Back in February, Maria Su, the newly minted head of the troubled San Francisco Unified School District, stood before an audience of business, nonprofit, and local government leaders and offered assurances about the future of the city’s public schools.
“We will have to make really painful cuts,” Su said. “But once we get through that, we will have a school district that will have stability and predictability.”
A few months before that speech, Su was a widely respected, longtime City Hall department head lending an outside hand to the district, which was reeling from a disastrous attempt at closing schools and other problems. But on Oct. 18 the superintendent, Matt Wayne, resigned under pressure. The district moved fast to name Su as his replacement.
She left her stable post at the Department of Children, Youth and Their Families (DCYF) to try to steer SFUSD out of a huge deficit and her first task was to make $114 million in cuts, nearly 10 percent of its $1.3 billion budget.
At that talk at San Francisco State in February, Su emphasized that it wasn’t all bleak — and showed a light touch with the crowd to boot.
“I know that with 90 percent remaining in our budget, we can make magic happen,” Su said. “And quite frankly, because I’m an immigrant, I will make 90 percent feel like 100 percent. You all know me, right?”
Su ran DCYF for 15 years, working closely with public schools on afterschool programs, internships, and more across several mayoral administrations. As officials came and went, Su was a City Hall constant, earning respect for leadership skills and political savvy. Su has in spades the political experience that Wayne, who came to SF from Hayward public schools, lacked. But she is the rare superintendent who lacks education credentials.
“When you don’t understand politics, you have what happened to Dr. Wayne,” says Frank Lara, United Educators of San Francisco vice president. “Negating the importance of politics is naive. However, when you’re not an educator, we should also not underestimate the impact that has.”
Still, when the walls were closing in on Wayne, SFUSD did not conduct a broader search. With time at a premium, they turned immediately to Su and were willing to craft an unusual arrangement. (Su remains a city employee under a contract with the school district, which runs independently of City Hall.)
“They needed someone who would inspire confidence,” says Meredith Dodson, executive director of the San Francisco Parent Coalition. “Maria was the only person who would instill that feeling of, ‘We’re going to be OK.’ She does know how to navigate the city system and the politics, and she does care deeply about kids.”
With school closures shelved, Su immediately had to deal with budget cuts, layoffs, and a shake-up of SFUSD’s often-bumbling operations. Even so, six months into the job, she hasn’t seemed to lose the initial goodwill. Dodson and several others deeply involved in the district feel SFUSD is on the right path, but we’ve only just seen the opening high-wire act.
Deep budget cuts don’t kick in until the fall. And sooner than later, the district will roll out a new student assignment system, open a new Mission Bay elementary school, and continue to address below-par academic outcomes. The administration is also likely to revisit school closures, which will be no less toxic after sitting on the shelf for some time.
SFUSD is also replacing its faulty payroll system this July and has union contracts to negotiate in coming months.
“She’s ending her honeymoon period soon,” says Dodson.
‘Not speaking a word of English’
In November 1979, three-year-old Maria Su fled wartime Vietnam with her family, in danger because they were ethnically Chinese, she tells The Frisc. Along with her 8-month-old brother, parents, her mother’s siblings, and great-grandmother, she was smuggled onto a refugee boat and spent 30 days on the open sea before a French cargo ship picked them up.
After making it to a camp in Malaysia, Su and her family went on to the United States. She grew up in public housing in Boston with her family receiving food stamps. She attended Head Start, the federal government’s early education program for low income students, and arrived in kindergarten “not speaking a word of English.” Su credits her success to public schools.
“It didn’t feel poor,” Su tells The Frisc. “I think it’s because of the way my parents were able to make the experience feel enough. That’s what I want to bring to our schools: that our students are going to feel that they will have everything they need.”
After graduating with a psychology degree from Boston University, Su touched down in San Francisco some 25 years ago to pursue a doctorate in clinical child psychology.
In 2009, then-Mayor Gavin Newsom appointed Su to lead DCYF. Data that reveals disparities between racial and socioeconomic groups of children “hurts your heart and your soul,” says Su, and has motivated her all these years. But relationships have been the key to her longevity.
“All things start with people,” Su says. “You cannot just go in and force a system to happen without the relationship first, because you don’t have the trust, you won’t have the credibility, and quite frankly, you won’t know what the hell you’re doing.”
She’s been in different roles as a public servant, as a bureaucrat. Now she’s the top dog, and she’s in the hot seat.
city college of san francisco trustee alan wong
Alan Wong and Aliya Chisti, City College of San Francisco trustees who worked with Su on CCSF’s free tuition program, say DCYF staff’s respect for Su and her accessibility as a leader stood out to them.
