SF School Board OKs plan to offer more choices - Jill Tucker, Chronicle
The San Francisco school board put the finishing touches on a new and long-awaited student assignment system Tuesday night, giving children a better shot at getting a seat at the school down the street while still offering families a choice if they want a different site.
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How does this help D10? Hopefully, one of the things that it does is that it gets kids off their long MUNI commute and puts them into quality local classrooms. Of course, we have to get higher quality local schools for that to happen. Hopefully this is a step in the right direction, though.
I'm sure this will be a topic of conversation this Saturday, 3PM, at the "Family-Friendly D10 Candidates Forum" at St Gregory's Church:
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Co-hosted by Saint Gregory's Church and Daniel Webster School PTA.
This is a non-partisan, unbiased, completely independent, unsponsored forum. The focus is on District 10 families and children. All candidates for Dist. 10 Supervisor, regardless of party or other affiliation(s), have been invited to participate.
RSVPs have been received from:
James Calloway
Malia Cohen
Teresa Duque
Kristine Enea
MJ Marie Franklin
Rodney Hampton
Chris Jackson
Tony Kelly
DeWitt Lacy
Geoffrea Morris
Steve Moss
Eric Smith
Lynette Sweet
Stephen Weber
Diane Wesley-Smith
A Google map with SF's Schools shown:
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I don't know about the rest of the District, but my sense is that it will be very helpful for engaged Bayview parents who want to get their kids into one of the higher quality or special program schools in other parts of the City. Our neighborhood is short on schools compared to the number of kids we have and the schools we do have leave a lot to be desired in terms of academic quality. Putting us at the top of the priority list will certainly help the situation. What I don't know is how it will affect those kids whose parents are out to lunch
ReplyDeleteFinally a D10 article that is about issues, not about candidates. I attended the Candidate forum a few days ago and was less than impressed with the questions. "Assuming you are the frontrunner, who is your #2 and #3 choice?" made my skin crawl. I'd have asked "What's your Big Idea?" and "How would you differentiate yourself from your opponents?" or "Fill in the blanks: they are___ but I'm ___."
ReplyDeleteI'm not a candidate but here's my Big Idea. Free college for SFUSD High School graduates who are accepted at CCSF or SFSU. We tell our students - "you make the grades, get accepted into either of these two schools, and we'll pay for your college tuition." You can include Union trade schools if you like. Let's look at the idea.
Here are the highlights: 1) This completly eliminates the "I can't afford to go to college" argument. Levels the playing field. No excuses. No monetary reasons why you should drop out. Forget the "I have no future so it's just drugs and jail or working at Mickey D's." 2) Parents would be for it. Parents would push their kids to go to school. Parents know the value of education. Everyone "gets it." 3) Teachers would be for it. More motivated students, more parental support. More students = more jobs. 4) SFUSD would be for it. More students means more money. Those dropouts cost us money. We get paid to put student butts into seats. 5) The Unions would be for it. More schools, more teachers, more janitors, more school supplies. If you include the "trade school" aspect, then the Unions would benefit by having more apprentices and more apprentice training. 6) The City would be for it. More people would move into the City with kids. Fewer people would move out or at least wait until their kids had graduated, if possible. More children born in SF hospitals. More tax revenue, more younger residents. We're becoming Sun City, a retirement city for people who can afford it. Closing a school is like chopping down a healthy tree. 7) Everyone would be for this because it eliminates the huge debt that often awaits a student who graduates from college. I read that, on average, a college graduate finishes college with a $30,000 debt. By paying for tuition and maybe some money for books, most of this debt is eliminated. We're a rich country. Why do we want our kids to start off behind the "debt eight-ball?" Why push them out into the work world with a debt ball-and-chain around their leg? Seems wrong. Very wrong.
Now, if the idea gets to be too big (and expensive), then you can trim it a little by introducing some conditions. "You qualify if you attended an SFUSD high school for 3 years before you graduated," or "You had to have been born in SF..."
Yes, there will be some free-riders, and yes, there will be some folks who think the best education is one in which the tuition is earned. I say the benefits far outweigh the costs. We're a City that prides itself on being forward thinkers. This looks ahead, not back.
CCSF already offers financial aid, making the money argument go away for many low-income students. Making sure people know about these programs is important, too.
ReplyDeleteWhat low-income families need are access to good food that they can afford that will feed the brains of their children so that they can then learn. Stability in the home and neighborhood are further factors in rearing students who will do well in school. Doing well early on in school opens the students' minds to the possibility of future prospects, like finishing high school and going onto college. It's these wrap-around services for pre-college aged kids that are in need of bucking up and that will give us a better crop of college-ready kids.
this is a great idea - don't be anonymous, claim some credit for it!
ReplyDeletethe mayor has tried something like this with SF Promise, but like so many things with this mayor, that isn't much more than a press release.
i'm all in favor of Big Ideas, lots of them.
CCSF financial aid - done.
ReplyDeleteHead Start meals - done.
Universal education (mandatory schooling until age 16) has been shown to have the highest correlation to the increase in the US GDP since its inception. Imagine what an increase in the number of SF residents who are college graduates would do. Even if they don't get into CCSF or SFSU, the positive effect of having a more highly educated population is enormous.
We need a Big Idea. The little ideas are needed to support it. Nothing is a success by itself.