San Francisco Unified School District commissioners are voting Tuesday night on how to officially end the district’s school choice lottery program, deciding between two options that prioritize keeping students in the neighborhoods where they live.
For the last 15 years, families with school-age children in San Francisco have had sometimes stressful starts to each school year because they have to rank their choice of campuses to attend.
Parents have complained when schools in their neighborhoods are unavailable or when children in the same family get sent to different campuses.
“The lottery is long maligned. No one is in favor of keeping the current lottery, it causes stress for everyone,” said Rebecca Kee, executive director of the San Francisco Parents Coalition.
The group recently conducted a survey for feedback on the two options board commissioners will be considering tonight.
The first option allows students to attend a school in their neighborhood and includes the option to apply to a school in a different neighborhood if there’s a seat available there.
The second also allows students to go to school in their own neighborhood, or they can apply to a different campus, but only if that school has some kind of specialized program.
Kee says parents they surveyed preferred the first of those options.
“All of these options moving forward are focused on both giving parents a little bit more certainty and peace of mind in the process. But also, the opportunity to have choice and speak up for their child as well,” Kee said.
District leaders had been considering three options. In working sessions with parents over the last few months, the superintendent and staff have gone over the details of all of them.
“What we are going to do is share with our board and community the tradeoffs that we have to face,” SFUSD Superintendent Maria Su, Ph.D., said during a September 1 session.
However, parents in some neighborhoods are raising concerns about what kind of zones will be considered as the district decides what constitutes a neighborhood.
Coleman Advocates for Children, which works with Latine, Pacific Islander, and Indigenous families, raised concerns about a possible return to under-resourced schools in certain neighborhoods.
A statement from the group reads in part: “Our communities have experienced school assignment policies, desegregation efforts, busing, school choice and other system changes in ways that have not always distributed the benefits or burdens equally.”
After tonight’s vote, the details on those neighborhoods will still need to be worked out. The chosen option is expected to be implemented in 2028.
