San Francisco Looks to Shut Several Schools Due to Budget Issues and Lower Enrollment
“As enrollment declined in San Francisco over the years, the district has maintained the same number of facilities.”
This should be a wake up call to the people of San Francisco, but it probably won’t be.
FOX News reports:
San Francisco announces school shutdowns amid budget, enrollment woes: ‘We must have fewer schools’
San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) is looking to shut down several schools due to a budget deficit and a decline in student enrollment.
“We must have fewer schools than we do now. We realize this is difficult to hear,” SFUSD superintendent Matt Wayne announced in a video released on Saturday. “No one wants to think about their school or any school closing its doors, us included. But by having fewer schools, we can concentrate our resources and enhance programs, teacher support and student services.”
How many and which of the 112 schools in the district would close has not yet been determined, Wayne told the San Francisco Chronicle.
The Chronicle was able to interview Wayne before he announced the details at an annual school planning summit.
“Wayne, however, never used the word ‘closure,’ instead saying the district was undergoing ‘resource alignment’ and there would be a process to ‘create a new portfolio’ with ‘fewer schools,’” the Chronicle reported.
As enrollment declined in San Francisco over the years, the district has maintained the same number of facilities.
“Our plan includes multiple phases of community engagement to ensure your voice is heard. We’ve also included external equity checks to ensure no community or student group is disproportionately affected,” Wayne said during the announcement.
In recent years, the school district has reportedly faced numerous challenges, ranging from a severe financial crisis, staff shortages and a decline in enrollment. According to local ABC affiliate, the school district had 53,000 students in 2012, but it dropped to 49,000 students in 2023.
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Comments
Where is the support from businesses? Businesses should be rushing to adopt these schools because the students are going to become their future customers.
If I were a business owner, I’d be more concerned about having an educated work force. These days, customers can be almost anywhere, but your employees need to be where the work gets done.
What students? Part of the problem is the lack of students.. People, families are fleeing..
CA state teacher union putting itself out of business with pay demands. lol
This is not a new problem, they tried to do it in the past and were stopped for the same reasons.
Maybe they can turn them into migrant shelters!
No citizenship verifciation for students. Free lunch provided. Why not let them sleep over there too?
Families leaving the city because of the rampant crime, drugs, vagrants, and illegal alien gangs making sending kids to public school just plain downright dangerous. Couple all that with other problems caused by woke school district and city policies that are ineffective at solving any of those problems. Is it any wonder that families who can afford it are turning to home schooling for all of those reasons plus the DEI/CRT indoctrination snuck in the back door by the teachers’ unions and other activists more intent on virtue signaling than on educating?
Having RV Travel as a hobby, I’ve visited my share of small towns “gentrified” by the artsy-craftsy intelligentsia: Taos, Jerome, Bisbee, Sedona… In many of them, you find historic schools re-purposed as community centers, town offices, and so on (almost always “public” uses, almost never commercial). And it’s less of a disaster than you might imagine… because the needs of the community have morphed.
People to whom families and kids are central to their orientation have long since migrated (or been economically forced out) into the apron communities; grad-student types, well-off gays, hedonists, and the constitutionally single have replaced them. People who don’t have kids don’t need schools, any more than age-55+ trailer parks need playgrounds.
I don’t know San Francisco demographics outside of its florid reputation, but what are the chances that this is just the same old mechanism at work?