We were at Grattan in 2006 when it was on the merger list. Back then it was a title one school. People would get assigned there and then get upset. You could only list 7 elementary programs ( and this meant even if the program was in the same school. So general ed and immersion at a school was 2 slots).
The diversity index lottery was if you added diversity to the community. Which was socioeconomic. We added diversity to Grattan because we were not disadvantaged. We listed it first and EPC said nobody did that and we wouldn't have a problem. We didn't.
What happened to change the demographic is a story of PTA ( I'm part of this) marketing and panic. I put up a website before a lot of schools had one. And we had a person who was a great graphic designer who created brochures and helped with the look of the site.
Back then there were a lot of small mom and pop enrollment fairs in upper middle class areas and we would take our show on the road. Because we wanted to increase enrollment.
The unintended consequence was the slow erosion of diversity. Then it became a self fulfilling prophecy.
I /We made a lot of mistakes in the panic to avoid closings/merger. I would do some things differently.
> will the district just modify attendance areas to account for the school closures or will it roll out the new elementary school assignment zones at the same time as all the closure announcements?
They will not roll out new zones. I believe a district presentation in the past month or so indicated that they will simply use the current system with a modified Attendance Area map (presumably to account for closed Attendance Area schools). The new zone system would have eliminated Attendance Areas and grouped multiple schools into zones. I suspect that the new zones have not been drawn at all, and certainly not in any shape to be rolled out. They had been working on them for years, and I imagine that once school closings started being rumored, they stopped work.
The attendance area policy never rolled out because it's a financial impossibility given the District's other objectives. Given residential segregation patterns in the city, you can't have diverse schools if you restrict kids to reasonable neighborhoods. The way around this is noncompact, awkwardly-shaped zones, which then require busing. The District doesn't have the wherewithal to pay for the significant increase in transit need, so the new assignment areas are DOA. They've been pushed half a decade in 1-2 year increments for a reason.
I really appreciate this analysis and breakdown. Could you move your vacation so we can get a quicker turn around time on the next analysis? (kidding, kind of).
I am certain this will end up being one of the more shared posts within the elementary school groups. Particularly among those you deemed higher likelihood to close. This is just going to be a mess all around.
Can someone explain why closing schools is bad when there are significant declines in the student population? I live in Chicago, and there are dramatically fewer students today. People were angry when schools were closed, but it was obscene to pay so much for empty buildings. Furthermore, who wants their children to be in a poorly-staffed school with a handful of other children?
With fewer schools, there is more money and a greater concentration of students to offer more to students. Senseless costs in facilities maintenance, heat, electricity, and even general admin expenses can be cut to the benefit of the students. Everyone wins.
Why are people upset when schools are closed? I have heard that some people are partial to their public high school and are sad when its closes (perhaps they still go to the football games???), but why elementary schools? Furthermore, are there any downsides? I cannot think of any. School closings benefit the students in every way. I cannot understand why there is resistance.
similarly the data on SFC is incorrect: according to the most recent NCES report SFC is 75% BIPOC and has guaranteed free K-5 aftercare. SFC’s K-5 is 98% enrolled. SFC was the first small-on-purpose school in SFUSD and the only project-based learning site.
What data is incorrect? I never used the term BIPOC because it's not useful in a district that is, using your definition of everything-except-White, 86% BIPOC. I did say that it had fewer disadvantaged students than its neighbors, which is true. You can look up all the data here:
I presume your statement that "SFC's K-5 is 98% enrolled" means that the average teacher's class is 98% full. That may be true but it's not the point I was making. The capacity number comes from SFUSD. It's the number of students that the building could handle if every classroom was used, not the number of students that can be supported with the current staff.
The data for McKinley is incorrect. Too bad the data wasn’t checked. It is at 99% capacity. The school was right sized to have 2 classes at each grade level (instead of 3) to make room for a TK and 2 SDC classes.
What data is incorrect? The capacity number comes directly from SFUSD. It's the capacity of the building, not the capacity of the current staffing. The capacity at current staffing levels is irrelevant to the discussion. Its capacity is 418 whether it has two classes per grade level or three. Looking at current enrollment as a percentage of the building's capacity allows us to see where there is unused space. If some other schools close, McKinley could be "right-sized" back to 3 classes per grade level again.
I do agree that the capacity % is not a good measure of a school's popularity because the district's actions in reducing classes per grade level at some schools and opening TK classes at other schools have biased the signals. Of the criteria the district is using, the kindergarten application one is the best measure of popularity but it's not ideal. If I'd had a voice, I'd have given heavy weight to something like the percentage of children retained from one grade to the next. The people already attending a school are the best judges of whether it's working well.
We were at Grattan in 2006 when it was on the merger list. Back then it was a title one school. People would get assigned there and then get upset. You could only list 7 elementary programs ( and this meant even if the program was in the same school. So general ed and immersion at a school was 2 slots).