Chisti, who worked at DCYF under Su before becoming a trustee, adds that Su showed strong and consistent commitment to accountability and equity.
“So far she’s been in different roles as a public servant, as a bureaucrat,” says Wong. “Now she’s the top dog, and she’s put into the hot seat.”
Cutting HQ
For years, there have been calls to cut SFUSD’s central administration. Su took office last fall with promises to refine operations at 555 Franklin, the district’s headquarters. She finally laid out her restructuring plan last month to cut 205 positions out of 1,080 to save nearly $34 million.
The central office’s share of the SFUSD budget will drop to 16 percent, down from 25 percent in the 2020-21 school year. Among the changes: eliminating four of eight positions from the district’s top administrative layer, which includes Su’s cabinet team, and restructuring beneath them.
This, Su says, will eliminate “silos” and disjointed internal communication that has led to major bungles. The most egregious recent example came last year under Wayne’s leadership. District staff cut $30 million in mandatory special education funds in error, leaving thousands of the district’s neediest students without teachers or services to start this school year. (The money was restored, but too late to fill some positions or services until later in the year.)
Of the 205 central office positions to be cut, 75 are vacant and 30 are taking early retirement. It’s notable that a steady stream of cabinet members — top administrators at the level or two below Su — are leaving, and only some will be replaced. They run the district, and some of the departures are long overdue, according to a person familiar with SFUSD.
With the caveat that the reorganization plan, at least publicly, is still an outline, some central office critics such as school board member Matt Alexander and the teachers union are supportive so far. The union representative for administrators also cuts Su some slack for the school budget cuts.
“We’re mad at the situation, but I don’t think we’re mad at her leadership at this point,” says Anna Klafter, president of the United Administrators of San Francisco, which represents principals and central office staff. “She’s been a really good partner to us. It’s clear she’s super smart and super talented. I’m curious to see how the reorganization is going to have an impact on the ground.”
But, as several sources tell The Frisc, paramount to Su’s long-term success is rebuilding a strong leadership team around her, especially to shore up her own lack of experience running schools. Hiring will come later, but Su already said she intends to hire from within where possible.
“She’s making good leadership moves,” says Alexander, who was board president when Su was installed. “We’re going to see the payoff in the long term.”
Short staffed
There has been pain and frustration during Su’s short tenure. She inherited a requirement to cut $114 million and hasn’t wavered. Su avoided pink slips for classroom teachers, but only because more than 300 agreed to early retirement buyouts that state regulators were pushing for.
But 126 paraeducators and 34 school counselors will be laid off. Losing that many senior teachers and “paras” — who work alongside teachers in the classroom — means less classroom experience when kids return from summer break. The district will still need to cut another $13 million for the 2026-27 school year.
All those cuts are going to impact the community. I think we’re in really big trouble.
vanessa marrero, Parents for Public Schools of San Francisco
Classes have been short-staffed for years, now made worse by a state-imposed hiring freeze. When kids return in August, there might be more combination classes in elementary schools. Parent advocates say Su and her team should have provided more detail by now about the effect of cuts on students.
“The style is different [from Wayne] but we’re still not seeing the transparency that the community deserves,” says Dodson. “It’s actually been quite frustrating.”
Su tells The Frisc that an analysis of classroom effects is coming soon.
Vanessa Marrero, Parents for Public Schools of San Francisco executive director, has a broader complaint: Su didn’t go through the normal hiring process with avenues for public feedback. “That’s concerning now because all these cuts happening [are] going to impact the community,” says Marrero. “I think we’re in really big trouble, to be honest.”
Beyond the short-term cuts, the district needs a long-term strategy to rebuild. Based on Board of Education evaluation rules, Su is supposed to start laying out that vision in the next several months. One key goal is to prevent another negative budget certification from the California Department of Education. The state’s current negative certification gives it partial control over the district’s budget.
Su’s unconventional contract with the district, which annually reimburses the city $385,000 and up to $153,000 in benefits, also expires at the end of June 2026. School board president Phil Kim says there have not been conversations about what will happen when that date arrives.
“Executive turnover is hard on any system,” Kim says. “There’s recognition that stability and continuity is important for SFUSD, especially given the turnover we’ve had in recent years. We’re hopeful, we’re encouraged, and we’ve been very clear about what we’re going to be holding her account to for.”
Su tells The Frisc, in emphatic terms, that she will not go back to DCYF and boot out Sherrice Dorsey-Smith, now the department’s executive director, whom Su hired 18 years ago. Besides, Su says she loves her new job. Asked point blank if she’s in it for the long haul, Su adds, “I am, I am.”
