28-03-2025
‘Least restrictive environment:' San Francisco schools strengthening special education services
SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — San Francisco Unified School District officials said they are taking steps to strengthen its systems and structures for serving students who receive Special Education services.
Special Education services are bound by state and federal mandates to ensure students eligible for special education have 'meaningful access to general education in the least restrictive environment to meet their unique needs,' district officials wrote.
While SFUSD has experienced trends of declining enrollment in the past five years, Special Education enrollment has increased. In 2023-24, nearly 14% of SFUSD's 49,000 students in TK-12th grades were identified as requiring Special Education services.
SFUSD is both a school district and a county office of education. SFUSD employs nearly 500 teachers and over 1,300 paraeducators who work directly with students receiving Special Education services.
The Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT) conducted a review of the public school district's special education services in fall 2024 by interviewing key SFUSD staff and evaluating SFUSD's SpEd procedures, data and processes.
Based off FCMAT's review of special education services within the district, SFUSD is implementing several action items, including:
Increasing Accountability and Oversight
'SFUSD will be working to further define the distinction between district and county programming, with a specific emphasis on strengthening strategies and programming for students who have more extensive support needs, such as those in Special Day Classes (SDC) or county-level services. SFUSD's goal is to better address these students' needs within our schools and transition students back from Non-Public Schools (NPS) whenever possible,' district officials wrote.
Hiring and Retaining Special Education Staff
'For the first time in recent memory, SFUSD is preparing to post positions for occupational and physical therapists, aiming to hire directly for roles that have primarily been filled through contracted services. Additionally, SFUSD is organizing hiring fairs, recruitment events and pursuing a supplemental grant for the Urban Teacher Residency Program, with a specific focus on Special Education teacher credentials,' SFUSD officials wrote.
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Strengthening the Continuum of Special Education Services
District officials wrote, 'Through cross-departmental efforts, SFUSD is working to address the significant disproportionality of African American students referred for Special Education services. SFUSD highlighted the need to strengthen site- level tiers of support, Student Success Team structures, and interventions that are already in place across schools within general education.'
Improving Data Systems
'SFUSD is focused on improving data systems to better inform decision-making and planning. As a result of this process, the team is beginning to organize more accurate, robust, usable data sets related to programming, staffing, caseloads, class sizes, and other data sets that were previously challenging to access,' district officials wrote.
FCMAT and SFUSD will discuss the report at the April 8 Board of Education meeting.
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