JOEL ON EDUCATION
Overview
Every resident of San Francisco should care about schools because our city’s future depends on keeping families here.
Families leave San Francisco for many reasons: cost of housing, quality of life — and schools. Well-run public schools are essential for a city to function and thrive. Good public schools are possible only when we give teachers what they need for success.
Better teacher and paraprofessional pay is a must. To attract and retain the most qualified and motivated educators, we must pay a living wage so teachers can live in the city where they teach. We also need to provide the basics. We have elementary schools that lack heat, soap, and chairs that fit 1st graders.
Academics should be a top priority while acknowledging the social and emotional needs of students. Today’s kids have experienced a level of trauma from pandemic closures to school shootings that their parents and grandparents never had to contend with. Learning for the current generation will require feeling safe and secure. They will need extra support to heal.
We must treat parents like partners and offer the courses and programs that will make parents want to choose public schools. This includes advanced classes for high-performing students — and 8th grade algebra. Parents want more public magnet schools in language, arts and sciences. We need permanent merit-based admissions at Lowell High School, and the creation of more Lowells across the city. We also need a school assignment system that lets more kids attend their neighborhood school.
This is the equation we must follow: Support teachers + center students + partner with parents = good schools.
Troubling trends
There are troubling trends that keep San Francisco from having high quality public schools:
San Francisco ranks among the worst school districts in California when it comes to the achievement gap facing Black and Latino students.
A quarter of our kids attend private school, compared to only nine percent in California. We have to attract families back to public schools — especially the working parents stretching themselves to pay for private tuition.
San Francisco has the lowest percentage of children among major U.S. cities. We have more dogs than kids, and that’s a problem.
Failed school board policies led to a significant decline in enrollment, which reduced revenue, and compounded a deficit crisis. Until the deficit is resolved, there will be a threat of insolvency and a state takeover of San Francisco’s public schools.
Necessary steps to improve our public schools
We deserve to have one of the best public school systems in the nation. This is possible if we:
Elect a competent school board that puts the needs of students and families above political ideology. Joel helped lead the historic recall of an incompetent school board in 2022. Many families felt abandoned by the school board when it chose to rename schools instead of reopening them. Our kids were suffering and we needed to take action. Joel wrote the case for recall and organized drive-thru signature gathering events at Lowell High School. The local media said Joel’s work was “key to the school board recall’s smashing success.”
Let kids take algebra in the 8th grade. We make everyone wait until 9th grade because some kids aren’t ready for algebra sooner. Let’s better prepare all students instead of holding back kids who love math.
Require that academics are prioritized when the school district uses city funds.
Treat parents like partners and offer the programs they want. Otherwise parents will continue to choose private schools as public school enrollment declines. When more families invest in public schools, PTAs will have more resources to enrich school programs. Some schools lack even basic PTAs while other schools benefit from well-run groups raising tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to provide additional staff, field trips, sports, arts, and supplies.
Ensure merit-based admissions remain at Lowell High School and create more pathways and incentives to increase the diversity of applicants. We should also commit to creating more high schools like Lowell with high academic standards.
Let kids attend their neighborhood school. Our convoluted school assignment system has actually created schools with less diversity than we would have with neighborhood schools. Tens of thousands of parents driving their kids across town twice a day is not good for the environment. Parents who can’t afford a car or work long hours have to worry about their kids taking Muni alone, in the dark, and traveling through unsafe areas. We need to prioritize letting families who live near each other attend the same school. This will strengthen communities, reduce traffic congestion, and allow for more family time at home.
We must focus on raising student outcomes. That will require an emphasis on rigorous learning along with supporting teachers, centering students, and partnering with parents. This is the equation for good schools.
Education is a top priority
Visiting all 12 public schools in the Sunset was a priority for Joel in his first weeks in office. As a city supervisor, Joel doesn't have jurisdiction over schools. But City Hall gives the school district funds and supervisors must ensure that it’s spent on what teachers and students need.
