San Fran schools need to close/merge 13 facilities. That would save money. This is a district with an average 38% daily absentee rate, at the same time, it has a declining enrollment and declining test scores. Like the city, it is in a DOOM LOOP. They have a $400 million deficit, that is growing. Now they want to flush more money down the toilet.
“If a simple majority of voters elects to pass Proposition A, the San Francisco Unified School District could borrow as much as $790 million to fund repairs and upgrades to any of its schools. The City Controller estimated it would cost $1.3 billion to pay the loan plus interest.”
Housing is already expensive in San Fran—this bond will be added to the property tax bill. Failures in academics, failure in finances, failure in student safety. This $1.3 billion bond helps Wall Street, the special interests and the unions. Once again, the students do not get a better education. I expect next year, with or without the bond, the State takes over this District.
Prop. A’s fate a test of SF voters’ confidence in school district
By Allyson Aleksey, SF Examiner, 10/29/24 https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/education/sfusd-bond-measure-hangs-in-balance-amid-district-turmoil/article_701a498c-963b-11ef-ba7c-4f9848468428.html
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Voters will weigh in on one of San Francisco’s biggest bond measures ever next month, and officials with The City’s public-school district say they are counting on its passage to provide much-needed upgrades to worsening century-old facilities.
If a simple majority of voters elects to pass Proposition A, the San Francisco Unified School District could borrow as much as $790 million to fund repairs and upgrades to any of its schools. The City Controller estimated it would cost $1.3 billion to pay the loan plus interest.
“If we care about protecting students and staff from earthquakes, fixing electrical and ventilation systems, improving school kitchens, expanding outdoor learning, and many other valuable projects, Prop. A needs to pass,” Cris Garza, the policy director for United Educators of San Francisco, the district’s largest teachers union, told The Examiner.
The district’s ailing relationship with families, worsened by a botched school-closures process and former Superintendent Matt Wayne’s abrupt resignation, make the measure’s passage anything but a guarantee.
For one, questions linger about how effectively money from a 2016 school bond — The City’s last before Nov. 5 — was spent. Critics have raised concerns over how certain schools were selected for improvements, and families and educators say the district failed to keep promises from that process.
For another, SFUSD is arguably in its most tumultuous time since the recall of three school-board commissioners in February 2022. Superintendent Matt Wayne resigned last month following widespread criticism of the district’s school-closures plan. The proposal is indefinitely on hold, but SFUSD still remains at risk of state takeover until it can show it’s financially solvent.
Still, the new proposition has faced no financed opposition. Prop. A supporters had raised nearly $333,000 as of press time. UESF and two parent-advocacy groups — Parents for Public Schools and San Francisco Parent Action — have backed the measure.
The district maintains and operates several buildings that are more than a century old, including Spring Valley Elementary School, California’s oldest such public school still in operation. The site, which opened in 1852, was included on the district’s now-scrapped closures list.
Teachers and parents have raised concerns over poor conditions at schools throughout The City, including at Buena Vista Horace Mann in the Mission District and Herbert Hoover Middle School in Inner Parkside.
Hoover Middle School staff “have repeatedly notified the district and reached out to [state regulators] about the lack of ventilation and excessive heat in their building,” Garza said.
“Some classrooms even heat up to 15 degrees hotter than the outside temperature — and, as we know, the physical infrastructure impacts physical health,” he said. “Staff at the site have reported that students have suffered from eye irritation, headaches, nosebleeds, dizziness, and other ailments.”
District officials admit the $790 million bond measure still wouldn’t provide enough money to fix all of the district’s aging facilities, but they say it would fund much-needed repairs and safety improvements at a majority of school sites.
Nearly three-quarters of all local school bonds in California passed between 2008 and 2022, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. But districts must rely on the effectiveness of previous bonds to secure voter favor, and SFUSD’s own school board and state-mandated bond oversight committee have raised concerns over weak voter confidence.
Although SFUSD officials, including former Superintendent Wayne, have touted an “excellent track record of delivering bond-funded capital projects on time and on budget,” the district’s own Citizen’s Bond Oversight Committee said it couldn’t verify those effectiveness claims.
The state-mandated oversight committee was inoperative from 2019 to 2021. According to public meeting records, the committee, which oversees bond expenditures, met only once across those years.
Oversight committee member Laurance Lee, a Board of Education candidate who has served on the committee since 2022, said there is “still work to do to improve practices.”
Nonetheless, Lee said he supports the upcoming bond.
“If the measure does not pass, buildings will be in worse shape and the cost to fix them will be more,” he said. “Having a two-or-more-year gap in projects until the next bond is approved will make it harder to bring back companies to do the needed work.”
Key opponents of the measure include San Francisco’s Libertarian and Republican parties, as well as the San Francisco Apartment Association.
SFAA Government Affairs Manager Charley Goss told The Examiner the group opposes Prop. A because it “creates additional tax expenses for property owners and increases rents for tenants.”
