Last year, the San Francisco Unified School District announced a system to make it easier for schoolchildren to attend a school of their choice — and possibly closer to their home.
But things didn’t turn out that way.
Just 56 percent of families received their first choice, down from 62 percent in 2010.
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With a June special election focused on tax extensions looking less and less likely, the possibility of hundreds of San Francisco teachers being laid off has increased.On March 1, the district announced it could lay off 473 teachers, aides and administrators before the coming school year, or about 8 percent of that workforce. By state law, the district must give pink slips to anyone it intends to dismiss by May 15.
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School officials have been enrolling students for years, but the district finally got around to defining what it means to be a resident of The City.
The new policy, which was approved by the Board of Education on Tuesday, is aimed at addressing a long-standing problem with families using false addresses to register for city schools.
“[It’s] something we’ve been struggling with a bit,” said Norman Yee, vice president of the school board. “Over the years, we’ve found a large number of people don’t live in San Francisco.”
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Across California, more students than ever are eligible for free and reduced-price meals at school, but fewer kids are taking advantage of the service — particularly for breakfast.
San Francisco public school officials are trying to address the trend by making it easier for students to get meals.
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Three-quarters of schools nationwide will fail next year under the standards of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
Federal officials, though, hope to change the law before that happens.
Nationally, the Department of Education estimates the number of schools failing will jump from nearly 40 percent this year to 82 percent next year. For 2009-10, only 48 percent of city schools met the federal standards.
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For more than three decades, the San Francisco Unified School District has placed students in schools based on socioeconomic factors, no matter where in The City the child lived.
Instead of attending a school down the street, a student could be bused across town in the name of district diversity.
Many parents were frustrated with the old system, which was created in the 1980s following a class-action lawsuit that charged that students were being assigned in such a way that created racially segregated schools.
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More than 200 students, staff and community members protested around the Saint Ignatius Church on the University of San Francisco’s campus Thursday in hopes of saving the Upward Bound program.Upward Bound, which is a federally funded program to help low-income and at risk teens prepare for college, will no longer be housed at the university after August 2012.University officials said the program can no longer continue on campus because of a “severe space crunch.”According to a released statement from the University, officials do not see an easy solution.
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A measure allowing a pay raise for members of the Board of Education will go before voters in June if a special election is called.
The cost of any raise, however, would be borne by the financially struggling San Francisco Unified School District.
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San Francisco’s Department of Public Works and the San Francisco Public Library received two Project of the Year awards in a ceremony on Thursday.The awards were given by the Northern California Chapter of the American Public Works Association for the recent renovations of the Bernal Heights Branch and the Eureka Valley/Harvey Milk Memorial Branch libraries.Both facilities won under the category of Historic Restoration/Preservation and the two will now be considered for national awards, according to the Department of Public Works.
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The University of California, San Francisco, has received its largest estate gift ever with a $48 million bequest from the estate of Nina Ireland, a longtime supporter of the school, UC San Francisco announced in a statement Monday.The bequest will benefit pulmonary medicine research at the campus furthering the university’s leadership in the study and treatment of pulmonary conditions, such as interstitial lung disease and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, they said.
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