SF School Closures Halted for Now, But District’s New Leader Will Be Tested

As the San Francisco Unified School District tries to turn the page on a tumultuous start to the year, state and local officials rallied Monday in support of the likely new superintendent following embattled leader Matt Wayne’s resignation.

On Friday, the school board said it would put a halt to the district’s plan to close some campuses, approved Wayne’s resignation and tapped Maria Su, the co-leader of a rescue team sent by Mayor London Breed to aid the district last month, to serve as superintendent. She will take the helm this week, assuming she is approved by the board at its meeting on Tuesday night, on a contract that runs through June 2026.

Su has been the executive director of San Francisco’s Department of Children, Youth and Their Families since 2009. She’ll remain a city employee but report to the Board of Education through a memorandum of understanding between the city and the district.

“When you need someone to get the job done, you call people like Maria Su,” Breed said during a press conference on Monday, joined by State Superintendent Tony Thurmond and other elected officials. “In every single instance, she has delivered time and time again, and she will deliver on helping through this very challenging transition.”

The school board will instruct Su to stop the current closure plan. Though that doesn’t necessarily mean closures won’t be needed in the future, Su said her first priorities will be to deliver a balanced budget to the state by the Dec. 15 deadline and restore trust with school communities.

While there have been fears that SFUSD could lose local control if it isn’t able to close a $113 million deficit by that deadline, Su and Thurmond said that there will be no state takeover.

The state plans to work with Su as a partner, Thurmond said, adding that she would bring great leadership to the district.

“There will not be a state takeover in San Francisco. Let me be clear about that,” Thurmond said. “The role of the California Department of Education is to assist with financial decisions. And our staff has been working with the staff of the district to work through some of the financial challenges and to build better systems. But the role of the Department of Education is never to lead the district.”

The district is already under the watch of state fiscal advisors, who have veto power over its spending. The two experts were appointed in 2022, but after SFUSD received a negative budget report in March, they were given more ability to intervene.

“We’re going to have to make some really tough decisions ahead of us,” Su said. “But I think we got it on camera that our state superintendent just said that he’s not interested in taking over the district. What he wants to do is provide us support and guidance to make sure that our children and families get everything they need to succeed in our city.”

While some parents breathed a sigh of relief after the proposal to close as many as 11 schools was halted, questions about the district’s stability — and continued declining enrollment — remain.

“Unfortunately, we have been looking at private schools because of the fact that it’s so destabilizing for students,” said Faith Flanagan, who was looking at middle schools for her son during the district’s enrollment fair on Saturday. “Who’s to say that next year they don’t decide to close down the middle school that my son would potentially be going to.”

Flanagan said the district’s focus should be on the budget.

“I think stabilizing the budget is really a first and foremost plan that we need to put forward, like how do we stabilize the budget so we don’t have to close schools,” she said. “We have incredible schools in San Francisco represented by amazing teachers, staff, [administrators] and parents that really care.”

Balancing the budget will likely include significant staff reductions and cuts to some programs.

In recent weeks, Wayne had doubled back on an earlier statement that school closures wouldn’t save the district money. He said that while the closures themselves couldn’t solve the budget crisis, without them, the cuts SFUSD needs to make would leave school sites understaffed and under-resourced.

Still, Board President Matt Alexander believes Su is up to the difficult task ahead.

“Our beloved San Francisco Giants finished the season in second to last place,” he joked at the press conference on Monday. “What did they do? They hired Buster Posey to run the team. That’s what we’re doing with Maria — we’re hiring Buster Posey to run the team.”

KQED’s Elize Manoukian contributed to this report.