Teachers, parents, students, and others with close ties to San Francisco’s public schools know that the district has $113 million in budget cuts on the near horizon, and that hundreds of teachers and other staff could be laid off.
But they might not know about another controversial cost-cutting measure on the table: doubling up two grades in one classroom. San Francisco Unified School District officials have confirmed to The Frisc that combination classes, in an as-yet-undecided number of schools, will be part of the plan to cut nearly 10 percent of their budget by the time kids return from summer break in August.
If SFUSD doesn’t make those cuts, it risks running out of cash in 2026. The California Department of Education has already taken partial control of the district’s finances, leading to hiring freezes and other tough measures.
Those freezes, in fact, make combination classes a more daunting prospect, according to teachers and parents. For some schools, these classes are nothing new. Staff and parents at these schools tell The Frisc that the concept can work when done right.
For example, they require students in second grade or higher, and teachers working in teams with minimal turnover. Extra staff to teach certain lessons is also key. But none of those conditions are guaranteed when cuts kick in next year.
Amy Clark has taught a combination class of 4th and 5th graders at Grattan Elementary in Cole Valley for 10 years. She is part of a team with four other teachers. It’s intense and complicated, but Clark says their collaboration, which includes dividing science topics among them, has kept things humming.
Clark warns, however, that the district’s expansion is not going to work if it’s not well thought out: “What they’re doing is pulling together shreds of classrooms.”
Unknown combinations
It’s unclear how many new combination classes will be in SF schools next year. Many details around budget cuts are still up in the air. Superintendent Maria Su has ordered cuts of at least 20 percent to its central office, and the district is offering employees early retirement. It has warned of a worst-case scenario of 837 layoffs of teachers, administrators, and other school staff. (It’s worst-case because every year the district must send employees preliminary pink slips in March before it has a full financial picture. The final layoff tally will likely be lower, but it’s unclear how much.)
Update, 3/14/25: The district said Thursday it would issue preliminary pink slips to 177 school staff – 34 counselors and 143 paraeducators – but no classroom teachers. “It’s a huge relief that teachers will not have to worry about pink slips,” Su said in a statement. The Chronicle reports that 278 administrators and other staff will also receive preliminary layoff notices.
After layoffs are finalized in May, a big classroom shuffle will begin. School closures are off the table for the next school year, but SFUSD says it will set size limits on each grade at each school to better allocate resources.
This would, in turn, require combination classes. According to a district staff response in January to questions from the Board of Education, the combinations could include classes with kindergarten and first graders when a school has fewer than 14 kindergartners, as well as transitional kindergarten and kindergarten students “where appropriate.”
The memo says combo classes will occur “in every elementary school possible, including where you have to split one grade into multiple multi-grade combination classes.”
SFUSD spokesperson Laura Dudnick says, “We will likely have to have more combo classes next year. Every effort will be made to limit it, but it’s just the reality [of] our financial situation. We’re really trying to do what is best for students with our limited resources.”
Dudnick says the district must wait until school assignments are finalized in coming weeks before it knows how many combo classes are necessary. In an FAQ last week, the district said it would cut 20 to 25 classrooms in elementary schools and an unidentified number in middle and high schools. It’s unclear if those totals are related to how many new combination classes the district will create.
Frozen funds
Teachers like Grattan’s Amy Clark are skeptical that the combination classes on the horizon are a good way to save money or will work, due in large part to new fiscal austerity rules.
Funds raised by Grattan’s PTA pay for an additional teacher to reduce Clark’s class sizes. But in the current fiscal crisis, the state’s advisors, who took partial control last spring, aren’t letting SFUSD spend those funds. As The Frisc reported last month, supplemental funding from a voter-approved city fund and from PTAs, totalling tens of millions of dollars, is in limbo.
School leaders had heard from administrators that they couldn’t hire non-essential staff, such as extra math tutors or literacy coaches. (One of Clark’s team left Grattan; the school isn’t allowed to hire a replacement, which increases class sizes from 25 to 32 kids, Clark says: “If I have 25 percent more students, they get less of me.”)
Lead advisor Elliott Duchon told The Frisc last month that he wouldn’t allow these new hires until the district went through its layoff process, which won’t be finalized until May.
