San Francisco Unified School District

On February 3, 2021, San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera announced that, on February 11, he will sue the San Francisco Board of Education, SFUSD, and Superintendent Vincent Matthews for violating state law by not having a plan to "offer classroom-based instruction whenever possible". The lawsuit was the first of its kind, wherein a civil action is filed by a city against its school district over COVID-19 school closures, within the state of California. The suit is supported by Mayor London Breed, who has criticized the Board for focusing on renaming 44 SFUSD schools during the pandemic. Both the Board and Matthews have criticized the suit, calling it wasteful and inaccurate.[6][7][8][9]

Another San Francisco Unified School District building, from Fell st. & Franklin st. crossing.

Windows of that San Francisco Unified School District building covered with photos of jazz legends.

SFUSD previously practiced a race-based admissions system. In 1983 the NAACP sued the school district and won a consent decree that mandated that no more than 45% of any racial group may make up the percentage of students at a single school. At the time, white and black students were the largest demographic groups in the school district. The decree was intended to benefit black children. When it was discovered that Hispanic children also had low test scores, they were added to the decree's intended beneficiaries.[10]

In a five-year period ending in 1999, Asian and Latino students were the largest demographic groups in the SFUSD. In 1994, after several ethnic Chinese students were denied admission to programs because too many ethnic Chinese students were present, ethnic Chinese parents sued SFUSD arguing that the system promoted racial discrimination.[10] On April 15, 1998, the Chinese-American group asked a federal appeals court to end the admissions practice.[11] The system required ethnic Chinese students to receive higher scores than other ethnic groups in order to be admitted to Lowell High School, the city's most prestigious public high school.[11][12] Waldemar Rojas, the superintendent, wanted to keep the decree because the district had received $37 million in desegregation funds. The NAACP had defended the decree. White parents who were against the racial quotas had a tendency to leave San Francisco.[10]

In 1998, a federal appeals court ruled that the race-based criteria should not be ended, but that SFUSD is required to justify why it required higher test scores from ethnic Chinese applicants to gain admission to the school district's most prestigious high school and that the school district is required to prove, during a trial held in the 1999-2000 school year, that segregation is remaining in the school system and that the limitation of the ethnic groups at each school is the only possible remedy.[13] On February 16, 1999, lawyers representing the Chinese parents revealed that the school district had agreed to a settlement that removed the previous race-based admission system; William Orrick, the U.S. district judge, had planned to officially announce the news of the settlement the following day.[10] The district planned to implement a "diversity index" in which race was one factor, but in December 1999 Orrick rejected the plan as unconstitutional. Orrick ordered the district to resubmit the plan without race as a factor or to resubmit the plan under the settlement that had been reached with the Chinese parents.[14] In January 2000 the district agreed to remove race as a factor of consideration for admission.[15] In 2007 the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that race may not be an admission factor for a K-12 school.[16]

As of 2007, SFUSD admission factors include race-neutral aspects, such as the socioeconomic status of a student's family. Lyanne Melendez of KGO-TV wrote in 2007 "but the local courts and the district have found that race-neutral factors haven't worked in San Francisco's case."[16]

The following is a list of SFUSD Superintendents: (additional information is needed to complete the list between 1851 and 1934)

• 1851 (1851) – ? (?): Thomas J. Nevins
• 1902 (1902) – 1905 (1905): William Langdon
• 1905 (1905) – 1922 (1922): Alfred Roncovieri
• 1934 (1934) – 1935 (1935): Edwin A. Lee
• 1936 (1936) – 1942 (1942): Joseph P. Nourse[20]
• 1943 (1943) – 1946 (1946): Curtis E. Warren
• 1947 (1947) – 1954 (1954): Herbert Clish
• 1955 (1955) – 1966 (1966): Harold Spears
• 1967 (1967) – 1970 (1970): Robert Jenkins
• 1970 (1970) – 1972 (1972): Thomas Shaheen[21]
• 1972 (1972) – 1975 (1975): Steven Morena[22]
• 1975 (1975) – 1985 (1985): Robert F. Alioto[23]
• 1985 (1985) – 1986 (1986): Carlos V. Cornejo (interim)
• 1986 (1986) – 1992 (1992): Ramon C. Cortines[24]
• 1992 (1992) – 1999 (1999): Waldemar "Bill" Rojas[25]
• 1999 (1999) – 2000 (2000): Linda F. Davis (interim)
• 2000 (2000) – 2006 (2006): Arlene Ackerman
• 2006 (2006) – 2007 (2007): Gwen Chan (interim)
• 2007 (2007) – 2012 (2012): Carlos A. Garcia
• 2012 (2012) – 2016 (2016): Richard A. Carranza
• 2016 (2016) – 2017 (2017): Myong Leigh (interim)[26]
• 2017–present: Dr. Vincent Matthews[27]

• San Francisco County high schools
• San Francisco Board of Education
• Reading Partners

• (in Japanese) Saito, Katsura (齋藤 桂 Saitō Katsura). "New Approach for Assessing Outcomes in San Francisco Unified School District: Driving Improvement with a Balanced Scorecard (サンフランシスコ統合学区における学力向上政策--Balanced Scorecardに焦点をあてて, Archive) Kyoto University Research Studies in Education (京都大学大学院教育学研究科紀要). Graduate School of Education, Kyoto University (Faculty of Education) (京都大学大学院教育学研究科). ISSN 1345-2142, NDL Article ID 11184660. NII Article ID 40018924726.NII NACSIS-CAT ID (NCID) :AA11332212. 25 April 2011. Volume 57. p. 601-613.
  • English abstract (Archive)
• (in Japanese) Honda, Hideki (ほんだひでき Honda Hideki) and Shihori Suzuki (すずきしほり Suzuki Shihori). "サンフランシスコ統合学区の�チャーター・スクール�1部." (Archive) Ikuyo Kaneko Research Group @ SFC (金子郁容研究会 Kaneko Ikuyo Kenkyūkai). Keio University Shonan Fujisawa Campus.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to San Francisco Unified School District.

• San Francisco Unified School District
• United Educators of San Francisco represents close to six thousand paraprofessionals and teachers in SFUSD
• Parents for Public Schools - SF
• San Francisco Schools blog
• San Francisco History Center - history and records of the SFUSD 1854-2003