At San Francisco International High School in Potrero Hill last Thursday evening, the city’s public schools superintendent promised a room packed with teachers, families, students, and alumni that the district won’t cut programs for immigrant students.
“There is no intention, definitely not under my watch, of cutting programs for our newcomer students,” said Superintendent Maria Su, using the term for students who’ve been in the country for five years or less and whose primary language isn’t English.
Su’s statement drew cheers, but they soon turned to boos. The crowd wanted Su to pause staff cuts for one year — a promise Su couldn’t make, citing lack of demand. “A lot of our families are choosing not to go into the newcomer program,” she said.
In other words, as with the rest of the district, enrollment is dropping, and fewer students require fewer teachers. Many in the crowd disagreed with that view. They say newcomers need more resources than general students and ‘one-size-fits-all’ cuts aren’t the right approach. They also say the cuts will backfire if newcomer enrollment rebounds.
SF International, or SFI, is the district’s only high school entirely dedicated to this group. Thursday’s attendees also included teachers and families from Mission Education Center, an elementary school for Spanish-speaking immigrant students, and Visitacion Valley Middle School, a general education school with special classes for newcomers.
“We ask you to see the newcomer program not as an expense but as an investment,” said Andrea Sofía, a Visitacion Valley student who spoke with the help of a translator.
The district’s proposed cuts for the 2026-27 school year include dramatic reductions to each school’s newcomer-serving staff.
The district says it must eliminate a $102 million shortfall over the next three years. Officials are eager to restore a positive fiscal rating from state watchdogs and win back full control over their finances.
The proposed cuts were enough to draw out a room packed with immigrants, some even self-declared as undocumented despite a federal nationwide crackdown, to protest. “I’ve never seen this big of a group of immigrant students, families, [and] educators who serve them coming together to speak up,” school board member Matt Alexander told The Frisc. “It merits listening to them.” (Alexander’s day job is with the immigrant advocacy group that helped organize the event.)
The district’s proposals are not set in stone. Every January through the spring, SFUSD revises budget and staff estimates for the coming school year, often with feedback from schools. Many have already appealed, according to one principal who spoke anonymously fearing repercussions to their school.
Principals were initially told they had until the end of January to plead their cases. But at Thursday’s heated meeting, Su told the crowd there would “definitely [be] time to talk past January” about the appeals.
Unlike Chicago, Minneapolis, and other large cities, San Francisco has avoided a federal enforcement surge, although ICE agents apprehended more than 100 people outside SF’s immigration court in a five-month period last year, according to Mission Local. SFUSD has also braced for encounters with agents — a talking point in stalled contract negotiations with the teachers union, which could strike as early as Wednesday.
Emotions are running high. The school district, whose budget process is difficult to parse even in less fraught times, has mostly responded to questions from the press with generic statements, making it more difficult to separate facts from speculation.
Enrollment equals money
The majority of funding for SFUSD, including its newcomer programs, is tied to enrollment. California distributes money per pupil, with extra money for students in foster care or low-income households, and for those learning English.
It’s not clear exactly how much SFUSD allots for newcomers. It dedicated at least $1,015,000 for them this school year, but the total is likely higher because other funds marked for English learners and low-income students often overlap with the newcomer population.
But overall enrollment is declining, which means fewer state dollars. The district estimates how many classrooms and teachers it will need based on these numbers. “Districtwide enrollment is projected to decline by approximately 1 percent (about 490 students) next year, and allocations for schools reflect enrollment projections,” said SFUSD spokesperson Katrina Kincade in an emailed statement. (It was identical to one SFUSD has sent to other outlets.)
Kincade also said that staff and budget allocations are only “a starting point.”
Here’s how the negotiation is playing out at Visitacion Valley, one of the main “newcomer” schools. Before the current school year, the district projected 125 newcomers there, and the school dedicated five classrooms for them. The projection was wrong; only 60 newcomers enrolled.
Four weeks ago, the district made its first projection for next year: zero newcomers. After Principal Maya Baker expressed alarm, the district changed its projection to 50, which still meant cutting two teachers and a counselor. After Thursday’s event, the school got back the two teachers.
The budget proposed for Visitacion Valley next year also shows newcomer cuts. Last year, state funding for the school’s “multilingual learners” included $62,500 specifically for newcomers. This money, and the entire multilingual learner fund, is cut from next year’s budget proposal entirely. However, the school still receives extra money from the main state fund for its English language learners.
