As The Frisc and other outlets have reported recently, San Francisco public school officials are making changes to their programs for newly arrived immigrant students, known as newcomers.
After months of frustration among families and school staff, the school district is now giving a reason for the changes. It needs to make way for more of its youngest students.
The San Francisco Unified School District is expanding transitional kindergarten classes, in part because a state law requires it. But the district is also responding to local demand. Getting four-year-olds into an extra year of school before kindergarten has proven quite popular, not to mention a potential windfall for a district scrambling to reverse a years-long enrollment decline.
There are 2,200 applications for transitional kindergarten (TK) spots this fall, up from the 1,466 who enrolled last fall to fill the district’s 88 TK classes.
SFUSD is moving fast to meet the demand — too fast, say critics, who feel blindsided by the moves. Superintendent Maria Su and staff will present their TK plan tonight at the Board of Education meeting.
The expansion includes physical renovation of some elementary schools and a complex puzzle of shifting resources.
Update, 5/20/26: At last night’s board meeting, district staff said the expansion plans on the table would add seven classes — about 140 students. Even if they find 20 more seats at a new Mandarin immersion school, it still leaves the district short about 360 seats. Staff explained a few more restraints informing their plan. Some schools, like Guadalupe Elementary, want a TK classroom, but low enrollment projections don’t justify the cost of campus upgrades. And other good sites for expansion, like the Junipero Serra Annex Early Education School, need significant work and won’t be ready by next year.
Another one of the puzzle pieces is especially controversial.
To help with TK expansion next fall, SFUSD is breaking up its only program dedicated to Spanish-speaking newcomers. The Mission Education Center (MEC) has been welcoming kindergarten through fifth grade students at its Noe Valley campus for 46 years. But for months, the district has in effect been winding down the program without explicitly saying it.
District leaders have said that demand for newcomer programs has cratered, in part because Trump administration policies have stemmed the flow of immigrant families, while those still coming are opting for general education schools.
MEC staff tell The Frisc that the district will disperse young newcomer students to other schools across the city. That will require specially trained bilingual teachers and other support systems in those schools. Last week, Su visited MEC staff and asked them to accept reassignments, according to one MEC teacher.
“They’re prioritizing pre-K and TK over the newcomer students,” said MEC speech language pathologist Claudia Valdivia. (Pre-kindergarten, or pre-K, is for three- to four-year-olds and often more play-based.)
SFUSD spokesperson Laura Dudnick declined to comment, saying officials will answer questions during tonight’s board presentation.
Little sinks and toilets
Many educators, families, and critical school board members have taken SFUSD to task for mixed messages and lack of transparency about the fate of MEC and other newcomer programs.
The frustration overlaps with SFUSD’s approach to school closures. After a failed attempt to close or merge 11 schools in 2024, the idea went on the back burner. The latest message from SFUSD is that it will first revamp its school lottery system, then potentially close or merge schools by the 2029-30 school year — if at all.
Without board consent, SFUSD has already decided to move one school. The Academy high school, which shares a building with Ruth Asawa School of the Arts, will relocate to the Raoul Wallenberg High campus this fall.
At the May 12 board meeting, board vice president Jaime Huling raised concern that Su has avoided board votes on big changes. “You’ve repeatedly referred, Superintendent, to large scale school closures, but we know there are currently school closures and programmatic closures or mergers happening that have not been in line with the board direction. When do you plan to bring those to the board?”
Su is presenting the TK plan to the board tonight, but it’s not up for a vote. It’s unclear if MEC’s dispersal, with no guarantee of reconstituting in the future, will be subject to board approval at some point.
Newcomer advocates like board member Matt Alexander say moving newcomers into general-ed schools, even with special resources, is an abdication of duty. “Our newcomer students are no longer getting access to the education that’s specialized for them, that they’re actually legally entitled to,” says Alexander, whose day job is with an immigrant rights group.
But the district is also legally obligated to expand TK. In TK classes, the state requires at least one adult for every 10 students, with a maximum size of 24 students. This means SFUSD needs at least four new classrooms, or more if they can’t hire multiple teachers for each.
The classrooms also have to meet specifications like self-contained restrooms, easy access to the play yard, and appropriate facilities for four-year-olds — that is, pint-sized sinks and toilets.
MEC has all this (the district says it can fit five more pre-K and TK classes there), but other elementary schools don’t. That’s one reason for a broader shuffle the next few years as SFUSD renovates several campuses. For example, the Jefferson site in the Sunset District will be “closed for the length of the project,” according to a document posted in advance of tonight’s meeting.
More expansions
Immigrant students are still coming to SFUSD. District data provided by Alexander shows a spike in the 2024-25 school year. (SFUSD officials have not responded to requests for the data.) But fewer students have enrolled at MEC and other SFUSD’s other newcomer programs, like SF International High School.
District officials say the families are opting for other schools. Critics say the enrollment office has intentionally steered them away. “That data show that clearly something has changed,” Alexander told The Frisc.
In February, Mission Local reported internal SFUSD communications mandating restrictions or “onerous extra steps” for enrollment in several schools, including at least one newcomer school.
The district says the MEC move doesn’t count as a closure because it’s moving more students into the building.
Other newcomer programs have staved off cuts for the moment. SF International had to dip into its own funding to keep teachers that SFUSD would no longer pay for. So did Visitacion Valley Middle School, a general-ed school that has a large immigrant program.
The advocacy group Faith in Action, where Alexander works, wants the district to adopt an informed choice rule for newcomer families to make sure they know about dedicated programs when they enroll.
The policy would require all new SFUSD students to complete a language survey to help the district identify who qualifies for newcomer programs, even if they don’t identify as new immigrants. For these students, newcomer programs would be the default option unless their parents opt out and acknowledge they understand what they’re turning down.
“I don’t think there was a deliberate policy change [at the enrollment office],” says Alexander. “But it seems like the system isn’t working for newcomer students. My understanding of what they’re proposing in the policy would go a long way to fix it.”
(The district is contemplating a similar policy for its 8th grade algebra rollout, which offers students different curriculum choices.)
With the board’s stacked agenda for the next month, however, the informed choice policy for newcomers likely won’t see a vote until the fall.
Meanwhile, two other expansions are coming. One is a new special education program at the Edwin and Anita Lee building, slated for discussion on May 26. The building used to host the district’s Chinese-focused newcomer program, which now shares space with Gordon J. Lau Elementary.
The other is SFUSD’s first Mandarin immersion elementary school, which officials promised after shooting down a parent-led effort for a charter school. It’s not clear where the school will end up located.
At a recent town hall, SFUSD head of communications and governance Hong Mei Pang told the audience that “right now, there’s no empty building that would work without some kind of impact to a school community.”
