School Closure Meeting in District 5 (edit this)
“We are putting our line in the sand.” Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi
“No school closures in District 5.” Parent upon parent
“When comparing the 13 largest school districts in the state of California, SFUSD comes in dead last in this department (spending for direct classroom support.)” Letter from UESF’s President, Dennis Kelly
There were over 200 people gathered in front of Ida B. Wells Alternative High School for Supervisor Mirkarimi’s press conference on school closures in District 5.
Deidrenne Ashcraft, coordinator of the Beacon Center located at Golden Gate Elementary School (which used to be at Benjamin Franklin and Golden Gate Academy till last year), was eloquent and pointed out the following facts:
1. One of the district’s elementary schools slated for closure, John Muir offers one of the district’s two intensive bilingual programs for elementary schools.
2. Total savings for merging/closing District 5’s schools (along with McKinley) is $2 million according to the handout given by the District on Dec. 6. The district’s 2005-06 budget went up by $2.2 million from 2004-05 (according to the District’s Adopted Budget June 28, 2005).
3. Last year, over 222 families requested one of the District 5 schools as one of their seven choices for their incoming kindergartener.
4. Three of the four SFUSD’s Pre-K Special Education Day Classes/Severely Impaired classes are in District 5 and are the closure/merger list.
Sheryl Davis, a District 5 community activist who is working temporarily in Mirkarimi’s office stated this chilling fact-8% of SF’s population is African American but 54% of the population at the Youth Guidance Center is African American. She pointed out that closing schools in the Western Addition is not going to help that statistic. Cheryl also pointed out that parents in the Western Addition have to avoid crossing different gang’s turf boundaries in order to stay alive and by combing schools, the District is putting those parents (as well as students) into jeopardy.
Joan Livingston, a parent at New Traditions, talked about the impact of the closures to the overall community. Joan provided that the District itself shows that 48 of its schools are overenrolled and have more than 7,000 students than their permanent capacity are designed for (including Tenderloin which is two blocks from John Swett). (The information was found by John Swett ES teacher, Jeremiah Jeffries.) The District 5 schools are 700 students shy of meeting 100% capacity-and would welcome the students that the District have placed in overenrolled schools.
Supervisor Mirkarimi also spoke to the crowd. He stated that it was wonderful to see District 5 united together in reinforcing that there shouldn’t be any school closures. He predicted that this challenge will help to create a movement within District 5 to demand the services and resources that the School District and the City has taken away from D-5 residents. He also pointed out that the federal government was to blame in their cuts in education.
For the District’s school closure meeting, there were only 100 chairs set up in Ida B. Wells’ small auditorium. Ida B.’s principal, Ms. Claudia Anderson was taking chairs from the stage and setting them up to provide more seating.
Mary Richards, ISO (and former principal from Clarendon) and Orla O’Keefe, Chief Administrative Officer (former director, the Education Placement-the people who assign students to school) ran the meeting with Chris Hiroshima (assistant superintendent for elementary schools). One glaring error of the District was that SFUSD’s senior staff at the meeting didn’t reflect the diversity of District 5.
Mary Richards went through the handout given to everyone. The second slide gave the “fiscal content, ” which basically stated that the reason for the District’s deficit was due to new compensation costs for Local 790 and UESF.
The District finished their presentation by 7:15 p.m. and then announced that each school would get only ten minutes to speak. John Swett Elementary School was called up first and they kept to their time. But after Rosa Parks E.S. completed, a parent came up to speak. The District didn’t giver her a microphone-till the audience requested “to let her speak.” The mother then gave the microphone to other parent at Rosa Parks.
At that point, the District still use the ten minutes as a guide-but allowed the schools to go over. The speakers tended to be parents or teachers. Only John Muir used their most eloquent speakers/their students in a meaningful way to promote their message. Unfortunately, none of the schools had their key staff members from Local 790 speak.
