By Thomas K. Pendergast

Once again, the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) Board of Education is contemplating ending the “merit-based” admissions policy at Lowell High School, replacing it instead with the lottery system used by most high schools in the district.

A high school task force was set up after a resolution was passed in June 2022 and it began meeting in November of that year to look at ways to improve all the district’s high schools. One task force recommendation – changing Lowell admissions policy – has once again created a backlash.

In its final report, the task force recommended changes to the school’s admissions policy that align with one of two approaches:

1. Admit students to Lowell by lottery among those interested in attending.

2. Admit students to Lowell based on revised academic criteria (i.e., a minimum grade point average) … and invest in outreach to students who qualify. Maintain priority for students attending middle schools that historically send fewer students to Lowell.

The current “merit-based” system relies on a qualifying test, special application and essay, and reserves spots for students from underrepresented middle schools or those with minimum academic criteria and strong recommendations from middle school staff.

In a recent interview with Jill Tucker of the San Francisco Chronicle, Superintendent Dr. Matt Wayne stated that switching to a minimum 3.0 GPA would create a diverse group of students and would meet the criteria for admissions, ideally increasing the overall diversity at the school, which is now disproportionately white and Asian American.

At this point, the matter is up for discussion. No action has been taken by the school board. No changes to the admissions policy at Lowell or any other school would take place for the fall of 2024 and full implementation of a plan would likely take until June of 2027.

The “merit-based” admissions to Lowell were set aside during the pandemic in 2020 because schools were shut down and the disruption meant that all the usual qualifiers were suddenly nonexistent or inadequate.

In June of 2022, the same month that the school board recommended setting up the task force, it also brought back merit-based admissions with a 4-3 vote.

All four board members who voted to reinstate the merit-based system were appointed by Mayor London Breed, three of them replacing previous board members who were recalled in an election that focused on several decisions by those members, including changing the Lowell admissions policy.

Other actions by the board which fueled the recall included the failed efforts to destroy the Life of George Washington murals at his namesake high school in the Richmond District and the renaming of 44 district schools.

And like these other controversies, the idea of abandoning the merit-based system at Lowell has sparked an acrimonious backlash, especially from members of the Asian-American community.

At a rally in front of district headquarters during a recent school board meeting, Forrest Liu, a self-described “stop Asian-hate activist,” called out three members of the current school board, starting with Commissioner Mark Sanchez.

“As a middle school principal, (Sanchez) failed to get one of his students into Lowell. And what did he say? He said, ‘Lowell failed,’” Liu said. “Sanchez is a failure, and you cannot blame Lowell.”

“(Commissioner Matt Alexander) is a colonizer! He said that merit (based admission) is segregation. Merit is segregation. He is a colonizer!”

“(Board President Kevine Boggess) thinks there are too many Asians in SFUSD. Too many Asians! That is a slippery slope because when an Asian person is attacked on the street, when they are killed, who cares? Because there’s too many Asians. Kevin Boggess and the school board are racists. Kevin Boggess is a racist and should resign,” he said. “Sanchez is a failure and Alexander is a colonizer. SFUSD, do your job.”

In 2021, attorney Christine Linnenbach successfully sued the district for violating the California state open meetings law because the board failed to properly list the resolution on the agenda when it voted to switch to the lottery system, did not provide equal time to both sides during public comment nor give the public adequate time to review the proposal before the vote.

“I’m here to tell the San Francisco Unified School District: ‘We sued you before. We’re going to sue you again. And we’re going to win,’” Linnenbach said at the rally.

“We are tired of spending $500,000 – a hundred thousand dollars a page – for a sham task force, Trojan horse report to push a political agenda,” Linnenbach said. “Are we going to let that happen? No! We are not going to let that happen. We’re going to save merit.

“We want good schools that educate all students based on their individual performance, not this performative, parochial political agenda,” she said.

There is a documented history of race-related incidents at Lowell.

In 2016, about two dozen students walked out in protest after an offensive sign was posted on a window at the school’s library, which read “Happy Black History Month #Gang” and showed several hip-hop artists along with President Barack Obama. The students resented the word “Gang” being used in relation to Black History Month.

More recently, in January of 2021, an anti-racism lesson using an online bulletin program called Padlet was smeared by the use of anti-Black and anti-Semitic slurs, along with calling for the death of President Joe Biden.

At the Nov. 14 school board meeting, Sanchez gave his version of Lowell’s racist history.

“We have a history of making racist, racially charged decisions in this district,” Sanchez said. “And in the ‘90s, this district had a policy that allowed students to get into Lowell, if you’re African American you didn’t have to score as high as a white or Asian student. If you’re a Latino, same thing.

“Families filed a class-action lawsuit against the district based on that policy and they won. The district lost,” he said. “And so then the district was forced to come up with another policy.”

In 2001 the district adopted the merit-based policy for Lowell, formerly known as the “three-bands” system. This was around the same time Sanchez was first elected to the school board.

“It did not provide the diversity that we had sought,” Sanchez said. “And so, it’s been a sticking point for me. I taught in the district for years. I was a principal in the district for years. Part of the system of the bands was to provide every middle school with a Lowell committee that would try to get kids access into Lowell.

“When I became principal at Horace Mann (middle school), that committee didn’t exist. In my two years as principal at Horace Mann in the Mission District, not one of our students got into Lowell because we didn’t have that committee. Nor did we have the bandwidth or the wherewithal to get that committee going.”

Additionally, the merit-based policy might be illegal under California state law. Sanchez said he’s still “uncomfortable” with using GPA to determine entrance into Lowell.

“I still think that breaks the law. I think that does not comport with the state law, which says that comprehensive high schools cannot use academic requirements or athletic requirements for entrance.”

The California Education Code 35160.5 says schools must ensure “that selection of pupils to enroll in the school is made through a random, unbiased process that prohibits an evaluation of whether a pupil should be enrolled based upon the pupil’s academic or athletic performance.”

Yet that same code section says school districts “may employ existing entrance criteria for specialized schools or programs if the criteria are uniformly applied to all applicants.”

The district does not officially consider Lowell a “specialized” school, but rather a “comprehensive” school. However, if there is a lawsuit against the current admissions policy, it might be argued that because of its emphasis on stringent higher academic standards, the school is very much specialized.