Single mother Veronica Garcia attends City College full-time and works a part-time job that pays $12 an hour. On those wages, she can’t afford rent in San Francisco, so she and her two daughters share a bedroom in her parents’ house.“It’s pretty crowded,” she said. “As much as I love San Francisco, I’m now forced to look at other cities to live in.”Garcia offered herself as an example to city supervisors Thursday as they explored the issue of family flight in a hearing of the Government Audit and Oversight Committee. Read More

San Francisco Unified School District has backed away from its decision to cancel transitional kindergarten, a program for children whose Fifth birthdays come after a new cutoff date for entering school. But the new plan has drawn criticism from parents. In January, after Gov. Jerry Brown proposed to cut funding for the state-mandated program, the district said it would scrap it. But Tuesday, district officials announced they would offer it at two early-education schools: Havard in the Bayview and McClaren in Visitacion Valley. Read More

Black and Latino students are disciplined more often than white and Asian students, according to national data released Tuesday by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights Tuesday.The data, from 2009, showed a similar pattern in San Francisco, where black students represented less than 12 percent of enrollment but 60 percent of expelled students and more than 42 percent of out-of-school suspensions. Read More

Two months after the Tenderloin Health Clinic announced its impending closure, the Department of Public Health has assembled a plan for the 3,000 poor and homeless San Franciscans who use its services. The clinic — which provides health care, HIV prevention and housing assistance services — said in January funding shortfalls were forcing it to close. The fate of the clinic’s clients, many of whom have HIV or AIDS, had remained uncertain until Friday’s announcement. Read More

The surprise loss of $3.6 million in funding has forced City College of San Francisco officials to cancel nearly 100 classes mid-semester and furlough some employees for up to 15 days.Jeffrey Fang, who represents the college’s 90,000 students on the board of trustees, said his classmates were upset that so many courses were cancelled after they had already bought books and attended class for weeks. Some would miss out on the credits they need to transfer to a four-year-school, he said. Read More

San Francisco's teachers union has slammed the school board’s decision to issue layoff notices to nearly 500 employees while setting aside seniority to save jobs at 14 schools in the Mission and the Bayview. “It’s arbitrary; it’s based on geography,” Dennis Kelly, president of United Educators of San Francisco, said of Tuesday’s decision by the board. The board is legally obligated to notify employees of potential layoffs by March 15. In previous years, the district’s financial picture improved, and most layoffs were rescinded by the time a final budget was approved. Read More