Facing another year of funding cuts, the Board of Education will vote tonight on whether to issue preliminary layoff notices to 450 teachers, administrators and staff.The board is legally obligated to notify employees of potential layoffs by March 15. In previous years, the majority of layoffs were rescinded by the time the board voted on a final budget. Read More
At George Washington Carver Elementary in the Bayview, children don’t just learn reading and math. They also get therapy, counseling, asthma screenings and access to a weekly food pantry.“You talk about the achievement gap, but you also have to look at the health disparities,” said Principal Natasha Flint-Moore. “It’s not just the cognitive development, it’s the mental and behavioral health. It’s really looking at the whole child now.” Read More
Last May, The City’s public schools completed a network connecting them to the Internet at more than 650 times their former speed. Today, almost every school district building is plugged into a citywide ring of fiber optic cable. “We’re finally in the 21st century,” said Erik Heinrich, the San Francisco Unified School District’s director of technology infrastructure.But many schools can’t say the same thing about the computers they use to connect to their new network. Read More
Students at Lowell High School, San Francisco’s elite public magnet, are known for spending long hours on their studies. But members of the robotics team have recently taken that dedication a step further. “They work until 10, they come home and start homework at 11-ish,” marveled Christina Lee, whose son, Justin, is on the team. “They’re back at school at 7:30. You see how much passion it takes.” Read More
When new immigrants with young children arrive in San Francisco, they find schools that bear little resemblance to ones in other countries. Here, parents have a say in how their children are educated — but they also must act as advocates for their kids in a diverse school district governed by multiple tiers of administrators and committees. Read More
After hearing impassioned pleas from the students and faculty of Leadership High School, the Board of Education voted unanimously Tuesday night to renew the school’s charter for another five years.Leadership, near Balboa Park, has held its charter for 15 years, but its reauthorization was uncertain after it appeared on a list of 10 such schools that the California Charter Schools Association recommended for closure in December. Read More
Parents who had planned to enroll their children in transitional kindergarten turned out at a meeting of the school board Tuesday night to protest the district’s decision to cancel the program for kids whose fifth birthdays fall after a new school entrance cutoff date.“It’s very disheartening; it’s very frustrating,” said James Taylor, the father of a 4-year-old. Read More
Hoover Middle School sprawls over three stories on a hillside in the Inner Sunset. The children who arrive here for sixth grade come from as far away as the Richmond and the Bayview. Some need special education, while some are gifted. Some went to bilingual elementary schools, and some are still learning English. But they all have one thing in common, says Principal Thomas Graven. Read More
Overseeing special education at a big city school district isn’t easy. Elizabeth Blanco, who took over last week as San Francisco Unified School District’s assistant superintendent for special education, will manage a system struggling to improve after years of complaints, violations and turnover. Read More
The former top lawyer at the San Francisco Unified School District has taken a job at a Los Angeles law firm with which the district contracted for hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal work in recent years, according to an announcement by the firm, Meyers Nave. Read More
