SFUSD’s Replacement For Its Stressful School Lottery Is Delayed Again

San Francisco families have hoped for years that their youngsters entering kindergarten would soon have a better shot at getting into their neighborhood public elementary school. But a long-awaited overhaul to the assignment system, notorious for leaving families in the lurch, is being delayed again, The Frisc has learned. 

The San Francisco Unified School District approved a new assignment system in 2020 but put it off; first because of the pandemic, then because of last year’s push for school closures, which ended up being shelved. Until recently, the new target for rollout was the 2026-27 school year. Now officials have delayed it again — without a specific target date. 

“Right now, we are not working on that,” Superintendent Maria Su told The Frisc before a recent public meeting. “We’re going to take another year or so to continue to solidify and map out where the zones are,” referring to the revamped areas around each school that will determine who goes where. 

A new school assignment system is meant to bring more predictability, give families school options closer to home, and address racial segregation. Consultants working on the project have crafted options that divide the city into six or seven zones, each with a set of schools families can expect their kids to attend.

Until the zones take effect, parents will have to live with the widely disliked lottery system, which is notorious for denying families their preferred schools. 

The district also has other crises at hand. It must cut $113 million, nearly 10 percent of its budget, this spring, and show state regulators that it can reclaim control of its finances.

SFUSD has also promised to finish replacing its bungled payroll and HR system this summer, which failed to pay teachers correctly for more than a year and put some employees’ health benefits in peril.   

With the failed effort to close schools and now the school assignment delay, SFUSD seems to be heeding advice from Ben Rosenfield, the former city controller, who last year provided a frank assessment of the district’s ambitious juggling act. “Can we really get all this done in a year?” Rosenfield wrote in an internal report first obtained by Mission Local. 

Referring to just the closure attempts, budget crisis, and payroll overhaul, Rosenfield wrote, “Completion of any one of these projects would be a major accomplishment. Accomplishing all three projects simultaneously, without significant disruption, seems both unlikely and risky.”

‘Too many buildings’

School closures are no longer happening this fall, but their possibility hangs over the assignment zones. 

“I think it comes down to a question for [Superintendent] Su, what her plan and strategy is for the coming years for the district,” says school board president Phil Kim. “We have too many buildings for the students we have and we need to address that.” (A majority of school board candidates last year also said school closures should remain on the table.)

Most SFUSD Board Candidates Say School Closures Must Stay On the Table

Parents continue to ask Su at public appearances about the fate of the 13 schools on the initial closure list. Su replies they are not happening in the 2025-2026 school year but makes no promises beyond that. 

SFUSD has tapped Stanford University researchers to create the new assignment zones. For months they have had multiple options at the ready. But they’re also prepared to make changes. They know that closures will force a major redraw, the project leader told The Frisc last year, because they’ve already had to make dramatic changes to include a new school in Mission Bay opening in August 2026. 

Before closures were shelved last year, the Stanford team said they could quickly produce new maps based on a smaller set of schools. If that holds true, it adds some mystery to Su’s statement that the district needs another year to study the maps. 

“My hunch is they are waiting for school closures,” says Vanessa Marrero, executive director of Parents for Public Schools San Francisco. 

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It’s too soon to say whether closures and the assignment zones are related, according to SFUSD. “Right now the district’s focus is on balancing our budget and implementing our new [Enterprise Resource Planning] system,” says spokesperson Laura Dudnick. “The zone assignment system will be revisited once we are further along with those priorities.”

Marrero calls the current lottery system “seriously flawed.” Some schools, often in wealthier neighborhoods, have long waitlists, while other schools, largely in the southeast, are underpopulated. But she says the delay isn’t necessarily bad if it means extra time to work out a more equitable system. 

Enrollment upswing

In the midst of all the turmoil, the district recently announced good news: the highest number of new student applications in a decade. The uptick — 10 percent more than the previous year — comes after a yearslong decline, a main reason for the budget crunch. (Much of the district’s state funding is based on enrollment.) 

The surge is due to an expansion of transitional kindergarten, which adds a year of school for four-year-olds before regular kindergarten. The state-mandated expansion has been in the works for a few years and seems to be bearing fruit for San Francisco. 

But it also adds a layer of complication, according to Superintendent Su. In our recent interview, she cited the expansion of transitional kindergarten (or TK for short) as a reason for the school assignment delay. With more TK kids, the district must refine the process of moving or “feeding” them into elementary schools. “It has to start with [transitional kindergarten] first,” Su said. 

Su’s statement isn’t borne out, however, by a district document (embedded below) that says the changes to TK feeder policy shouldn’t affect the broader zone-based assignments. Adding to the confusion, the school board recently postponed approval of the TK feeder changes. 

Update, 4/10/25: This story previously linked to the document below, but it was removed from the SFUSD website.

That said, some changes to the TK application process are already in place, making life easier for some parents. Ruth Wong, whose three-year-old is set to join his older sibling at Chinese Immersion School at DeAvila, says this year’s application was an improvement over the forms she filled out for her older kid.  

There was more clarity about the student skill assessment for the language immersion program, for example. Even better, she no longer needs to reapply for her younger kid to stay on as a kindergartner. “I was less stressed about it,” says Wong, who said the sibling connection helped. “This year was a lot better.”

If, as former controller Rosenfield wrote last year, the district has taken on too much, the new board — after last November’s election shakeup — and superintendent have at least acknowledged the need to prioritize. 

“We do have to produce clarity on TK feeders because it’s here now,” says school board president Kim. “There are a lot of things on the docket for the district to tackle. The question is what do we prioritize to do that well.”