Sign the petition by Families for San Francisco that asks the school board to reconsider plans to eliminate admission to Lowell High School based on academic merit. 

By Joel P. Engardio

I oppose the school board’s plan to change admission to Lowell High School — one of the best in the entire country — to a lottery no longer based on academic achievement.

The school board claims this is necessary because students have not received letter grades or taken standardized tests since the pandemic started last spring. Yet admission to Lowell for incoming 9th graders can be based on letter grades and academic tests when students were in 6th and 7th grades before the pandemic.

The school board also claims this is a temporary one-year situation because of the pandemic. I trust what Todd David told the Chronicle. He is not just a parent. He was one of the founders of the San Francisco Parent Political Action Committee, which has long advocated for the needs of parents who want to keep their children in public school.

“I think they’re using the pandemic as a catalyst to do this,” said Todd David, whose daughter is a sophomore at Lowell. “I’ve been around long enough to know this is the beginning of the end of Lowell High School as we know it.”

The Chronicle has reported past attempts by the school board to change Lowell’s admission policy to a lottery for the purpose of increasing student diversity.

History of policies with bad outcomes
In 2010, the school board disregarded the recommendations of professional staff and ended up creating a lottery system that made our schools more segregated. Stanford University did a study that concluded our complicated lottery system only made things worse and our schools would be more diverse if kids could just walk to the school in their own neighborhood.

I wrote about this in my Examiner column in 2013:

Stanford’s Center for Education Policy Analysis presented data to the school board last fall that showed families in San Francisco “tend to select schools with higher proportions of students as the same race as them.”

“It shook me a bit,” said Matt Haney, who was elected to the school board last year. “People are picking schools that look like them when their neighborhood school would actually be more diverse if everyone just went there.”

The San Francisco Public Press published a comprehensive report in 2015 titled “As Parents Get More Choice, San Francisco Schools Resegregate.”

In 2018, the school board finally voted to phase out the failed lottery system. Now it’s 2020 and they still haven’t taken action.

Why families leave our public schools
This is why so many families leave San Francisco — or opt for private school — when their children become school age. Our public school system refuses to treat families like the customers they are. Instead, we drive families away by telling them bright kids can’t take Algebra in the 8th grade and that advanced placement classes in high school are bad. Now, our school board wants to eliminate what makes Lowell High School so special.

The admission policy at Lowell already works to increase diversity by designating up to one-third of the incoming 9th grade class for under-represented students. John Trasvina, the president of the Lowell Alumni Association, explains the current process:

“Thirty percent of Lowell admissions offers are set aside for promising students who do not reach the scores of the other 70% but are working through economic or family hardship and have demonstrated school leadership and resilience factors that will help them succeed. A portion of that 30% is further set aside for students from schools that do not otherwise send many students to Lowell and are considered under-represented. Under the [proposed] lottery, there is no indication these promising and hard-working students will get this help.”

Sign the petition
We must demand a public school system that is willing to listen to the data, give parents what they actually want, and provide the education that our students deserve.

A newly formed group called Families for San Francisco merged with Todd David’s Parent PAC to be a voice for families all issues facing our city, including schools. Families for San Francisco have started a petition about the Lowell admissions policy you can sign here.

Full statement from John Trasvina, president of the Lowell Alumni Association:
Around the nation, school boards with academic high schools are revising admissions policies as a result of COVID-19.  Only one, our San Francisco School Board, is trying to replace academic criteria with a lottery system. Other districts established community panels of educators, parents, and civil rights leaders to meet publicly, study and recommend options that are diversity-friendly, predictable and aligned with academic excellence. By contrast, our School Board announced on the Friday before a three-day weekend that it would take final action in ten days to put Lowell admissions through a lottery system that it has acknowledged "actually exacerbates racial segregation." In 2018, the Board voted to phase out the lottery system.  Lowell High School alumni, here and around the nation, call on the School Board to reject the failed lottery system idea and retain academics-based criteria for Lowell admissions.  

COVID-19 simply does not compel the School Board to end academic admissions. Despite the School Board's decision last spring to eliminate grades in response to COVID-19, it can easily retain its academic-based admissions policy by relying on the pre-COVID19 semester grades from 6th grade and the first semester of 7th grade, other academic tests or some combination thereof.

Currently, the flexible academics-based Lowell admissions policy relies on grades, test scores and a recognition of a student's extenuating life circumstances. Thirty percent of Lowell admissions offers are set aside for promising students who do not reach the scores of the other 70% but are working through economic or family hardship and have demonstrated school leadership and resilience factors that will help them succeed. A portion of that 30% is further set aside for students from schools that do not otherwise send many students to Lowell and are considered under-represented. Under the lottery, there is no indication these promising and hard-working students will get this help.

In this time of COVID-19 uncertainty, San Francisco parents are not well served by resorting to an unpredictable and discredited lottery system that may impede diversity. If the School Board insists on this path, it must provide the necessary academic and other support for students to be happy and successful in their academic high school. If it does not, the School Board runs the risk of disrupting the futures of these students and give other students and families more reason to flee to independent schools. In any decision, parents, students and community members must be at the table.

COVID-19 does not force San Francisco to be the only city to abandon academically-oriented admissions. The Lowell Alumni Association will continue to work with the school district, parents, faculty and students to make Lowell welcoming for all admitted students and support their well-being and success.

Joel Engardio is a candidate for supervisor on San Francisco’s westside in District 7. Learn more about his views on local issues at engardio.com/issues