When the San Francisco Board of Education voted in December to close the district’s $125 million deficit with drastic cuts, the members held their noses and held out hope for a different outlook in a few months’ time.
They got it, and more. Since then, a landslide recall removed three of the board members. Their replacements announced today — all women with children in SF public schools — will have a baptism by fire.
The next few months are crucial for the district to recover from damage wrought by the pandemic and a bruising recall fight, fix its finances, find a new superintendent, and staunch a loss of students.
The new members’ first regular meeting on March 22 should feature an important budget-related vote, accompanied by what could be a scathing state watchdog report on the district’s long-term finances.
Since that painful December vote, the financial landscape has changed too. A January windfall from the booming California economy pared the proposed cuts to $15 million from schools (down from $50 million) and $35 million from the central office (down from $40 million).
More relief could be coming. In remarks to a parent group Wednesday night, SFUSD chief financial officer Meghan Wallace said “we’re hoping for other good news,” pointing to a California budget update coming in May. (The SFUSD budget must be finalized in June.)
[UPDATE: A huge California budget surplus helped SFUSD stave off drastic cuts and layoffs for the 2022–2023 budget, but longer-term deficits based on declining enrollment remain a threat.]
Whether another California windfall arrives or not, school board member Matt Alexander thinks SFUSD can wipe the rest of the proposed $15 million school cuts off the board by cutting more central office jobs.
Last week, Alexander posted figures, which he obtained from the district, that he held out as evidence of administrative bloat. Since 2010, the last time enrollment was under 50,000, the administration has added 124 positions across five job classifications. Alexander claimed those positions have added $26 million to the budget. Asked to verify the data and provide context, SFUSD spokeswoman Laura Dudnick wrote that the district is conducting an analysis “in a thoughtful, strategic, and data-driven manner.”
Last week, Alexander also met with Superintendent Vincent Matthews, who has promised a deeper review of central office spending, and came away optimistic that cuts could happen in time to save jobs at the schools in the next couple months. “Dr. Matthews asked [a] consultant to do a high level analysis for upper management cuts for this spring, in addition to the long term,” Alexander told The Frisc. “I’m grateful for his leadership on this.”
The Frisc asked SFUSD’s Dudnick to confirm the meeting. She emailed this response: “The superintendent is in the process of identifying an external consultant to support with a functional analysis to assess how SFUSD might staff and organize central administration differently to further reduce the district’s costs, while still maintaining its legal obligations and essential services.”
This week, Alexander said he got bad news: the consultant wouldn’t be available this month. When asked if there’s time to incorporate deeper central office cuts into the next budget draft (due about a week from now), Alexander said he’s trying to convince the superintendent and staff. “It would be very important to have that draft reflect additional cuts,” he said, but ultimately it’s up to them — and to the state, which requires a vote on March 22 to approve the draft. “If they give us only one option on the 22nd, we have no choice but to approve it or miss the state deadline.”
Cutting upper management, Alexander said, could let schools hire extra school staff — literacy and math specialists, social workers, counselors — to help with pandemic learning loss and emotional support, or reduce class size in schools with no enrollment decline. He acknowledged that the district needs to be reconfigured because of lower enrollment, but at the same time, “there are so many needs at the school level that continue to be unaddressed.”
Asked about possibly erasing the $15 million school-site cuts, SFUSD spokeswoman Dudnick said costs must align with enrollment: “For the past three years, school site budgets have not decreased proportionally to the decrease in the number of students they serve. Central support service budgets have and will continue to absorb a greater percentage of the cuts than school site budgets.”
A reluctant yes
Deeper administrative cuts would be vindication of sorts for Alexander, a former teacher and principal in the district. Before voting for the December austerity plan, he tried to undermine it with an alternative, short on details, that advocated for all cuts to come from the central office. (One of its main points: SF’s administration is bloated compared with that of Long Beach, California.)
