Latest news with #SFUSD
San Francisco Chronicle
16-07-2025
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
Anonymous benefactor helps SFUSD open new Mandarin immersion school
An anonymous benefactor will help spur San Francisco public schools to expand Chinese language programs in the district, including the opening of a new Mandarin immersion school for students in the fall of 2027, district officials announced Wednesday. The school will serve kindergarten through eighth grade students, with the location to be determined down the road, Superintendent Maria Su said. 'The desire to strengthen SFUSD's language program offerings is something I've consistently heard from families,' Su told the Chronicle. 'It's clear that multilingual education is a top priority for our community.' Before the school can open, the first priority is creating a Chinese bilingual teacher pipeline to support Mandarin and Cantonese language programs to ensure there are certified educators ready to step into all the district's immersion classrooms, Su told the Chronicle. Currently, there are only a few hundred bilingual Chinese language teachers qualified to teach in California, she added, and the district will be working with San Francisco State University and with existing district staff to help boost those numbers and ensure there are qualified educators well into the future. 'I am thrilled to take SFUSD's multilingual education to the next level, starting with our Chinese language immersion programs,' Su said in a statement. 'This plan will build on a strong foundation to cultivate the next generation of bilingual teachers and expand our language programs so that every SFUSD student has the skills to unlock opportunities no matter where they are in the world.' Su said she will be expanding and strengthening the language programs 'in partnership with families, not for families.' 'This has to reflect the voices, values and strength of the families we're serving,' she said. Former San Francisco principal Liana Szeto, who opened the first Chinese immersion public school in the country, will head up the effort as Su's special advisor to create the new school, officials said. The benefactor's funding will pay for Szeto's contract, which is the only cost so far associated with the effort. District officials did not disclose how much the donor was contributing to the plan overall. Szeto opened Alice Fong Yu Alternative School in 2000 and served as its principal until this year, when she retired. She will start in the district role in January. A wide body of research has shown that non-English language immersion enables students to achieve a high level of proficiency in another language while performing on par with or better than peers in English and math. Alice Fong Yu students have consistently outperformed the district and state in English and math, according to state data. Currently, only three SFUSD schools offer Mandarin immersion programs, with just 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. Every grade at those two schools has a long waiting list for the upcoming school year. SFUSD parents have said 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. Another four elementary schools offer Cantonese immersion programs, with additional dual language programs in Spanish and Korean. The announcement of the pending new district school comes less than two weeks before a scheduled school board vote on a petition to open a Chinese immersion charter school in San Francisco, a grassroots effort by parents frustrated at the lack of Mandarin immersion seats in district schools. The proposed charter, Dragon Gate Academy, would also be a K-8 Mandarin immersion public school, with almost 200 parents and teachers already expressing interest, organizers said. District officials said they were prepared to follow the legal process related to the charter application. 'We're deeply grateful to the benefactor whose generosity is providing the resources to help us turn this shared vision into reality,' Su said. 'At the same time, we remain fully committed to providing all charter school petitioners with a fair, thorough, and impartial review process, as outlined in California Education Code.'