That sounds convoluted, and it is. The various sources that come from the state and local coffers make it possible for Su to say that they’re cutting staff, but not programs.
When they sent out staffing proposals on Jan. 5, the district also predicted lower newcomer enrollment at SFI and MEC. SFI staff say they currently have 400 enrolled, but the district only expects 220 next year. MEC staff and families say they currently have 107 newcomers, but that the district leveled their 2026-27 predictions to zero.
Again, a main reason for this tug-of-war over enrollment projection is state funding, which accounts for 70 percent of the district’s $1.3 billion-plus annual budget. But SFUSD also receives newcomer funding not tied to enrollment. Those sources are less consistent and often vary from school to school.
For example, Burton High last year received a $10,000 grant for academic support from a special City Hall fund. The district and state Migrant Education office did not respond to questions about whether alternative funding sources were under threat.
What’s more, SFUSD officials want to increase the district’s reserve fund to $111 million, which has rankled the teachers union and others who say it should be used for other purposes. “It wouldn’t cost that much money to pause the cuts,” said Alexander.
Shifting choices
California school officials say immigrant enrollment jumped 43 percent statewide from 2022-23 to 2024-25.
However, SFUSD reports nearly the opposite. District spokespeople told Mission Local that newcomer student numbers have declined 29 percent, from 1,856 in 2022-23 to 1,326 in 2025-26. (Oakland public schools also reported a decline in the same period.)
Superintendent Su says it’s because families are choosing general education instead of newcomer programs. “A lot of our families are scared,” she told Thursday’s crowd. “We cannot tell parents to choose SFI. I cannot tell someone to identify themselves as a newcomer.”
Su reminded Thursday’s crowd that she is an immigrant herself whose family fled war-torn Vietnam and ended up in the United States in the 1980s.
Opponents of the cuts don’t dispute the district’s numbers. But they dispute the reasons behind the decline.
Alexander blamed the fear on President Trump’s anti-immigration policies, which have created a historic decline in migration nationwide. Reacting to what could be a temporary situation, Alexander said, is the wrong approach. Instead, he said, the district needs to plan for a future where “we’re going to fight back and have immigrants again. If [it’s] true, then we need to preserve these programs.”
He and others also question the district’s formula to calculate school staff counts.
According to school staff, newcomer enrollment fluctuates much more than the general population. “They don’t get students enrolling in the beginning of the year,” said Baker. “When they’re crossing borders and arriving here isn’t on the timeline of a school.”
Migrant worker movements, global conflict, and natural disasters are better predictors; a 2021 Pew study showed U.S. border crossings vary widely by month, but March is often a popular time to immigrate.
School staff also say the enrollment office isn’t adequately promoting newcomer-focused schools, and they allege that some families are even being discouraged from those schools. SFUSD did not respond to questions about families’ experiences.
Immersion or not?
The current fight over staffing touches on a deeper debate over how quickly immigrant students should move into mainstream schools. In SFI’s graduating class of 2024, 91 percent of the 35 who applied to the University of California were admitted — well above the state average, according to a Chronicle analysis. And 78 percent of the same class met the admission requirements for the UC and California State University systems, compared to 46 percent of English learners in the rest of the district.
School staff also shared numbers on Thursday about their climate of academic learning, which SFUSD surveys every year. A positive climate can have a positive impact on grades, research shows. Last spring, 90 percent of SFI students said they felt a “sense of belonging,” compared to 73 percent of newcomers in mainstream schools. “Those results are really impressive,” said Alexander. “If we go ahead with these cuts, those results are going away.”
But pointing to just a year’s worth of data can highlight problems as well. In 2025, SFI’s language arts, math, and graduation rates all declined, according to state data. Districtwide, these results for English-language learners stayed the same or rose.
The district itself has a long-term study, conducted in 2010, that found immigrants who started in newcomer programs within mainstream schools fare better than kids who start in immersive schools like SFI.
More recent research has found better results for newcomers who start immersive programs in elementary school, but the authors note outcomes vary depending on grade level. A 2016 study in Los Angeles also showed gains for younger students in newcomer programs.
Whether the district is leaning on its own 2010 findings to influence enrollment and staff decisions is unknown. SFUSD spokespeople did not respond to questions.
School staff and families concerned about the proposed cuts are scheduled to meet Thursday evening at Everett Middle School in the Mission. By that time, however, a lot could change. On Wednesday, a state mediator is supposed to publish a report about union negotiations, which could trigger a teachers strike. Commitments to immigrant students are just one of the union’s demands.