Joel met with every principal and their staff, many parent leaders of PTAs, and a number of teachers and students. The school tours took up entire days of Joel’s time, and it was worth it. He learned a lot in one-on-one and small group meetings.
Education will be a top priority for Joel along with public safety. He will visit schools often and advocate for what our parents, teachers, and students need.
Why Joel helped lead the school board recall
“Joel Engardio was the first to believe the recall was possible — and the first to believe that we could do it,” said school board recall co-founder Autumn Looijen.
Joel believed in the recall because many families felt abandoned by the school board when it chose to rename schools instead of reopening them. They put Roosevelt Middle School on the renaming list — without knowing or bothering to learn whether it was named for Teddy or FDR.
San Francisco’s school board became a national joke. But families weren’t laughing as kids suffered too long in Zoom school.
Another galvanizing issue centered on academic achievement. The school board eliminated 8th grade Algebra, put advanced placement classes on the chopping block, and ended merit-based admission at the city’s — and one of the nation’s — top-ranked high schools. The stated reason was to improve equity, but it seemed like bright kids were being punished in the process.
The school board had also driven our schools into a financial ditch and faced a potential state takeover. More families kept leaving public schools, and less enrollment meant even less funding. It was a cycle to the bottom that only a recall could stop.
Read Joel’s full, point-by-point case for the recall.
Why is the lottery system for school assignments so maddeningly painful?
In 2010, the superintendent and professional staff came up with a plan to help make schools more diverse. But the political school board didn’t like how the plan prioritized neighborhood schools.
So they didn’t follow the professional recommendation. They changed things on their own and ended up creating a complicated lottery system that only made the schools more segregated.
We can’t prove that the professional recommendation would have made things better. But Stanford University’s Center for Education Policy Analysis published a study that showed the school board’s version definitely made things worse.
But the school board refused to change course. There wasn’t a majority of commissioners willing to go back to the original plan the superintendent asked for.
In 2018, the school board finally voted to phase out the failed lottery system. But it still isn’t clear what will replace it.
That’s why parents still suffer through a lottery system that doesn’t work.
A former Lutheran church on the corner of Ulloa Street and 33rd Avenue in the Sunset is filled with people again as a Buddhist temple. Three magnificent Buddhist statues from Asia were recently installed to complete the transformation of the Lutheran church that was built in 1960. The original stained glass and some pews were preserved. Meet the Sunset residents creating community and improving their lives at the vibrant new temple.
The impact of the pandemic lockdown of four years ago still reverberates for the children who experienced it. That’s why Taylour Ganster, a Sunset-based behavior therapist, is helping kids overcome developmental delays caused by COVID isolation.
Meet Evan Rivera-Owings. The Sunset resident loved his own free-range childhood exploring San Francisco. Now today’s city kids can experience some of that thrill with the summer day camp he founded.
There’s a rare group of kids ages 11 to 17 who voluntarily — even eagerly — give up their phones and screen time every week for IRL adventures: the members of the Sunset’s three Boy Scout troops. By choosing wilderness hikes and camping over video games, these kids are discovering how much fun real life can be.
Rugby is alive and well in the Sunset as today’s teens embrace a sport connected to Irish immigrants decades ago. Meet the coaches and young players who say when it comes to rugby “there’s just too much to like”
Meet Alex Peng. He retreated to the online world of video games until a high school counselor told him about Mission Bit, a nonprofit that teaches tech skills to underprivileged youth. Now he’s a computer science major at Stanford. It was quite a journey from San Francisco’s Sunset district.
Meet Saw Nwe. The Sunset resident and Lowell High School graduate is benefiting from the ultimate stocking stuffer this holiday season — a $50 deposit in a savings account the city gives to every child entering the public school system. Learn more about the Kindergarten to College program and the status of your child’s $50.
I introduced a ballot measure urging San Francisco’s public schools to let kids take algebra in the 8th grade. We make everyone wait until 9th grade because some kids aren’t ready for algebra sooner. Let’s better prepare all students instead of holding back kids who love math.
