(and if you don’t get through this entire post, please vote for Jane Kim & Kim-Shree Maufas for San Francisco School Board - Nov 7)
When I started this blog a year and a half ago, I thought I’d be living on Potrero Hill for life (well, maybe that’s a stretch … but at least for a while). That was before the birth of my second child in April, and before I started thinking more seriously about kindergarten choices for my daughter (who enrolls in the fall of 2008).
Nowadays, I regularly think about moving down to the peninsula. The high cost of living in the city (I currently own a 2 bedroom condo which my family will eventually outgrow) and the current student assignment process for public schools, make me question whether or not staying in Potrero Hill and San Francisco is the wisest decision for my family.
I’m not alone. The San Francisco public schools continues to lose middle class families like my own. Families either enroll their students in private schools or leave the city altogether.
This past year, the San Francisco Unified School District lost 1,000 students.
Why the school board vote matters
There are 3 board seats available, and the next school board will be making several key decisions which will affect the future of San Francisco schools. A new superintendent will be hired, the district’s projected $5.8 million shortfall will need to be addressed, adjustments will be made to the student assignment process, and more schools will be closed.
Even though several motivated Potrero Hill parents with pre-school aged children (myself included) successfully campaigned to save Daniel Webster Elementary school from closure this past year, it’s a foregone conclusion that it’s days are numbered. The school has lost between 48-92 students in the past year, and it’s closure is probably the fiscally prudent action to take.
What would keep me on the hill
I’d prefer to send my daughter to a nearby school, and the newly inaugurated mandarin immersion program at Starr King Elementary would be on my list of school options for my daughter (for those uninitiated, you can choose up to 7 schools). But it’s survival is still tenuous; of the 40 available kindergarten spots this year, only 25 were filled.
I would like to see the SFUSD support Starr King via heavier promotion of the mandarin immersion program. There is also a private pre-school (Friends of Potrero Hill Nursery School) leasing space within the school. I would like to see the school district extend that lease. The current school population of Starr King is mostly African-American and Latinos. Many of the children attending the pre-school are caucasian, and their parents have been huge advocates of the school and it’s charismatic principal, Chris Rosenberg.
Potrero Hill needs middle schools. A K-8 would be ideal. In hindsight, we should have been advocating for merging Daniel Webster with Enola Maxwell and creating a K-8 on the hill.
There’s still hope. Mission Bay has set aside 2.2 acres for the San Francisco Unified School District. Mayor Newsom reportedly wants to turn it into a High School focused on bio tech. I think it should be turned into a K-8, and here’s why:
- There are 300+ families on Potrero Hill with pre-school aged children … we need nearby schools to keep those families in the city.
- It’s a well known fact that most of the future housing development is occurring in the southeast sector. In fact Potrero Hill / Mission Bay is expected to triple in population over the next decade. We need kindergartens, not high schools.
Mayor Newsom talks about wanting to keeping middle-class families in San Francisco … I think a good place to start is Potrero Hill. Our neighborhood is bursting with kids, and because of the diverse ethnicity of it’s inhabitants, we have an incredible opportunity to create a truly integrated school.
School Board Endorsements
A few weeks ago, many of the candidates running for school board were generous with their time, and spoke with parents on the Hill. After listening to them, I’ve made the decision to endorse Jane Kim and Kim-Shree Maufas for school board, and hope you will join me in voting for only these 2 candidates on Nov 7.
P.S. And for the record, I’m really hoping to stay on Potrero Hill … it’s hands down my favorite neighborhood in San Francisco.
update: NBC 11 just interviewed me about this post, and it should be airing tonight at 6 pm (Thurs, Nov 2)
update 2: The NBC 11 website posted an article (w/ video from their broadcast) about sfist.com’s post persuading me to stay on the hill
update 3: Thanks to Socketsite, the Civic Center blog, and Starked SF for linkage.
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We hope you stay, too, Mike! And we hope we’re not faced with the same choice a year or two after you are.
As a Potrero Hill parent I have been very disappointed in our school battles. I am happy you saved Webster, don’t get me wrong, but I think this city has squandered so much time and money over the last few decades that I’m not optimistic.
I am a progressive, but turned off by the lefties on the School Board. I think there is a lot of leftie grandstanding and little attention to results or accountability. There is a lot of jawboning about the value of public schools but no consistent and coherent crafting of policies for good public education.
This is the School Board that drove Ackerman out of town and before that practically had riots because Edison got corporate money. Why can’t they put their energies into education instead of posturing?
Mike, while I agree with you that the BOE election is very important, and it would be a blow to the PH community if DW were closed, I would recommend that you do consider other SFUSD schools before moving out of SF if DW does, in fact, close. There are many excellent ES’s wtihin a 20-min drive of PH.
Mike, I am a reporter at NBC 11 and I think what you’re talking about in this blog is very interesting and exemplifies what a lot of parents are going through here in the city. I wanted to speak to you today (thursday) for a story I’m doing. Please write back to me at traci.grant@nbc.com
thanks.
Hi Mike,
Thanks for a good write-up. I haven’t been following the local school stuff too closely as my daughter is only a few months old now.
I’m curious about the mecahanics of the school board’s role in the closures. Even if candidates with your (our) agenda in mind get elected, what pressures external to the board of education are involved? If -you- were on the BOE what challenges would you expect to face and what would be your plans? I’m really curious. As Tesla gets older, I’m hoping to become an involved parent in these matters, but frankly the last time I worried about the BOE actions was over 20 years ago and from quite a different perspective
“…because of the diverse ethnicity of it’s inhabitants, we have an incredible opportunity to create a truly integrated school.”
