SFUSD president, mayor criticize superintendent's release of school closure list
SAN FRANCISCO - Students spelled out their message to the school district on Tuesday, as they stood outside the San Francisco Public Montessori School.
"Don't merge our schools. Don't merge our schools," the children chanted, holding handmade signs.
Superintendent Matt Wayne of the San Francisco Unified School District released a list last week, naming 11 elementary schools and 2 high schools that could be closed or merged to save money.
Many families across the district were shocked their school was on the list.
On Tuesday, before meeting with Wayne, San Francisco Public Montessori parents showed up, calling on Wayne to preserve their program.
"Now we're going to be closed because it's small, but it's small because we've had our seats reduced. It's ironic," said Gerald Kanapathy, a parent of two students.
Wayne visited Parker Elementary and SF Public Montessori schools on Tuesday on a listening tour to hear parents' concerns.
"We're here to listen to you," Wayne told the group of students.
Wayne told parents the district must outline a way to close a budget gap of more than $100 million by December, and must show it to fiscal advisors from the California Department of Education, or risk being put under state control.
"Twenty-five years ago, we had over 60,000 students. Since then, our enrollment has gone down to a little more than 48,000," Wayne told the gathering of parents.
School Board President, Matt Alexander and Mayor London Breed, who are both up for reelection next month, distanced themselves from the Superintendent's decision.
Alexander said the Superintendent should focus more on staff-cuts, district-wide instead of merging and closing individual schools.
"School mergers are a way to combine resources to better serve kids. They don't provide a huge amount of budget savings," Alexander said. "The budget balancing question is about much bigger staff cuts across the board... there's going to be some critical decisions about how we use our resources and what's most essential."
Alexander says each school closing might only save an estimated $1 million per building. The superintendent says bigger cuts will be needed district-wide, requiring some painful decisions by the school communities. That could include eliminating 535 positions, including 200 Central Office positions.
Mayor London Breed, who created a School Stabilization Team to help the district craft a plan, released a statement on Tuesday saying, "I have lost confidence in the Superintendent's ability to manage the current process and do not believe this current plan will lead to an outcome that will benefit students and the School District in the long-term."
"For us to be on this list, it was a little shocking." Bertha Argumezo, a San Francisco Public Montessori School parent said. "I would like for all the schools to be removed from the list. There shouldn't be school closures, period."
"Knowing that it's the only public Montessori school and is at risk of closing is devastating, because other Montessori schools are very expensive," Chloe Neilson, a San Francisco parent said. Neilson said her mother recently retired after being a public Montessori teacher for decades, and Neilson had hoped to have her children attend the school.
"We've got a deadline coming up when people have to apply for schools and we still don't know which schools are going to be open next year. That's chaos," Lyndsey Roach, an SF Public Montessori parent said, after the meeting ended.
Superintendent Wayne plans to continue these listening sessions. He has two more schools on Wednesday, at Harvey Milk Elementary at 4 p.m. and at Sutro Elementary at 6:30 p.m.
Jana Katsuyama is a reporter for KTVU. Email Jana at jana.katsuyama@fox.com. Call her at 510-326-5529. Or follow her on Twitter @JanaKTVU and read her other reports on her bio page.
