These Are the San Francisco Schools That Could Close, But the List Isn’t Final

Updated 4:28 p.m. Tuesday

After months of waiting and a frustrating last-minute delay, San Francisco’s school superintendent announced Tuesday that 11 schools are being considered for closures and mergers, and two others will take in students from shuttered campuses instead of closing.

The list of campuses that meet the district’s criteria for closure includes eight elementary campuses, as well as one serving kindergarten through eighth grade and two high schools. Two other elementary schools that met the criteria for closure will remain open and welcome students from closing schools. Middle schools are not being considered, according to the announcement.

The district is considering closing or merging elementary and K–8 schools with fewer than 260 students and is in the lowest 50% of its composite scores, which it said is determined by factors including equity, excellence — which includes school culture and academic performance — and effective use of resources.

Here’s what that could look like:

• Sutro Elementary, Yick Wo Alternative Elementary School and Jean Parker Elementary are proposed to close.
• El Dorado Elementary School is proposed to merge with Visitacion Valley.
• Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy is proposed to merge with Sanchez Elementary.
• Malcolm X Academy is proposed to merge with Carver Elementary School.
• San Francisco Public Montessori is proposed to merge with Rosa Parks Elementary.
• Spring Valley Science Elementary School is proposed to merge with John Muir.
• San Francisco Community TK–8 is proposed to merge with Paul Revere TK–8.

Two high schools that have fewer than 400 students and are not alternative schools are also on the chopping block:

• June Jordan School for Social Justice and The Academy High School are proposed to merge with John O’Connell High and Raoul Wallenberg High at their respective campuses.

Redding Elementary and Visitacion Valley meet the criteria for closure but would remain open as merged or welcoming schools.

According to the announcement from Superintendent Matt Wayne, district staff plans to meet in the coming weeks with all 13 school communities “to share what happens to their budget next year and our initial thinking about the school’s future, including why a closure or merger could result in a better educational experience for students.”

This isn’t Wayne’s final recommendation — after the next few weeks meeting with school communities, he’ll propose a plan to the Board of Education on Nov. 12, and the board will vote on it on Dec. 10.

Though the district has previously framed the campus closures and consolidation as a way to adjust for declining enrollment, not to save money, Wayne said that the closures are necessary as the district faces a significant budget shortfall, which puts it at risk for state takeover in the coming year.

“There will be significant staff reductions, which will impact all of our schools,” Wayne said in the message Tuesday. “We are particularly mindful of the impacts of these staff reductions on schools already experiencing the greatest resource challenges because of their enrollment patterns and other factors.

“Our small schools are extremely vulnerable to the impact of pending budget reductions.”

The announcement comes days after a news report suggested that the highly anticipated list might be delayed again. It was originally expected in mid-September before Wayne pushed it back a month, just two days before it was scheduled to be released, saying the district needed more time to thoroughly review some aspects of the plan.

That delay kicked off a rocky week for the district — the former school board president announced her abrupt resignation from the board was in part due to Wayne’s failures in leadership, the school board called an emergency weekend meeting, purportedly to discuss whether to keep Wayne in his job, and Mayor London Breed sent in a team of experts to assist the district’s consolidation plan, which it’s labeled its Resource Alignment Initiative.

Tuesday’s announcement offers some respite for school communities not on the list, but it’s not set in stone, and the 13 campuses that are affected will have a long few months ahead.

Wayne plans to host the first of three town halls to discuss the budget crisis on Thursday, with two more to come on Oct. 24 and Nov. 6.

The announcement also included site visits at the 13 affected schools between Oct. 14 and Nov. 1.

“As a district, we have difficult decisions to make, and it’s important that we’re talking about these decisions together,” he said.