Meet Melissa Chow, a media student raised in the Sunset who is leading an effort to save Cantonese in San Francisco. She wants to ensure young generations will be able to speak the language of their grandparents.
Sunset parent Lisa Nowell is on a mission to help reduce the isolation and stress that new parents often experience. She also offers their babies a creative playspace — and some recess time for the moms and dads to enjoy with each other. The mission is to create community.
Budding ecologists are taking root at Dianne Feinstein Elementary School in the Sunset. The school yard is abuzz as kids search for worms, tend to planter boxes, or work on a water catchment system. Parents helped create and fund the school’s popular outdoor education program, where a garden has replaced part of a concrete parking lot and play area.
Dispatch from Lincoln High is a series that features the reporting of journalism students at Lincoln High School (Home of the Mustangs) and their student newspaper the Lincoln Log.
Did you know the big terracotta-roofed building on Vicente Street in the Sunset was once home to the San Francisco Orphan Asylum? That’s what it was called a century ago. Today it's still there. Now called the Edgewood Center for Children and Families, it is the Bay Area's oldest provider of behavioral health services for youth and teens. And it’s poised to tackle some of the present day’s biggest challenges when it comes to mental health.
Dispatch from Lincoln High is a series that features the reporting of journalism students at Lincoln High School and their student newspaper the Lincoln Log.
Lowell High School’s student choir traveled to New York City during spring break to compete in a music festival called WorldStrides. They were named “Outstanding Choir” after receiving the highest overall score.
Too many skateboards were piling up in front of the secretary’s desk at A.P. Giannini Middle School (kids aren’t allowed to roll down the hallways). So a handy parent solved the gnarly problem with some ingenuity welcomed by school staff.
The streets of the Sunset can use some cleaning. That’s why residents are organizing to clean the streets themselves. Volunteers armed with rubber-tipped grabbers and garbage bags scour the streets for trash several times a month.
Can 5th graders write and publish a book? Sunset Elementary teacher Jason Parmele knows they can. His students have spent months creating and illustrating the 12-chapter, 12,000 word tome called Dog Land. It’s an imaginative tale where dogs rule the world.
Dispatch from Lincoln High is a series that features the reporting of journalism students at Lincoln High School and their student newspaper the Lincoln Log
Dispatch from Lincoln High is a series that features the reporting of journalism students at Lincoln High School and their student newspaper the Lincoln Log.
Visiting all 12 public schools in the Sunset was a priority in my first weeks in office.
It’s an honor to be given the opportunity to lead the next steps as a newly elected city supervisor. How we won.
I believe San Francisco’s best days are ahead. We deserve to live in a city that works. Here’s how.
Do you still believe in San Francisco? I do. I’m running for supervisor to create our best San Francisco.
We must ensure merit-based admissions remain at Lowell High School and create more pathways and incentives to increase the diversity of applicants. We should also commit to creating more high schools like Lowell with high academic standards.
Our children’s well-being and the future of our city is at stake. That’s why we won an epic school board recall. But we’ve only just begun. Next, we need to elect new city supervisors. Most of our supervisors stood by an incompetent school board, which became a glaring example of how they do not represent the will of the voters. We deserve better.
When the story is written about the historic effort to recall San Francisco’s school board, it must include the Chinese/API parents and grandparents who organized their community to vote for the first time. It's a political earthquake in the making with no going back.
The greatest indictment against San Francisco’s school board is that it neglected its core job: Getting students safely back into classrooms to avoid the harmful learning loss and mental health stress of being isolated at home on Zoom for more than a year.
San Francisco residents are finally pushing back on elected officials who say things are fine when schools, public safety, and housing are in crisis.
San Francisco’s school board remains defiant while facing a recall and refuses to change course in a fiscal crisis that threatens a state takeover. The result is continued enrollment decline, which further reduces revenue and puts the school district into a death spiral. Children suffer the most.