Axios
30-06-2025
- Politics
- Axios
SF schools to replace ethnic studies curriculum amid backlash
The San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) is overhauling its ethnic studies curriculum to add what superintendent Maria Su called "guardrails" in a Monday interview. Why it matters: San Francisco high schools' ethnic studies classes, which started as an elective in 2010, became the target of controversy in recent months as some parents accused the district of peddling division and promoting antisemitism, among other concerns. Driving the news: SFUSD will opt for an off-the-shelf package instead of its home-grown curriculum starting this August. There will be an audit of current materials, and the school board will have to sign off before the district officially adopts another curriculum. The year-long ethnic studies course requirement for freshmen, first implemented last year, will remain in place, though students can choose to waive it. What they're saying: "There is general consensus that ethnic studies as a course is really important," but the district's curriculum has evolved to include lessons that don't reflect its "true tenets," Su told the San Francisco Chronicle Monday. She did not cite specifics but said generally that parents have complained the curriculum "has flaws." "We want to ensure that all of our educators are adopting the curriculum in a consistent manner," she said. "I'm putting in more guardrails." Su did not immediately return a request for comment, while SFUSD directed Axios to its press release on the announcement. Between the lines: Controversy surrounding ethnic studies has largely centered on how to approach the subject — whether it should focus on appreciating cultures other than your own or systemic racism and white supremacy. In one case, a unit on social movements included references to the Chinese Red Guards as a push for "change and justice" despite their use of murder, torture and public humiliation to crack down on dissent against Mao Zedong, the San Francisco Standard reports. Some parents have also argued that lessons perpetrate discrimination against white students, pointing to a reading about white male privilege from 2012. The big picture: California became the first state to establish a one-semester ethnic studies course as a graduation requirement for public high school students when AB101 was signed into law in 2021.
Fast Company
04-06-2025
- Politics
- Fast Company
San Francisco transformed an old parking lot into affordable housing for public school teachers
After nearly a decade of planning and consultation, the San Francisco Unified School District has made its first venture into the unexpected—and increasingly relevant—business of affordable housing development. The district just opened Shirley Chisholm Village, a 135-unit housing complex in San Francisco's oceanside Sunset District. Built on district-owned land, with affordable rents and preference given to SFUSD educators, it's a model for the ways urban school districts can use their extensive land holdings to address the housing-affordability challenges faced by their own employees. The $105 million project was developed by the nonprofit MidPen Housing with a design by San Francisco-based BAR Architects & Interiors, in coordination with the San Francisco Mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development. The units, set aside for residents who earn between 30% and 100% of the area's median income, range from studios up to three-bedroom apartments. Other school districts have taken similar approaches, including the Los Angeles Unified School District, which began developing underutilized district-owned sites into housing back in 2009. SFUSD's first foray into housing development stands out for both its design and the process behind it. The design of the building and its range of amenities were influenced directly by the preferences of the district's teachers. A panel of educators helped guide the decade-long planning process to bring about the project, participating in workshops to shape its amenities and social spaces. 'One of the main things that came out of those workshops was the desire to have a space to work when they came home, but not to work from their apartment,' says architect Patricia Centeno, a principal at BAR Architects & Interiors. The architects carved out a space on the five-story building's top floor, facing the ocean, for a work-from-home lounge and gathering space. Other input from educators guided the way the project interfaces with the surrounding community, which is primarily made up of modest single-family homes. Dropping a 135-unit building in the middle of the neighborhood could have been a shock, but the designers worked to ensure the building and its site were not an imposition. It was a tricky balance to strike, because not long ago the site was a wide-open asphalt parking lot with a small, underutilized storage building, and the community had turned the parking lot into a makeshift neighborhood park. Nearly an acre and a half, it was used for basketball, skateboarding, and a range of other recreational activities. Replacing that with housing—especially housing that was at least a story or two taller than everything around it—could have been grounds for a vocal opposition campaign. The architects focused on making sure the project's footprint was as small as possible. 'One of our goals was to try to find a way to incorporate a portion of [the community park],' says Centeno. 'We knew we were never going to be able to create something as extensive as what they had, but we worked with our client to see if we could meet the goal for the total number of units, and also create some sort of common public space.' What they came up with is a publicly accessible plaza, playground, and seating area placed in a carve-out along one of the project's street-facing edges. 'It's a little bit of a return to the neighborhood,' says Chris Haegglund, president and CEO of BAR Architects & Interiors. A small one-story annex building that sits nearby is intended to be leased out to a local nonprofit. These spaces, and several residents-only common areas, were made possible by creatively shaping the building into an elongated H as seen from above, filling in the voids with courtyards and green space. From the street level, the building was designed to blend into the low-slung neighborhood as much as possible, despite rising to four and five stories in various places. Haegglund says the structure was stepped down at its edges to make a smoother transition to the smaller homes on either side. This nod to the context is also a geographical reference, evoking the sand dunes that once made up this section of San Francisco before development. 'We're trying to create a building that feels contemporary,' says Centeno. 'But we're trying to fit into a neighborhood of homes that were largely built in the '30s, '40s, and '50s, which is kind of newer by San Francisco standards.' To give the building that contemporary feel, the architects put an undulation into the roofline, having it mimic rolling dunes and referencing the roofs of the nearby houses. This undulation was also added to the facade of the building in a nod to the bay windows common in the region. Though the project was not required to include parking under the city's zoning code, the developers chose to include some underground spaces, partly to assuage neighborhood concerns about street parking and partly at the request of the educators who helped guide the design process. Despite ample public transportation in much of San Francisco, this neighborhood is on the fringes, and some were concerned about potentially long commutes to schools in other parts of town. As a district-owned site, it does have the benefit of being embedded in its neighborhood, which makes its conversion to housing—and the conversion of other district-owned sites—very logical. And Shirley Chisholm Village is just the start. SFUSD has three other housing projects in the works.
