Inside the school district, dysfunction reigns
‘They don’t talk to each other.’ The financial and administrative state of the San Francisco school district may be even more chaotic than its critics imagine.
San Francisco Standard
Published Sep. 17, 2024 • 6:00am
In mid-August, days before the start of the school year, the mother of a soon-to-be freshman at Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts wrote a frantic email to Matt Wayne, superintendent of the San Francisco Unified School District, and others she thought might be able to assist her child.
Acting on advice from school officials, the student had twice taken extracurricular algebra courses only to be told, twice, that the courses didn’t confer eligibility for geometry. “How can this district do this to my child?” the parent wrote.
Unlike so much of what’s going on with the city’s public schools, however, this tale has a happy ending. The district’s “central office” intervened. The child was admitted to geometry. But behind the scenes, the incident provoked a telling give-and-take between the SFUSD’s staff and Lainie Motamedi, then president of the school board.
“How many students requested to take a 9th-grade math class other than algebra?” Motamedi emailed several staff members, blind-copying the entire seven-member Board of Education. “Can we confirm students making a request for a course other than algebra have had their requests reviewed correctly and placed accordingly? What is the process for review? What is the process for student/family appeal of placement?”
The staff’s response illustrated the dysfunction that plagues so many of the district’s operations and shows why SFUSD, after years of turmoil, is no closer to salvation than before.
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