Local News

SAN FRANCISCO (BCN) ― In the wake of Thursday's contentious San Francisco school board meeting, which resulted in the closure of three schools, the merger of four into two and the relocation of seven others, district and union officials are today facing a re-shaped school district that is almost certainly going to change again in the near future.

San Francisco Unified School District spokeswoman Lorna Ho said this morning the financial outlook for the district continues to be difficult.

The board of education decided Thursday to close Cabrillo Elementary School along with Enola Maxwell and Luther Burbank middle schools. Elementary school students at John Swett will join their peers at John Muir, and those in the Japanese Bilingual Bicultural Program will merge with Rosa Parks Elementary School students at the Rosa Parks campus.

Several high schools are among those moving to other sites.

While the most immediate concern for the school district is providing the affected schools with "as much extra support as we can" as they face closure or mergers, Ho said, "We're going to have to be making more cuts in the future."

Ho said the school community would have to confront the "reality" of future closures. Thursday's cuts are a temporary reprieve that will give the district "a year to plan and engage the community," she said.

Ho said school district officials predict this round of school closures, which amount to fewer than the 22-26 closures or mergers originally up for consideration, would save the district around $2.4 million in operating costs.

The school district also expects to make approximately $4 million in revenue by renting out school buildings that have been closed, Ho said.

School board vice president Sarah Lipson offered a similar assessment of the district's future.

"The decisions we made last night had to take place," Lipson said today. "It's about fiscal responsibility."

But Lipson also argued that current enrollment patterns in the district are unfair and said that a proposal to look at the discrepancies in school enrollment district-wide is on the agenda for the board's upcoming meeting Tuesday.

Some highly popular schools house students in bungalows that were originally intended to be only temporary classrooms, while at the same time other, less popular, schools' bungalows go unused, Lipson said.

Bungalow occupancy figured in some assessments of school enrollment, Lipson said.

"The long-term goal is to not use bungalows," Lipson said. Schools with lower enrollments that don't use them "shouldn't be penalized for that," she said.

According to Lipson, the school board is looking at eliminating bungalows in popular west-side schools and at undertaking "better marketing and outreach" for east-side schools that have unjustly been labeled unattractive.

Ho agreed with Lipson's assessment of the imbalance in enrollment patterns but said there is definitely "higher demand at certain schools and we try accommodate as many families as possible."

School board president Norman Yee said the board is planning to establish an advisory committee of community members to help discuss future plans for the district.

In the meantime, Yee said he is trying to work out how best to use the district's "skeletal staff" to administer the mergers and closures.

"Every merger situation will be slightly different," Yee said.

Even though some schools are closing and others merging, United Educators of San Francisco President Dennis Kelly said he doesn't expect many teachers, paraprofessionals or school counselors to be affected by the closures. The UESF represents some 6,000 teachers, paraprofessionals and counselors in the district.

"At this point there have been no proposals to do layoffs," Kelly said. Instead, "the district has talked about reduction of administrative staff since they do not need administrators at those (closed) sites," he said.

"Contractually, if the class moves, the teacher has to move with it. In the case of a merger the teachers will move with their classes to the new sites. In the case of a closure, such as Burbank, Cabrillo and Maxwell, then those teachers have the right to choose another school" in the district, Kelly said.

Kelly also expressed frustration with the district administration's participation in the process of choosing which schools would be closed or merged.

Outgoing Superintendent "Arlene Ackerman did not even attend a major closure meeting," Kelly said, adding, "that kind of instability is not good for anybody."

(Bay City News)