CBS News
01-06-2025
- General
- CBS News
San Francisco parents concerned over implementation of school district's ethnic studies class
San Francisco Unified School District parents are speaking out now that the district is requiring ninth graders to take a two-semester ethnic studies class. Just days before the 2024-25 school year, SFUSD sent an email to parents of incoming freshmen notifying them that their kids were enrolled in a yearlong ethnic studies class, something that was previously an elective. "It's teaching to a particular ideology, not actual history," said parent Viviane Safrin. She said she supports ethnic studies, but she's concerned about how this course is being implemented. "This course for our freshman has replaced world history," explained Safrin. "Our ninth graders are saying I took this course already in middle school and why am I having to take it again as a ninth grader for a full year?" It covers topics like racism, activism, and comparing the merits of capitalism versus socialism. "When I looked at what was being taught in this course, we've gone too far," said Safrin about what she saw in the curriculum published online. "And it's okay to say we've gone too far." Parent Scott Kravitz agrees. "I feel that instead of fostering critical thinking or knowledge, all that we're doing is creating ill-informed activists," Kravitz said. In 2021, a California bill required all high schools to offer an ethnic studies course by the 2025-2026 school year. It needs to become a graduation requirement by the 2029-30 school year. District leaders say they moved forward with the mandate properly, but parent Alex Wong questions that. "The president of the board at the time, Lainie Motamedi, said, 'Let's slow this down,' and the fact that SFUSD just continued to barrel through kind of just made me hesitant on why is everything being rushed when there's still a lot of questions to be answered about this," Wong said. Ethnic studies has been offered as an elective for about a decade. Wong said mandating a two-semester class will leave students missing out on other topics. "I think the problem with SFUSD is it's a full-year course," said Wong. "The state law only requires one semester. There are only so many days in the school year, and the fact that you're required to take an extra semester and leaves less time to take other classes kids may be interested in." On the state level, there are still four years before an ethnic studies class is required for graduation. All the parents CBS Bay Area spoke with hope SFUSD uses the extra time to re-evaluate the course. "Our city schools are reflective of the best of our society," said Safrin. "We want to raise our kids here and provide the highest quality, rigorous curriculum. Giving our kids many choices and opportunities to learn."
Epoch Times
30-05-2025
- Politics
- Epoch Times
San Francisco School District Drops ‘Equitable Grading' Plan Amid Backlash
The San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) has abandoned a proposal to follow a 'Grading for Equity' policy for the upcoming 2025–2026 school year, after it drew criticisms from the community and officials. 'It's clear there are a lot of questions, concerns, and misinformation with this proposal. We want to make sure any changes benefit our students,' SFUSD Superintendent Maria Su said in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times on May 29. 'I have decided not to pursue this strategy for next year to ensure we have time to meaningfully engage the community.'
