By Joel P. Engardio

San Francisco has fewer kids by percentage than any other large city in America. A big reason for that also explains why a third of the children who do live here attend private school.

Public school parents have to deal with a school board that seems to revel in finding ways to let them down. When the frustration becomes unbearable, families choose private school or leave San Francisco.

The school board refuses to treat families like the customers they are. Instead, it alienates parents and drives 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.

The latest let downs are testing any resolve parents have left:

• Changing how to admit students to the prestigious Lowell High School.

• Keeping schools closed well into next year.

• Continuing the push to rename schools when parents need the focus to be on safely reopening schools.

“The end of Lowell High School as we know it”
I feel for the 8th grade students who studied so hard and had their dreams crushed by a school board that eliminated merit-based admission to Lowell High School — one of the best in the nation. Now, incoming 9th graders will have to rely on winning a lottery instead of having the best academic achievements.

I also feel for the parents who stuck it out in public school through elementary and middle school, when so many families give up sooner.

The school board said the Lowell change was necessary because students did not receive letter grades or take standardized tests since the pandemic started last spring. The school board refused to listen to parents who asked that admission for incoming 9th graders be based on letter grades and academic tests when students were in 6th and 7th grades before the pandemic.

While the school board also claimed this is a temporary one-year situation because of the pandemic, some members made it clear they want the change to be permanent.

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 it still isn’t clear what will replace the lottery.

Diversity at Lowell
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.”

Should we be renaming or reopening schools?
While frazzled parents struggle with distance learning, the school board determined that schools will likely remain closed until August 2021. This article in the San Francisco Chronicle sums up why families are at wits end. 

Yet in the middle of this crisis, the school board wants to look at renaming 44 schools so they will be less offensive. Abraham Lincoln High is on the list! News reports reveal how the discussion by the renaming committee devolved into comic absurdity. And renaming schools could cost millions when our schools face huge deficits because of the pandemic.

Parents are exhausted. They just want their kids to get a good education. We should treat parents and students like customers. If they want the academic rigor of the Lowell experience — one of the best high schools in the nation — we should offer it. Providing a variety of programs and curriculum that will attract families and give them reason to stay is good for public schools. We should do more to win the families back who have gone to private schools. It starts with paying attention to who is making decisions on the school board and organizing parents.

I often talk about how our city needs to focus on getting the basics right (clean streets, less crime, better services). Better schools is a must on that list.

Learn more about Joel Engardio’s views on local issues at engardio.com/issues