The San Francisco Board of Education has gritted its teeth and voted for an austerity plan that will keep the state of California from potentially taking the reins of the city’s public school district, which is facing a $125 million deficit next year and perhaps deeper deficits in future years.
Yet the plan is a blueprint, not a done deal. Between now and June, when the final budget must be approved, the board is vowing to identify more cuts at the district’s burgeoning central office to ease the burden on school sites. There’s also a chance that California’s new budget, due in January, could bring a windfall.
“We hope and expect the funding outlook to improve,” said district deputy superintendent Myong Leigh. Onsite school programs currently slated for cuts would be first to be restored, he added.
The state’s representative, Elliott Duchon, warned last week that rejecting the detailed plan, which district staff began to roll out in early November, could trigger a takeover. But it seemed possible the board would defy him after two board members floated an alternative plan two weeks ago. (Duchon said the alternative would not be viable.)
No one denies the district needs to cut its budget; the disagreement is how. The district plan would cut $50 million from school site budgets, $40 million from central administration, and fill the gap with $35 million in revenues. The alternative plan, from board commissioner Matt Alexander, would leave schools untouched, cut $90 million from the central office, and use the same $35 million revenues.
Out in the cold
But as educators who favored Alexander’s plan rallied in the cold outside last night’s meeting, he withdrew the plan at the last minute. Board president Gabriela López was the only member of seven who did not vote for the district’s plan, after saying she felt “backed into a corner” by the takeover threat.
Yet even the board members who put together the 11th-hour alternative — the first public discussion of it was one week ago, and it contained only one slide of financial details — decided not to risk losing local control of nearly all district functions and decisions.
It’s a setback for a board that has been awash in controversy during the pandemic. It has pushed to rename schools (unsuccessfully) and to change the admissions policy of Lowell High School (improperly, according to a judge), all while students stayed home for a full year or more. Infighting also cost time and money after Alison Collins sued the district and her board colleagues (unsuccessfully) for removing her from the vice presidency — punishment for anti-Asian tweets she posted before she was elected. Collins, López, and board VP Fauugaa Moliga are up for recall in February.
The district will submit the plan to the state’s Department of Education, but it can be debated and adjusted through next spring; the board must approve a final budget for the 2022–2023 school year in mid-June. Before casting his vote for the district plan, board member Mark Sanchez said that, if left unchanged, it would be a “disaster.”
“We’re looking forward to a more rosy budget outlook from the state,” added Sanchez, who helped put together the alternative plan.
Alexander also said he would hold his nose and vote for the austerity plan with promises that in the new year, the board would try to make deeper cuts to central office staff (some of whom, he noted, were his friends). He was withdrawing his plan, “but not the concept.”
Even as a vote for the austerity plan looked inevitable, Duchon left the board tonight with another warning. San Francisco public schools are losing students. Enrollment, which is a key to state funding, has dropped nearly 15 percent to less than 50,000 students in five years, and the district needs to “align staffing at all levels,” not just in the central office, with that decline.
“If you have 400 kids and lose 100, you don’t need as many teachers,” whether through layoffs or attrition, Duchon said. He also pointed out that teachers might have to be moved around the district to rebalance school staffs.
Outside help
A parent advocate who has battled the school district to reopen schools was sympathetic with the push for more central cuts. “It’s hard to justify the size of the central office in light of the performance of the district,” said Surpryia Ray, who has kids at Jefferson Elementary and A.P. Giannini Middle School. “It’s neither reasonable nor fair that the school sites have to bear the brunt.”
But Ray supported the district plan, saying Alexander’s was not a viable alternative and called his maneuver “throwing a firebomb at the last moment.”
There were signs last week that the move was more smoke than fire. Board VP Moliga, who could have been a key swing vote, cautioned that people who might want to work with the board in the future were watching its behavior closely.
Just before he announced he would withdraw his plan last night, Alexander acknowledged that the board could have spent more time this year digging more deeply into SFUSD’s structural problems. He then wondered aloud if the district needs an outside consultant to identify how to make central office cuts. “It’s hard to ask a division chief to cut their own people,” he said.
Ray couldn’t help note the irony. It was the school board, back in June 2020, that denied the superintendent’s plea to hire a consultant to help reopen schools safely and more quickly, even as evidence was mounting of virtual school’s toll on students. The impact of that rejection, he told board members in June, “would be a body blow.” (At the time, Collins said bringing on the consultant would be “recreating white supremacy.”)
“It was a major factor in the school reopening debacle,” Ray said. “It’s frustrating they wouldn’t do it when it really counted for our students. I hope they do it now.”