For a time it seemed it could draw majority support from the board, which in turn produced even starker warnings from the state. Alexander withdrew his plan at the last minute; the board voted for the state-backed plan 6–1.
You’re still budgeting for probably 55,000 to 57,000 students, and you have 50,000. Are you going to align staffing with the number of students?
calfornia department of education financial advisor elliott duchon, to the sfusd board
The takeover threats have not receded entirely. Last month, Elliott Duchon, the state’s representative, chastised the board — even with the January windfall easing some short-term pain. “You’re still budgeting for probably 55,000 to 57,000 students, and you have 50,000. Are you going to align staffing with the number of students? In most districts it’s a mathematical calculation, it’s not a process,” Duchon said. “This year, you’ve chosen not to do that.”
The SFUSD budget, $1.16 billion next year, is separate from the city’s budget. Over time, SF voters have earmarked city funds for the public schools, such as a fund dedicated to sports, libraries, and several other programs, as well as an extra property tax to boost teacher salaries, and more. But most money comes from the state — and a huge chunk of that outlay is based on enrollment. That’s at the heart of the current budget crisis. Enrollment, down to 49,500, has fallen 14 percent in five years, and the district projects it falling further in the next few years.
‘A slight change in our assumptions’
The longer-term view, which Duchon and others have stressed, is that short-term windfalls cannot be used to paper over deeper structural problems. (The incoming board members are likely to share this view as well.) If the superintendent’s promise to dig more deeply into the central office comes to fruition this spring, it could be a good start in addressing those longer-term problems.
But adjustments between now and June might be cold comfort to teachers and other district employees who’ve already received layoff warnings as part of the district’s worst-case scenario planning. Because school sites must start preparing for the fall, the district doesn’t wait for a final budget to send out these “you might lose your job” notices. A big round goes out March 15; final notices arrive in May.
The situation is even more complicated at the high school level. A new teachers union contract, approved March 1 by the school board, eliminates $6.5 million that helps high schools adjust for teachers who get extra time to prepare for advanced placement classes. (Forty percent of AP classes are taught at Lowell, which will take the biggest funding hit.) The money is being redistributed to help cover $33 million in one-time teacher bonuses and raises for substitutes.
The board also voted on March 1 to approve worst-case scenario layoffs of 151 teachers, social workers, and counselors, 71 administrators, and 42 other employees, but drew the line at 47 layoffs of paraprofessionals — teachers aides and others. The vote forced budget staff to look elsewhere for the $3.8 million in potential savings, which is why they delayed the next budget draft until March 22, according to deputy superintendent Myong Leigh. In a budget meeting the day after the layoff vote, Leigh said the vote required a “slight change … in our assumptions.”
March 22 will be the first regular board meeting with the three new members. It will also feature what could be a critical report on the district’s financial health from the state Department of Education watchdog known as FCMAT.
Alexander told The Frisc that the district’s dramatic increase in upper management spending the past decade, despite budget deficits, should be a “red flag” to FCMAT: “I hope the paraprofessional vote demonstrates we’re willing to take it on.”
Others saw that vote in a more complicated light. Calling into the March 2 budget meeting, former SFUSD official Matt Kelemen, who has a child at Ruth Asawa School of the Arts, agreed with the search for deeper central-office cuts but said “the tactics don’t represent good governance.”
“The net result of your actions is that school sites will have less flexibility to deal with budget cuts,” he said.
At Lincoln High School, at least four non-teacher positions are supposed to be cut, and it’s unclear if any teachers will have to go, according to Rex Ridgeway, vice president of the school site council and grandfather of a Lincoln student.
The council was supposed to ratify the school’s fall budget recently, but uncertainty has forced a delay. Ridgeway has served on the site councils of El Dorado Elementary and Martin Luther King Jr. Middle schools, and this is unprecedented for him. “We’ve always approved budgets, meaning materials, books, supplies, things for the operation of the schools. Pretty easy,” he said. “This is the first time I’ve ever had to approve layoffs.”