After months without explaining the situation to school staff, SFUSD officials announced last week that schools cannot use grants or parent-raised funds for out-of-classroom roles (such as teachers who do one-on-one math or literacy coaching) until the state lifts the hiring freeze.
Once the district staffs 92 percent of its classrooms with qualified teachers – no easy task because of chronic shortages – the state says schools can hire the extra out-of-classroom roles.
‘The more needs you need to meet’
While the next school year, starting in August, could bring a wave of new combination classes, SFUSD has pushed at least a couple schools to create them this school year.
At Yick Wo Elementary in Russian Hill, parent Christy Samson likes the class. Her third grader has learned leadership skills and interacted with more students. And critically, the PTA is funding an extra math instructor, which means the second and third graders learn math separately. But the instructor won’t be back next year because of the state’s restrictions, which worries Samson. About a lack of support for combo class teachers, she says, “There’s no way for one teacher to teach two sets of math.”
They need to be honest and realistic about the loss of learning that’s going to happen.
starr king elementary teacher jessica erickson, who is teaching a combination 1st-2nd grade class by herself this year.
On Potrero Hill, Starr King Elementary teacher Jessica Erickson is running a new 1st-and-2nd grade class, but without the teamwork or other support that others say is necessary. She says her experience is a warning of things to come.
When she sought planning advice, she got nothing beyond vague guidelines on the SFUSD employee website.
Without additional staff, Erickson does not expect to make it through the required units for both grades this year. The lack of adequate time shows in her students’ “deplorable” writing and significant behavioral issues. “They need to be honest and realistic about the loss of learning that’s going to happen,” Erickson says of the district.
School board president Phil Kim echoes the concern about the effect on learning, especially at a time when the district is struggling to boost academic outcomes that had suffered through the pandemic years. “We already have significant variance in students and their readiness coming into the classroom,” says Kim. “The more you have coming into one room the more needs you need to meet.”
SFUSD spokesperson Dudnick says the district is crafting a professional development plan for combination classes.
Pushing back
Some schools have pushed back against combo classes. In the Bayview, Bret Harte Elementary principal Jeremy Hilinski received instructions to create two of them next year but successfully appealed the order.
At Argonne Elementary in the Richmond, the district has proposed multiple combination classes. The school has whittled it down to one, says parent-teacher organization co-chair Parker Austin. The Argonne PTO has since banded with nearby elementaries Sutro and Lafayette, also facing multiple combo class proposals, to advocate for classes to be restored, which would reduce or eliminate combined classes.
Sheridan Elementary in Cow Hollow is also working to revoke plans for a K-1 combination, according to teacher Darcie Chan Blackburn, and Cobb Elementary is warning against bringing back an unsuccessful 4-5 combination, according to teacher Katie Nuñez.
Parents and staff are wary of the classes themselves, but they’re also frustrated with what seems like SFUSD’s scattershot approach with no discussion about long-term strategy, says Austin, the Argonne parent. “There [are] no uniform rules and regulations about what’s going on across the district,” he says. “The lack of communication is not ideal.”
Correction, 3/17/25: An update to this story misquoted the Chronicle. The Chronicle reported last week that 278 district employees would receive layoff notices, not that they had already received notices.
We were at Grattan years ago in the title one days when it was on the closure/merger list.
They had combo classes. Later, my daughter was in a 4/5 combo class. They switched teachers for grade level math. I remember how excited she was to be changing rooms, with a different teacher, just like middle school! She’s a scientist now and when I told her about all this I shared that memory. We laughed.
The problem is central office has been authoritarian for years and years.
The district does not communicate properly with school sites or treat principals, teachers and parents as partners.
They treat these folks as nuisances and afterthoughts.
The combo classes can work if it done thoughtfully but this requires planning and support. Central Office can’t just wave a wand and say “make it so”.
It is very frustrating to watch all this from the sidelines and see nothing changes.
I have yet to hear a cogent explanation for limiting PTA funds, even temporarily.
I adore the concept of sharing pta funds. Also, families that fundraise big dollars are going to leave the district if they can’t get additional teachers. Truth, we need real perm sources for the schools. PTAs wouldn’t raise $1m and cause gross inequities if the schools were properly funded.
Will the new mayor be able to tap his wealthy network to fundraise for sfusd?