The Better Side of Education Politics

by Jason Wong

(Note: Rough Draft, even the title may change)

With solid test scores and a strong upward academic trend, the San Francisco Unified School District and its current and former leaders have found themselves scrutinized for their innovative reforms and mimicked throughout the nation.

In terms of comparable school districts, San Francisco has been ahead of the curve—San Francisco’s notable policies are beyond the implementation phase and many of these policies have been working for San Francisco students for years. Among the most well known policies of the San Francisco Unified School District, and the most controversial, have been the San Francisco Nutrition Policy, and the Weighted Student Formula.

New Ideas, Old Ideals

The birth of these novel policies to SFUSD has been aided by traditional democratic practices. District governance in San Francisco typically involves much community participation and the decisions made are far from autocratic. The Weighted Student Formula and the San Francisco Nutrition Policy are byproducts of this massive co-operation between community members, parents, school faculty, administrators, and district staff.

Without such representation, it is in doubt whether or not these projects undertaken by SFUSD could have been as wildly successful as they have been. With parental participation and community representation, the school district received an added boost to its own efforts for school reform.

It is forty such volunteers (district staff and community stakeholders) that were on the committee responsible for crafting the majority of the Weighted Student Formula. The San Francisco Nutrition Policy was also largely crafted by district staff and community volunteers, with the support of school board members and key administrators.

In of itself, the Nutrition Policy is perhaps one of the most influential of such policies in the nation. It has been three years since its implementation, and since then countless other school districts have followed suit, with similar nutrition policies signed into law in California and other states. Even the American Beverage Association recommended limiting the availability of soft drinks in schools—two years after San Francisco’s Nutrition Policy took effect.

Increasing Incidences of Civic Participation

San Francisco schools are full of political and administrative activity, from the lowest levels of school site management to the upper echelons of the school district administration and governance. Each school supports a School Site Council whose membership comprises of school administrators, teachers and faculty, community members and parents, and even students.

In fact, it is the School Site Council that manages the Weighted Student Formula funds that it receives to balance the school budget. It is the School Site Council that determines individually how many resources to allocate to teachers and staff, school supplies and technology, special programs and projects, and other budgetary items.

Each student is weighted under the formula to determine the specific significance of the resources that the student brings to a school. Schools are thus held responsible for attracting students in order to receive an appropriate level of school funding, and students with special needs or from low income backgrounds are given more “weight”.

This Council serves in addition to the other councils and committees district-wide that community members and staff serve on, some previously noted. Each of these committees is charged with handling tasks from the site specific, to the general district wide policies.

A Self Perpetuating Cycle

SFUSD’s many active committees and councils, in addition to providing meaningful impact to San Francisco students, serve as a perpetual educative resource for the experienced, budding activists and volunteers, and the potential politicians.

Even students are influential in crafting their own educational experience. Two students currently serve on the San Francisco Board of Education, and hundreds (if not thousands) of others have been involved in School Site Councils and PTSAs.

In addition, many of the candidates for this year’s school board elections have served in various capacities for individual school sites and district wide committees, or as school site volunteers.

One candidate for school board, Bayard Fong, remarked on his experience serving as the chair for his school’s PTA, and as a member of his school’s School Site Council, “It helped me to be in the culture of thinking about all of these key [education] issues, and helping to influence that culture to include your own spirit, your own experience, and your own positivism, to help make schools better in San Francisco.”

Within a few years, his PTA has grown from only involving 8 regular members, to a current membership of 90. Test scores have improved too, by 34 points on California’s Academic Performance Index to 666 out of a possible 1000.

Not Good Enough

Even though San Francisco has the highest test scores of an urban school district in the state, and test scores have been improving at an amazing average of 5% per year in math and 3% per year in English for the past five years, San Francisco still has a ways to go before being able to rest on its laurels. Among the problems plaguing San Francisco is the perception that beyond a certain circle of high performing popular schools it is better to go to a private school (its private school population is among the highest in the nation), and the familiar achievement gap between members of different ethnicities in academic performance.

That may soon change. There are many examples of San Francisco public schools that have switched from being undesirable to becoming some of the most desirable schools in the city in a short amount of time. Parental and community involvement are credited with turning schools such as Aptos Middle School, Alvarado Elementary School, and Miraloma Elementary School (just to name a few) into some of the most desirable schools in the city, and there are rising stars in many of the neighborhoods that primarily only low income students with little choice would go to.

More Discretion, More Community, More Results

At a time where school districts are increasingly finding themselves under stricter guidelines and policies that typically hinder innovation, SFUSD has flourished. Over the past few years, San Francisco public schools have been at the forefront of innovative policies that have positively affected the educational experience of its students, as well as involved them in public service and key education decision making. This distribution of balance, autonomy, and oversight has served as a successful contrary model to that of city or state takeovers, and the movement toward charter schools and school vouchers.