Parents Deserve Better

Ask any parent in the Sunset what the most stressful months of the year are, and many will give you the same answer: the months between submitting their public school application and finding out where their child got placed. It is a strange thing to put families through, and stranger still that it has not changed.

That stress is not a glitch. It is the school assignment system working as designed. Families rank schools across the entire city, an algorithm sorts the results and you find out where your child landed. For some families it works out. For many others, it means a kindergartner commuting across town while a neighbor’s child walks to the school down the block.

I grew up in the Sunset. When I was in elementary school, my younger brother and I waited every morning in front of Jefferson Elementary at Irving Street and 19th Avenue for a bus to take us to DeAvila Elementary, in the Haight. Even though Jefferson Elementary was right there, we had to go to school in a neighborhood halfway across the City.

San Francisco is one of the only places in America where this is normal. In most school districts in the country, a child’s neighborhood school is the default. But here, proximity is one factor among many, and not the strongest one. The result is that children on the same block, sometimes in the same building, can be scattered to schools in opposite corners of the City.

I hear about it constantly in the Sunset, because this district has one of the highest concentrations of public school families anywhere in San Francisco, and our neighborhood schools are among the fullest. The practical effects are not abstract. They are longer commutes and harder mornings. They are working parents trying to make two drop-offs in two directions before clocking in. They are families who would volunteer at their school, know their child’s teachers and build friendships with other parents nearby, if only their school was nearby.

A school assignment system should not make family life harder than it already is. It should offer something basic: a reasonable expectation that your child can attend a good public school close to home.

Here is the part that frustrates me most. This is not a new idea. The San Francisco Board of Education adopted a more neighborhood-oriented assignment policy in 2020. We are most of the way through this decade, and families are still in the same lottery system. Every year that passes is another kindergarten class that goes through the old structure, while the new one sits on a shelf.

This is not about taking choice away from families. Choice matters. Any good system keeps real options open, including the language immersion and special programs that so many Sunset families value. What a neighborhood-oriented system adds is predictability. A parent should be able to sign a lease, or decide whether they can afford to stay in this City and know what their realistic school options actually are. That certainty is the entire point.

While the Board of Supervisors does not run the school district, and does not get to vote on how students are assigned, the City and the school district are equally invested in whether our public schools work for the families who depend on them. My job is to make sure District 4 families are heard in this decision, not informed of it after it is made.

I am asking the school district for two things:

First, deliver the neighborhood-oriented system the board already committed to in 2020. If parts of that policy need to be fixed to actually guarantee families a school near home, then fix them and move forward. The technical challenges are real, but they cannot become one more reason to wait another four years.

Second, do not leave families in the dark again. The district’s current target is the 2028-29 school year, three years out. The families I represent have learned to be cautious about district timelines. The original policy was supposed to take effect in 2022-23. It has slipped three times. Between 2020 and mid-May, families heard essentially nothing from the district about where this policy stood. A timeline only matters if it is paired with regular, visible community engagement: clear milestones families can watch, real input from parents and educators inside the system and honest updates when something changes. That is what makes a target real instead of a placeholder.

The families in this neighborhood have been remarkably patient. For years, they have raised this at every meeting, in every survey, for years, and they have kept showing up. That patience should not be mistaken for indifference. It should be taken as exactly what it is: a community that cares deeply about its public schools and is still waiting for the system to reciprocate.

I will keep pushing on this. I want to hear from you. Email my office, come to a community meeting, tell me what your family has lived through. These stories are what I carry into the rooms where these decisions get made.

Supervisor Alan Wong represents District 4 on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Reach his office at wongstaff@sfgov.org or 415-554-7460.