The diversity index lottery was if you added diversity to the community. Which was socioeconomic. We added diversity to Grattan because we were not disadvantaged. We listed it first and EPC said nobody did that and we wouldn't have a problem. We didn't.
What happened to change the demographic is a story of PTA ( I'm part of this) marketing and panic. I put up a website before a lot of schools had one. And we had a person who was a great graphic designer who created brochures and helped with the look of the site.
Back then there were a lot of small mom and pop enrollment fairs in upper middle class areas and we would take our show on the road. Because we wanted to increase enrollment.
The unintended consequence was the slow erosion of diversity. Then it became a self fulfilling prophecy.
I /We made a lot of mistakes in the panic to avoid closings/merger. I would do some things differently.
> will the district just modify attendance areas to account for the school closures or will it roll out the new elementary school assignment zones at the same time as all the closure announcements?
They will not roll out new zones. I believe a district presentation in the past month or so indicated that they will simply use the current system with a modified Attendance Area map (presumably to account for closed Attendance Area schools). The new zone system would have eliminated Attendance Areas and grouped multiple schools into zones. I suspect that the new zones have not been drawn at all, and certainly not in any shape to be rolled out. They had been working on them for years, and I imagine that once school closings started being rumored, they stopped work.
Thanks for pointing that out. I must have missed it.
The attendance area policy never rolled out because it's a financial impossibility given the District's other objectives. Given residential segregation patterns in the city, you can't have diverse schools if you restrict kids to reasonable neighborhoods. The way around this is noncompact, awkwardly-shaped zones, which then require busing. The District doesn't have the wherewithal to pay for the significant increase in transit need, so the new assignment areas are DOA. They've been pushed half a decade in 1-2 year increments for a reason.
Excellent point . Check out voteformin.com and come to meet her and discuss
I really appreciate this analysis and breakdown. Could you move your vacation so we can get a quicker turn around time on the next analysis? (kidding, kind of).
I am certain this will end up being one of the more shared posts within the elementary school groups. Particularly among those you deemed higher likelihood to close. This is just going to be a mess all around.
Can someone explain why closing schools is bad when there are significant declines in the student population? I live in Chicago, and there are dramatically fewer students today. People were angry when schools were closed, but it was obscene to pay so much for empty buildings. Furthermore, who wants their children to be in a poorly-staffed school with a handful of other children?
With fewer schools, there is more money and a greater concentration of students to offer more to students. Senseless costs in facilities maintenance, heat, electricity, and even general admin expenses can be cut to the benefit of the students. Everyone wins.
Why are people upset when schools are closed? I have heard that some people are partial to their public high school and are sad when its closes (perhaps they still go to the football games???), but why elementary schools? Furthermore, are there any downsides? I cannot think of any. School closings benefit the students in every way. I cannot understand why there is resistance.
similarly the data on SFC is incorrect: according to the most recent NCES report SFC is 75% BIPOC and has guaranteed free K-5 aftercare. SFC’s K-5 is 98% enrolled. SFC was the first small-on-purpose school in SFUSD and the only project-based learning site.
https://nces.ed.gov/globallocator/sch_info_popup.asp?Type=Public&ID=063441005663
What data is incorrect? I never used the term BIPOC because it's not useful in a district that is, using your definition of everything-except-White, 86% BIPOC. I did say that it had fewer disadvantaged students than its neighbors, which is true. You can look up all the data here:
https://dq.cde.ca.gov/dataquest/dqcensus/EnrCharterSub.aspx?cds=38684786093488&agglevel=School&year=2023-24&ro=y
I presume your statement that "SFC's K-5 is 98% enrolled" means that the average teacher's class is 98% full. That may be true but it's not the point I was making. The capacity number comes from SFUSD. It's the number of students that the building could handle if every classroom was used, not the number of students that can be supported with the current staff.
The data for McKinley is incorrect. Too bad the data wasn’t checked. It is at 99% capacity. The school was right sized to have 2 classes at each grade level (instead of 3) to make room for a TK and 2 SDC classes.
What data is incorrect? The capacity number comes directly from SFUSD. It's the capacity of the building, not the capacity of the current staffing. The capacity at current staffing levels is irrelevant to the discussion. Its capacity is 418 whether it has two classes per grade level or three. Looking at current enrollment as a percentage of the building's capacity allows us to see where there is unused space. If some other schools close, McKinley could be "right-sized" back to 3 classes per grade level again.
I do agree that the capacity % is not a good measure of a school's popularity because the district's actions in reducing classes per grade level at some schools and opening TK classes at other schools have biased the signals. Of the criteria the district is using, the kindergarten application one is the best measure of popularity but it's not ideal. If I'd had a voice, I'd have given heavy weight to something like the percentage of children retained from one grade to the next. The people already attending a school are the best judges of whether it's working well.
What public records did Philippe Marchand request and get? Is there a link to that data?
Thank you for all your analysis on this subject!
He has uploaded it here:
https://pmarchand1.github.io/sfusd_data/