s enough Mandarin-language teachers to staff the school.
“People are glad that [Dragon Gate] has gotten the ball rolling,” Chinese Parent Advisory Council member Sam Cheng told The Frisc. “Both efforts are really, really preliminary.” (The council, which is unaffiliated with SFUSD, has not taken a position on the charter proposal.)
Just like Dragon Gate, SFUSD doesn’t have a site yet. It also hasn’t explained how it will plan for a new school and cut $59 million from its district-wide budget at the same time. In a school district that’s 32 percent Asian, its leaders have now raised expectations that, one way or another, it will meet a growing demand.
‘How excited people are’
SFUSD’s K-8 Mandarin immersion program has room for 560 students in two elementary schools, Starr King and Jose Ortega, and Aptos Middle School. Last spring, there were 134 applications for Starr King’s kindergarten spots and 248 applications for Jose Ortega. As of this week, there were 14 and 82 students on their wait lists, respectively. Aptos had 63 applications for 6th grade spots and does not have a wait list.
Cathay Bi, who has two kids in SFUSD’s Mandarin immersion, says she frequently hears from parents struggling to get a seat for their kids. In May 2024, she and other parents and advocates signed an open letter to SFUSD leadership to grow the program, and to increase teacher stability at Aptos to keep more middle schoolers in the district.
“I think the fact that there’s a charter request as well reflects how excited people are for Mandarin immersion,” Bi told The Frisc. She wants SFUSD to give more support to its existing programs, but “whether it’s a charter or not,” she’s skeptical that “standing up a school can be done overnight.”
It’s just someone’s opinion.
brian hollinger, lead petitioner for dragon gate academy, responding to sfusd’s report that it the charter school would have adverse fiscal impact on the district.
SFUSD will start its own school by hiring Liana Szeto, who was the founding principal of the district’s groundbreaking Alice Fong Yu Alternative School. It was the country’s first Chinese immersion public school. Szeto recently retired after 30 years there. She is returning to SFUSD as a consultant.
Her salary is coming from an anonymous benefactor, who has pledged $60,000, according to district spokesperson Katrina Kincade. But no other funding or budget numbers have emerged.
Even in normal times, that would be notable. But SFUSD is contending with an ongoing budget crisis. Superintendent Maria Su, hired during a crisis nearly a year ago, led negotiations to cut $114 million of its $1.3 billion budget for this school year. But the deficit for 2026-27, which the district said last spring would be about $13 million, has since grown to $59 million. There’s also uncertainty over federal funding as the Trump administration moves to dissolve the Department of Education. It threatened to hold back funds over the summer but backed down, at least temporarily.
Immersion language programs need teachers with special skill sets. San Francisco already has a teacher shortage. The district has said for the new Mandarin school it would partner with San Francisco State University, the Association of Asian American Administrators, and the Association of Chinese Teachers to boost recruitment and teacher certification and training programs to grow the pool of bilingual educators.
Economic boon or burden?
Dragon Gate’s Hollinger said the charter school would provide continuity and keep families from leaving SFUSD. With the district’s budget struggles, he and his allies say with their school, families on the fence would end up staying in the district, growing its enrollment, all while limiting the impact on non-charter schools.
Dragon Gate estimates it would need about $1.7 million to operate in the first year, in addition to some pre-opening costs, but would bring in $2.2 million, mostly through per-pupil state funding, which is the main way public schools fill out their budget.
“We are approaching this with a solution to this demand, which is unmet by the district,” Hollinger said. “This [charter] would not impact the finances in a meaningful way. It’s just someone’s opinion.”
The SFUSD staff report says Dragon Gate hasn’t sufficiently supported its claim of economic benefit to the district. At the heart of the dueling estimates are different assumptions: Would Dragon Gate attract kids who would otherwise go to private school or leave SF; or would it cannibalize from SFUSD’s noncharter schools?
The district estimates it would lose $17 million in the first five years if Dragon Gate meets its enrollment goals. (The report also said there could be a loss of supplemental grants, but it didn’t include them in the estimate.) The district is “not in a position to absorb the fiscal impacts of a new charter school,” the report says.
SFUSD also noted that Dragon Gate’s plan fell short in its plans for English learners and students with disabilities. For example, the charter said it would cap special education students at 11 percent of the population; SFUSD’s special education students make up 14 percent of the district.
The report also said Dragon Gate’s goal to only have about 50 percent of its teachers credentialed conflicts with state education code. (Dragon Gate would need to apply for credential waivers but doesn’t say how it would do so.)
Bi and Cheng share concerns about staffing, given the current issues with having credentialed staff. If higher-income families who could afford private school are Dragon Gate’s target demographic, low-income families who rely on SFUSD could lose out, Cheng said, which makes CPAC “broadly skeptical.”
“There’s merit to the argument that they would siphon [teachers] from the district,” Cheng said.
Asked yesterday about the report’s criticism, Hollinger said “it wasn’t appropriate” to comment and that he and his allies would make their case before the board next week.
The proposals have cast attention on not just Mandarin offerings, but the district’s shrinking language programs as a whole in recent years, including Cantonese. This year, nine language pathway programs were converted to combination classes, the district confirmed.
Cheng hopes that the district follows through on its plan and didn’t just announce it to placate people.
Geri Almanza, United Educators of San Francisco’s treasurer and a longtime bilingual teacher, acknowledges that the district needs better course planning from elementary to middle school in its special language programs. Rethinking school locations would help too. But the union is firmly against new charter schools. “If you’re going to decide to invest in these bilingual programs,” said Almanza, “it should be a real investment.”
The union asks all Board of Education candidates to pledge to fight against charter schools. Of the seven board members, four of them had signed the pledge as of April 2024, enough to vote down the Dragon Gate petition. When asked today if he’s worried about Tuesday’s vote, Hollinger said, “we’ll see. Maybe they’ll vote yes.”
