The San Francisco public school district has long encouraged parents to join advisory groups and share input on a wide range of matters, including special education, the well-being of students of color, and nitty-gritty budget details.
But in recent years, those groups have become more grist for an ever-churning political mill, often exposing rifts along racial and other lines of identity. In 2021, the school board rejected the main parent council’s nomination of a white gay father, and last year Chinese-American families accused the same council of exclusion. In both instances there were open seats that needed to be filled.
There’s now an effort underway to reform the parent groups — San Francisco has more than any other school district in the state — and it could add more debate to a volatile situation.
With teachers and other staff threatening a strike, the district recently began a yearlong effort to rethink its $1 billion-plus budget, which might result in school closures. The district has also pledged to reform elementary school reading and middle school math, as well as take a long look at high school student outcomes and admissions — all spurred by troubling gaps in performance between racial and ethnic groups.
Meanwhile, teachers and other staff, frustrated with work conditions and an 18-month-long payroll fiasco, could soon strike if contract talks don’t go their way.
The problem of the parent advisory groups touches nearly all these issues, not least of which is the budget. SFUSD faces deficits as student enrollment, which has dropped below 50,000, declines and costs keep rising. (In June the district estimated a deficit of $36 million in 2024–25.)
The parent committees cost money. But they’re also what many see as a crucial platform to advocate for various student groups. One example is support for LGBTQ+ students, especially in an era of growing hostility toward them and their families across the country.
“If we want to improve student outcomes, we have to protect our students here in our district and their families, so how can we not afford it?” board commissioner Alida Fisher told The Frisc. “Budgets are value statements. We have to prioritize funding what matters to us the most.”
The district’s LGBTQ+ commitment has earned it praise — something in short supply the past few years — but many feel the support can’t be fulfilled without a parent advisory group for these families. A QTPAC (queer and transgender) was proposed in 2021, with the remit of recommending policies to support LGBTQ+ students and parents. (A few suggestions have been floated already, including curriculum additions and new gender-neutral bathroom signage.)
The QTPAC was approved by the pre-recall school board in 2022, but it hasn’t been funded. “There’s broad agreement that this is really important,” board commissioner Matt Alexander said at a Feb. 3, 2022 board meeting, while acknowledging “questions around the budget and the deficit [where] there are tough decisions for the district and board to make.”
Last year, SFUSD’s former chief financial officer estimated the QTPAC would incur an initial cost of approximately $480,000 and about $220,000 annually thereafter. This included pay for a full-time staff member, potentially an attorney to ensure compliance with state laws on gender options, and the bathroom changes.
Back with the PAC
Budget worries are greater than ever, but a year later, the QTPAC is back on the table. It’s part of a proposal that SFUSD Superintendent Matt Wayne and staff unveiled Sept. 12. It also includes new advisory groups for Latinx and Asian families, along with big changes to the district’s main parent group, simply known as the Parent Advisory Council, or PAC — which is currently inactive.
Just before summer break, the school board ordered Wayne to produce the recommendations — and in light of recent controversies, to make sure the changes comply with state and federal rules that govern family engagement.
The board will vote on a final plan, but no one can say when, and the shape of it could change. For now, here’s some of what the superintendent wants:
- PACs must comply with California education code to ensure they include parents of students who are low income, English language learners, foster youth, and have disabilities.
- Create a clear and standardized process for the PACs, including member selection, attendance and participation expectations, and staff support. (Each PAC has had its own application and nomination process.)
- Establish three more parent advisory bodies — queer/transgender, Latinx, and Asian American — to bring the total number to 17.
- Focus the main PAC on SFUSD’s three-year Local Control and Accountability Plan process, which every California school district must use to show they’re spending the state’s funding, which makes up a bulk of their budgets, to meet state priorities.
Fisher will be a key vote. Before her upset election last fall, she was a member of parent committees for African American families and special education. She remains on both (without voting power), but as a board member she continues to stump for parent input to be taken seriously.
“You shouldn’t have to join an advisory committee or come to a board meeting to have your voice heard as a parent,” Fisher said at the Sept. 12 board meeting. “We’re hearing over and over again that within this mechanism [PACs] that they don’t trust us, they don’t feel engaged, and they feel like we’re not listening.”
At the same meeting, some board members and commenters complained the district’s recommendations weren’t detailed enough. SFUSD head of staff Marin Trujillo, one of the superintendent’s deputies, noted the tension between community input and moving a process forward. By presenting only an outline, Trujillo said, “we have also heard, ‘You need to give us something to chew on,’ but if we created a plan, then we hear [complaints that] ‘you did it for us.’”https://x.com/TheFrisc/status/1701811315793436701?s=20
Board president Kevine Boggess told The Frisc that it is up to Wayne and staff to decide whether to put parent recommendations in action or not. The school board serves as a listening ear and can give advice to the superintendent.
What’s missing
The district’s recommendations leave out a lot of details, including one that gets to the heart of the recent controversies: How parents are chosen for the committees. The proposal calls for an improved nomination process but goes no further. On Sept. 12, Wayne said he would like the new process to involve parents choosing other parents. Since then, SFUSD spokesperson Laura Dudnick told The Frisc that “staff have been developing a process to be inclusive of the SFUSD community. We don’t have updates to share at this moment, but we will keep the community informed as new updates are available.”
Meredith Dodson, executive director of SF Parent Coalition, says it’s best to keep the school board out of the process to avoid conflict, otherwise “the school board is appointing [people] whose voices they want to listen to.”
Dodson added that PAC members should also be free of political affiliations with board members or educational movements.
The proposal would end the practice of PACs presenting reports at school board meetings. (The main PAC reports monthly, and the others once or twice a year.) Instead, they would report directly to the superintendent. But Dudnick did not clarify the frequency of report sharing or how often the superintendent would meet with PACs.
“Families are concerned because if regular reports go to the superintendent, it removes one of the advisory councils’ roles, which is the ability to be critical of the school district and the superintendent’s work,” Rick Oculto, education program manager for Our Family Coalition, told The Frisc. “This would mean that the same people who are being critiqued would be in charge of the group doing the critiquing.”
Wayne’s proposal also lacks details on the shift to making LCAP a priority for the main PAC. Despite the uncertainty, the next LCAP cycle is about to begin, with applications to join the LCAP advisory committee open until Oct. 27. The process to create the LCAP plan is supposed to convene a wide range of people with a stake in the district, including administrators and educators, parents, and community advocates.
Both Fisher and Boggess said the superintendent had not briefed them on funding — for example, whether each body would receive a staff member to help with administrative tasks, communications, and report writing.
Boggess seemed cautiously optimistic but acknowledged he wants more details. “The proposal shows a commitment to be inclusive of communities and fulfill the existing promises that the district has created, which I think is a big priority for us at this moment,” he said. “We need to figure out more details, as we haven’t had an active Parent Advisory Council for a while now, which is a negative for what we’re trying to accomplish.”
