S.F. parents are trying to start first K-8 Mandarin immersion charter school. It won't be easy

San Francisco Chronicle​

24-05-2025

Yunita Tjhai has always wanted her kids to be able to speak, read and write Mandarin. Unable to speak Chinese, the San Francisco mother of three, who grew up in Indonesia, regretted that she was never able to communicate with her monolingual Chinese-speaking grandparents.
She and her husband Brian Hollinger enrolled their kids in Mandarin-immersion daycare. The oldest child is now in first grade at one of San Francisco's only two Mandarin immersion public elementary schools.
Hollinger is concerned that the district has not met the growing demand for Mandarin immersion education and that SFUSD's turbulent financial situation might jeopardize his kids' Mandarin education.
'The district hasn't prioritized Mandarin immersion,' Hollinger said. 'They haven't expanded on it even as the city's demographics have changed, even as Mandarin immersion daycare has exploded, even as private school options have exploded.'
In March, Hollinger alongside two veteran educators and two other district parents, kickstarted an effort to create San Francisco's first K-8 Mandarin immersion public school, a charter school to be called ' Dragon Gate Academy.' Supporters say the school would address unmet demand and offer more continuity as well as efficient use of resources with students remaining at the same site for elementary and middle school.
'There's an opportunity for the board of education to say we recognize the demand,' Hollinger said. 'Let's deliver a win for these families. Let's deliver an alternative for them to take advantage of tuition-free public education through Mandarin immersion in a K-8 format.'
Hollinger said they have already gathered meaningful interest from almost 200 parents and teachers and are preparing to bring the charter petition to the San Francisco school board in the next couple months. They needed 77 prospective parents — 50% of the K-4 students expected for the first year — to sign the petition to be eligible.
The team will likely face an uphill endeavor to seek authorization from a school district that's historically been opposed to expanding the number of charter schools.
In the absence of the San Francisco Unified School District opening a K-8 Mandarin immersion school, Hollinger said he and other parents feel they have no choice but to serve unmet needs of hundreds of parents who couldn't secure one of the coveted K-5 spaces.
SFUSD has two Mandarin immersion elementary schools and one middle school. Both elementary schools have long waitlists for every grade for the upcoming school year.
With only 66 seats in the incoming Mandarin immersion kindergarten classes at Starr King and Jose Ortega elementary schools, about two-thirds of which are reserved for proficient speakers, parents say that's far from enough in a city where 22% of residents are Chinese and where Chinese languages are by far the most widely spoken after English.
'If you're thinking of equity, people who can afford Mandarin immersion daycare in preschool have a massive leg up in getting into Mandarin immersion,' said co-organizer Brian Grech, who has three boys in Mandarin immersion, two at Starr King and one in preschool, because their kids can test into the spots reserved for proficient speakers.
There were 174 kindergarten seats for immersion in Cantonese, the most common Chinese dialect spoken in San Francisco, at four elementary schools, which also have waitlists, and 163 for native Cantonese-speaking kindergarteners who may not speak English. By contrast, San Francisco Unified School District had almost 400 Spanish immersion kindergarten seats even though there are more than twice as many Chinese speakers with limited English proficiency in San Francisco than Spanish speakers with limited proficiency.
San Francisco Unified School District spokesperson Hong Mei Pang said the district is 'supportive of expanding SFUSD language immersion programs as a strategy to increase enrollment options for families while improving student learning and outcomes,' including the possibility of a Mandarin immersion K-8 school, and that the district is engaging experts to determine next steps.
District spokesperson Katrina Kincade said that an additional kindergarten classroom could fulfill the existing demand for the 2025-26 school year. She said there are vacant seats in the middle school Mandarin immersion program.
'Public school language immersion programs are a key priority for Superintendent Su,' Kincade wrote in a statement as they 'strengthen enrollment in SFUSD.'
Kincade said as the district prepares for the upcoming budget cycle, 'we will be sharing plans to enhance and grow our acclaimed immersion offerings.'
