Mayor London Breed speaks during a San Francisco mayoral debate on June 12, 2024. On Tuesday, Mayor Breed said she has lost confidence in San Francisco Unified School District Superintendent Matt Wayne's ability to manage the pending school closure process and urged SFUSD to focus on balancing its budget. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)
Updated 3:54 p.m. Tuesday
Mayor London Breed on Tuesday called on the San Francisco Unified School District to halt its plan to close up to 11 schools at the end of the academic year, citing confusion around the process and saying she has lost confidence in the superintendent’s ability to carry it out.
In a statement posted on social media platform X, Breed said, “It is time to immediately stop the school closure process.”
“This has become a distraction from the very real work that must be done to balance the budget in the next two months to prevent a state takeover,” the statement reads.
The pressure from the mayor comes a week after Superintendent Matt Wayne announced the list of campuses being considered for closure, igniting concern and anger from families who had been frustrated over weeks of uncertainty surrounding the process.
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Breed said the rescue team of city administrators she sent to aid the district three weeks ago has worked alongside district staffers on operational issues, including cutting roughly $110 million from the district’s budget. If that shortfall isn’t closed by the end of the year, the district could face a takeover by the California Department of Education.
The “mismanaged school closure process” has made addressing those issues difficult, Breed said in her statement.
She also slammed Wayne, saying she does not believe the current school closure plan can be carried out in a way that will benefit SFUSD students and families.
Teachers, K-5 students, families and community members march from Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy to Harvey Milk Plaza in the Castro on Oct. 9, 2024. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)
“I recognize that discussions around school closures and mergers are difficult and painful, but that only speaks to why any effort to engage in this conversation must be done with care, clarity, and competence,” Breed said. “That has not happened here, and I don’t have confidence that it can happen right now under the current conditions.”
In the week since Wayne released the list, there has been significant fallout from communities who were told their schools met the district’s criteria for closure.
The year was already off to a rocky start, especially after Wayne pushed the planned September announcement of the closure list back a month, just two days before it was anticipated. That week, the former school board president announced that her abrupt resignation from the board was in part due to Wayne’s failures in leadership, and the school board called an emergency weekend meeting, purportedly to discuss whether to keep Wayne in his job. Breed sent in her team of experts to assist the district’s consolidation plan the same day.
The October rollout was also chaotic: After news on Oct. 4 suggested Wayne might hold the list until November, the district didn’t offer much information until the following Monday, when Wayne announced in a video message that he would be releasing a list of schools that met the district’s criteria for closure on Tuesday.
The list went live around 4 p.m. after it was obtained by Mission Local and led to confusion about whether the list — which included plans for which campuses would merge or welcome students from other campuses — was just the schools that were eligible for closure or the district’s actual proposal.
“What I’ve heard over and over is confusion and concern around the proposed school closures/merger list and how it has been communicated and managed,” Breed’s statement continues. “I’ve heard from parents, students, and educators who are fearful about the futures of their schools.”
Many school communities and political leaders have protested the closures in the past week, and parent groups have raised concerns regarding the equity of the list, which disproportionately affects schools on the east side of the city and would relocate students in two schools with Cantonese biliteracy programs.
Parents have raised concerns about the criteria the district used, which targeted small schools and included “composite scores” that rate schools on factors including equity, academic performance, school culture and effective use of resources. Those criteria were also changed the same day the list was posted, they said.
Breed suggested that her rescue team and members of the school board weren’t even clued in to all of the district’s communications.
“It was our understanding from our work with the school board that our stabilization team would be taken seriously,” she said, speaking with reporters after her announcement. “There were some major communication issues with our superintendent. And the fact is, if we are working on this together and we’re providing that support, we need to all be on the same page, and unfortunately, we haven’t been with this process.”
Teachers, K–5 students, families and community members leave Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy to march to Harvey Milk Plaza in the Castro neighborhood of San Francisco on Oct. 9, 2024, to protest against the potential closure of the school. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)
School Board President Matt Alexander said that Breed’s statement made “some valid points,” adding that the rollout wasn’t done in the way he expected.
He said although the mayor’s team has been working closely with district staff on fiscal and operational stabilization, the superintendent seemed to decline assistance with strategic communications.
“There’s been a fair amount of chaos and unnecessary drama,” Alexander told KQED.
“The Board of Education is actively monitoring the situation. We have one employee, which is the superintendent, and so we’re monitoring it, holding him accountable and we understand that as a governance team, it’s our responsibility to ensure that we stabilize the situation and that we provide our students and our educators with the schools they deserve.”
This week, Wayne and his staff are expected to meet with various school communities that would be affected by the closures ahead of the final proposal that will go to the school board on Nov. 12.
As of now, the board is set to make a final decision on school closures on Dec. 10.
Breed said that the next few months should be spent ensuring the district maintains local control by balancing its budget in December. Both she and Alexander said that they believe it’s possible to achieve that goal without closing schools.
“The weeks and months ahead are going to be incredibly difficult,” Breed said. “There are painful but necessary decisions that will have to be made and any school closures or mergers would only be one small piece of the overall effort to balance the budget.”
