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San Francisco Unified School District

Bucking a punitive trend, San Francisco lets students own up to misdeeds instead of getting kicked out of school

Jeremy Adam Smith, SF Public Press — Dec 11 2011 - 1:45am

How one big-city district cut suspensions and expulsions — and why they may rise again

These articles were produced through a reporting collaboration with the Center for Public Integrity.

Instead of being kicked out for fighting, stealing, talking back or other disruptive behavior, public school students in San Francisco are being asked to listen to each other, write letters of apology, work out solutions with the help of parents and educators or engage in community service. All these practices fall under the umbrella of “restorative justice” — asking wrongdoers to make amends before resorting to punishment. The program launched in 2009 when the Board of Education asked schools to find alternatives to suspension and expulsion. In the previous seven years, suspensions in San Francisco spiked by 152 percent, to a total of 4,341 — mostly African Americans, who despite being one-tenth of the district made up half of suspensions and more than half of expulsions. But the data — along with interviews with parents, students and educators — reveal that progress so far is halting and uneven. Critics say that’s because the transition from punitive to restorative justice is underfunded and haphazardly evaluated. The resulting picture is a school-by-school patchwork, at best an unfinished project to reform the traditional juvenile discipline paradigm.

Across San Francisco region, expulsion rates and attitudes toward punishment vary widely

T.J. Johnston, SF Public Press — Dec 11 2011 - 1:43am

While there are many aspects of culture and politics that unite the nine counties of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of more than 7 million people, attitudes toward school discipline do not seem to be among them. What happens to students when they disrupt the classroom or commit crimes depends largely on where they live. That is because approaches to expulsion and suspension vary widely across school districts and across the region. While reforms such as restorative justice appear to coincide with decreases in expulsion rates across the region in the last year or two, school administrators at the county and local level have a wide range of views on the best ways to preserve order in schools after a student has misbehaved.

In second week of school, nearly 50 district staff still without jobs

Rosemary Macaulay, SF Public Press — Aug 25 2010 - 2:01pm

Even as classes began last week for San Francisco’s 55,000 public school students, nearly 50 teachers and other staff remained out of a job as the school district struggled to find openings to rehire them after a summer of budget cutting. Previously laid-off staff continued to get recall notices, with the most recent rehires announced Thursday. The majority of recalls were made in the last month. Still, eight teachers and 40 paraprofessionals remained laid off.

Prop. A looks to extend school parcel tax another 20 years

Theresa Seiger, SF Public Press — Jun 7 2010 - 4:25pm

Proposition A on Tuesday's ballot seeks to extend a 1990 parcel tax aimed at helping fund capital improvements in the San Francisco Unified School District. In addition to authorizing the tax for another 20 years, it would also allow it to be increased annually, up to 2 percent, based on inflation.

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Parents, teachers withhold signatures on SF school budgets

Jennifer Martinez, SF Public Press — Apr 15 2010 - 2:29pm

Amid a jarring education funding shortfall, committees of parents and teachers at two San Francisco schools are refusing to endorse the budgets for next school year, saying that signing off on them would excuse unacceptable cutbacks. The shrunken budgets that the San Francisco Unified School District is requiring would make class sizes larger. School site councils, introduced in the 1970s throughout California as a way to broaden involvement in school administration, have faced disagreement about whether they have any real say in spending choices.

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Lesson in SF grade schools: protest education cuts

Anna Rendall, SF Public Press — Mar 3 2010 - 11:31pm

On Thursday, San Francisco public school students as young as 5 will get a real-life learning experience about civic engagement — through protest. Students from kindergarten through college plan to convene at Market and Powell streets in the late afternoon to protest cuts to public education during a coordinated political action called the Rally for California’s Future. Several schools were planning to have students create picket signs in school. On Wednesday, students sat in the parent room at Sheridan Elementary School making signs and banners. But the school district, citing safety, put a stop to a plans for teachers to take students as a field trip.

Besides taxes, few solutions at town hall on education

Tabitha Harmon and Kristine Magnuson, SF Public Press — Feb 26 2010 - 5:55pm

The organizers of what was billed as a town hall-style meeting on education funding in the Marina Thursday said their intention was to have a conversation with the community about solutions to money woes for the coming school year. But the evening’s talk, moderated by Michael Krasny, host of KQED-FM’s “Forum,” fell short of those expectations for some parents, educators and others in attendance — as evidenced by booing and hissing that punctuated the meeting.

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