Hollinger said the idea that an extra kindergarten class could a meet the exploding demand for Mandarin immersion schools reflects the district's lack of understanding. Hollinger said numerous private Mandarin immersion schools are entering the market, including one called Hiba Academy opening in fall 2026, showing how high demand is.
Dragon Gate Academy would adopt a similar immersion model to SFUSD, where kindergarteners receive 80% of teaching in Mandarin and the rest in English, scaling down to 50% by fourth grade. Research has shown K-12 Mandarin immersion has enabled students to achieve extremely high levels of Mandarin proficiency while performing on par with or better than peers in English and math.
But a key difference is the K-8 throughline.
SFUSD's Mandarin immersion middle school, Aptos, is on the opposite side of the city from Starr King, one of its two immersion elementary schools, creating a 38-minute round trip drive that parents said is inefficient and impractical, especially if they have kids in both schools.
Grech's oldest son is expecting to enter sixth grade at Aptos next year. His middle child is at Starr King. Grech is bracing for a commute of over an hour, with traffic, from his home to each of his children's schools, putting his oldest on a long bus ride, or enrolling him in another middle school altogether
'It was obvious that the entire Mandarin immersion program, broadly, was an afterthought in the way it was constructed by SFUSD,' Grech said. 'While I'm very thankful all those programs exist, it should be rethought, in my mind, in a more coherent way that serves the interests of parents across all kinds of demographic groups and every single neighborhood and city.'
The organizers envisioned a centrally located school and proposed co-location with an existing, underused SFUSD school, paying rent to the district to share a building. Non-native speakers would have 41%of seats reserved for them. The goal, according to the charter petition, is to mirror the diversity of the district, through an open lottery admissions process with no quotas or preferential admissions and outreach to underserved communities.
Hollinger said he started having concerns when he heard in fall 2023 that the Mandarin immersion teacher for seventh and eighth graders at Aptos Middle School had resigned at the start of the school year.
'That was the first, 'Oh my gosh,'' Hollinger said. 'What is the path for the kids if the district isn't supporting the program enough to get a teacher?'
It would be months before the position was filled, said Sherry Lin, a parent of two Aptos middle schoolers, who organized parents at the time. From September until March, Lin said her seventh-grade daughter was taught by a rotating cast of substitutes, including many that Lin said did not speak Mandarin proficiently.
'It took the wind out of their sails,' Lin said.
The proposed charter school will have to be supported by a majority of the school board, which can, by law, reject it for a host of reasons, including that the district is not positioned to absorb the financial impact of the proposed charter school.
Dragon Gate Academy will likely face opposition, especially from the teacher's union, which opposed expanding charter schools in its public education pledge. At least four current San Francisco school board members are listed as having signed it. Neither the union nor the school board members responded to a request for comment.
Charter opponents say charter schools siphon funding away from district schools as they attract students who would otherwise have enrolled in district schools. California state funding for schools is allocated on a per pupil basis — about $22,000 per student.
Hollinger has argued that Dragon Gate Academy could attract some students who otherwise would have left the district to enter private schools or move out of San Francisco, and therefore doesn't subtract from the district's coffers as much as opponents might think.
One such parent is Kailee Boyce, who has two kids in Mandarin immersion preschool and an eight-month-old baby. Neither she nor her husband are or speak Chinese, but they wanted to give their children the benefits of language immersion, including cognitive benefits and cultural exposure.
Her older daughter's first word was in Mandarin. ' Gou,' she had said, seemingly pointing to the sidewalk, Boyce recalled. Her daughter was pointing at the dogs on the sidewalk.
'My son was like, 'No Mommy, she means dog, you don't know Chinese,'' Boyce recalled. 'I felt just proud.'
But when she started researching elementary Mandarin immersion schools for her four-year-old, she said a parent at Jose Ortega told her that unless they had a sibling already enrolled, the chances of getting in were almost zero. Starr King, located in Potrero Hill, is a 25-minute drive from her younger children's Sunset District daycare. It wouldn't be logistically possible, she said.
She's betting on Dragon Gate Academy to succeed.
'If the charter school doesn't get traction,' Boyce said, 'I think we would probably leave San Francisco.'