Observations from remarks of the speakers:
1. There was unity among almost all of the speakers from each of the impacted schools that they didn’t want to just save their school-but all of the schools in District 5.
2. More strategies should be implemented on bringing more students into the schools-not shutting down schools to create overcrowding problems which will stop parents from bringing their students to SFUSD.
3. Biggest applause was given for “The District is not showing itself as a compassionate, supportive community when they schedule these meetings right before school ends and hold the meetings right after school begins. It doesn’t show that the District is a supportive, caring community when they schedule the deadline for school enrollment the day after the final vote for school closures is scheduled to be taken.”
4. Second biggest applause: “If the Mayor wants to make our City more family-friendly, then he should do more than schedule one free day at the City’s museums.”
Those in attendance included BOE President Eric Mar, School Commissioner Mark Sanchez, former Supervisor Sue Bierman, and President of “Parents for Public Schools” Lisa Schiff.
January 5th, 2006 at 9:53 am e
Thanks for the thorough report, Kim. Some comments, which I’m just tossing out into the general cyberatmosphere; they’re not directed at you, since you’re just reporting:
I sympathize with the school communities in question and would certainly be mobilizing support myself if I were in their shoes. However, Mirkarimi and this aide Cheryl seem to be blundering around tossing out notions of solutions — implying that it’s all so easy if that stupid school district just did things their way — with no clue about the situation, the background or the details. I think that’s irresponsible and reckless.
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This comment implies that this person thinks it’s the norm and the ideal for students in low-income, high-crime neighborhoods to attend the closest school. Is she unaware that various aspects of the district’s assignment plan provide for — and even encourage — students in low-income neighborhoods to attend schools outside their neighborhood, and have done so for many years? That’s originally based on an NAACP lawsuit, of course. Many advocates of diversity in education, including Jonathan Kozol and Gary Orfield, strongly encourage interdistrict busing that even encourages students in a disadvantaged neighborhood like the Western Addition to attend schools in nearby, high-income suburbs. It sounds like this person had very little information or understanding about current school assignment processes or practices for promoting equity and diversity in schools.
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Does Mirkarimi feel that students should be shifted from school to school to even out the student population without any parental say in the matter? Is he unaware that parents are actually extremely vocal about wanting a choice in what schools their children attend, and that the school district’s assignment process is designed to accommodate that as much as possible? Is he aware the school district is under constant fire for not being able to accommodate parental choice in every case, and that it is constantly accused of driving families away to private school because of that? Given all that, how can he endorse shifting kids from school to school without taking parental choice into account? If he isn’t aware of that entire situation, it’s irresponsible for him to stand there in complete ignorance making recommendations. And what are Mirkarimi’s solutions to the combination of dropping enrollment and desperately short funds?
I wish I had an easy solution for addressing the issue of budget crises and declining enrollment without closing schools, and I don’t. Nobody does. But I think its irresponsible for uninformed outsiders in high-profile official positions to declaim about it without sufficient information or alternative solutions.
January 5th, 2006 at 2:59 pm e
There’s less money to spend.
The real focus is on Mar and Sanchez. Will they assume the responsibility for making the tough decisions? What do they think is possible? Can they work with others or have they made that impossible?
We now know that Mirkarimi can assume a pose among his constituents.
People in all of the supervisorial districts will be affected and at each of the public meetings, most of the speakers from the impacted schools will state that they wish to save not only their own particular school but all of the schools represented at that particular meeting.
The real focus is on Mar and Sanchez.
January 5th, 2006 at 4:52 pm e
I am curious. Are there any parents who want their school closed? I see that parents from Daniel Webster have started a blog: www.savewebster.com and I am guessing they’re not the last.
January 5th, 2006 at 10:39 pm e
No, parents are fairly universal in not wanting their child’s school closed. After all, they have the most important investment in the school. They have rearranged their lives to gt their most important investment to the school every day. And they need to ensure that their child is in a safe environment-very important to any parent.