Good article, but this point is just politically-correct nonsense. Namely, “diverse” does not correlate with “integrated”. Just ask the good people in Iraq.
e pluribus unum.
Maybe there’s another reason why people move to Marin and why BART doesn’t go there…
[kathy] The majority of the students in our neighborhood elementary schools (Daniel Webster & Starr King) are african-american and latino due to the large public housing in Potrero Hill.
However, the large majority of potrero hill residents not in public housing is caucasian.
We just need to get those families with pre-schoolers on the hill into those elementary schools.
Starr King is starting to become more diverse because of the newly inaugurated mandarin immersion, but not necessarily integrated. The key is to get parents interested in the general program.
But you can’t get to integrated unless you already have diverse.
Mike-
We have a pre-schooler who we are looking to enroll in Kindergarten next year. We were hoping to go to Daniel Webster, but with all of the doubt on whether it will remain open or not, we are not that convinced that it will be worth it.
What would help is to see if there are a group of us on the hill who would enroll together. Perhaps if we see the numbers up front, we’d be more willing to give it a go. And if we could continue that process through the years to come, maybe there would be a better chance of the school continuing on.
As for now, we are looking for a Public School in S.F. that is within a 15 minute drive. We’ve actually found quite a few that we really like! All hope is not lost– We’ve chosen to stick it out and hope that you do the same.
Mike-
I think I understand your frustration and concern. I also have 2 kids- the oldest will also enroll in public kindergarten in the fall of 2008. My husband and I did pull up our SF stakes last fall and moved to southern Marin- largely out of fear of the SF public schools. We lasted 8 months, and moved back to Glen Park. Although I suppose the schools in our new community were more consistently “better,” we got really turned off by the lack of diversity and the culture of affluence we found ourselves in. We missed the San Francisco values we had here! We decided that our happiness mattered most, and that we would take our chances in finding a good public school in SF- after all, as several posters have mentioned above, there are a number of good to great public schools within a relatively short drive. Sure I’d love to send my kids to the Spanish immersion program in the school down the street from our house, but we have decided to remain open to other options as well.
Good luck!
Our son is in a private middle school now but he was in Alvarado Elementary, in the Spanish immersion program there. He had a terrific experience. I concur that there are really good worthwhile elementary schools. That said, I don’t advise you to try to swim against the stream if the school is not good. Have a clear idea about what is good enough for your child and accept no less. The fact that Alvarado had a strong community of parents and teachers was essential - as well as a great community experience for all of us. I fought hard to get my son into that school, even calling up political types (as a constituent, I had no personal pull). Do what ever you can, and you will get something good.
We found San Francisco middle schools to be much more problematic. The good ones are huge, overstuffed with kids, and tense. Our son was at Hoover and it didn’t work. The gifted program was mean spirited and had the atmosphere of a crowded bus terminal. He had a terrific teacher there, but it is not for everyone. Middle school is a difficult time for kids socially anyway. I think the high school selection is much better.
The Mandarin Immersion program at Starr King Elementary School is THRIVING! By 2011 we will be a full K-5 program, as we grow by one grade per year.
Don’t be fooled or jump to conclusions because it is not enrolled to capacity, as history shows that new programs typically do not fill in its first year. Most parents are hesitant to enroll their child in a program without meeting teachers, viewing curriculum and seeing the program in action. None of this was available to me but after touring Starr King I was convinced that it was the right choice for us…..and parents can now meet teachers and see how every student can respond back to the teachers in Mandarin Thursdays at 10am, call 695-5797.
I encourage parents on Potrero Hill to look at the schools in our neighborhood. We are a community that has not supported the schools locally, and that should change.
www.starrkingschool.org
hi everybody — I’m the mom of a 7th-grader and a 10th-grader who have been in SFUSD schools all the way, and I’m a booster. Others here have said it better than I could. (To the parent who moved to southern Marin — I’m from on-so-precious Mill Valley myself, Tam High ‘71 — I’d rather be in Glen Park too!)
But I’m here to tell you that I strongly prefer middle school to K-8, and I’m now in my 5th year as a parent at Aptos Middle School (two kids back to back). My friends with kids in K-8 sacrifice a lot — separate honors classes, band/orchestra/art, a good competitive sports program. Most families with kids in K-8s start to grasp that around 5th grade, though most remain in their K-8s — why disrupt the kids and go through the assignment process again? But there are families in my daughter’s middle school who have transferred there from Rooftop, Alice Fong Yu and by choice from some private K-8s (West Portal Lutheran, Kittridge, Live Oak, Brandeis, Nueva).
I was passionately in favor of K-8s when I had little kids too! But things look very, very different when your children are older.
Good luck! And don’t worry — there are lots of good public schools in SFUSD, and it’ll work out.
Congratulations on your school board advocacy. I’m sure the two Kims won because of you.
Without the current school assignment process, which gets a bad rap on little evidence, it’s very unlikely a specialized program like Mandarin Immersion would exist. Mandarin Immersion at a neighborhood-only school?
As a graduate of Daniel Webster Elementary (class of 1993), I can comment on those of you commenting on the fact that DW and Starr King are predominantly black and latino students.
Your comments are correct, the majority of my classmates were (as well as a large portion of Asian American children), but most of the latino and asian kids didn’t even live in the low income housing near the school. They (like myself) were bused in from the Mission District (in the case of the latinos, at least), in SFUSD’s feeble attempt to diversify their schools. I lived less than 3 blocks away from Sanchez Elementary, and my parents wanted me to attend Sanchez so that I would be in walking distance from home, but the school district instead assigned me to Daniel Webster.