SFUSD staff present data and framework for student-assignment redesign; board seeks models before April vote

SAN FRANCISCO ' At a Jan. 29 meeting of the ad hoc committee on student assignment, San Francisco Unified School District staff presented new analyses of where students live and which schools families requested in round 1, and unveiled a draft framework the board will use to score conceptual assignment models.

"One third of all schools have more than 50% of enrolled students living in the same zip as the school," staff analyst Orla O'Keefe told commissioners as she reviewed ZIP-code enrollment data and first-choice request patterns. She also said distance analyses of kindergarten applicants showed 47% requested a school within a mile of home, 71% within 1.5 miles and about 81% within roughly 2.5 miles.

The presentation tied that data to the district's strategic-plan goals: access and equity, student achievement and accountability. Nancy Waymack, who walked the board through a proposed scoring tool, said the framework "will reflect the goals of the strategic plan, and it's intentionally subjective," with raters using a 1'5 scale to judge each model's trade-offs.

Staff outlined several conceptual models on a spectrum from limited choice to full citywide choice ' attendance-area schools with local guarantees, attendance areas with citywide options, school clusters with geographic zones, and fully citywide choice. For each model staff said they would run simulations and report metrics including racial/ethnic breakdowns, percent of students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch and numbers of schools likely to show concentrations of a single group.

Myung Lee, a senior staff member, told the committee the timeline calls for staff to incorporate feedback in February and March, develop three or four models, run simulations and present them to the board. "The intent is to bring a student assignment system'that synthesizes all of the feedback'to the board at its first regular meeting in April for first reading, and then to schedule adoption at the second regular meeting in April," Lee said.

Members of the public used the meeting's public-comment period to press competing priorities. "I'm coming today to support neighborhood schools," said Tina Will, a Diamond Heights parent, who emphasized reducing students' commutes and building local community. Other speakers asked staff to analyze applicant pools and warned that families are leaving the city or choosing private schools when their preferences are not met. Chad Lester said he was concerned that using proxies for race could produce unintended effects: "I worry that we're still measuring race, but now not using race directly forces us to use proxies which may be harmful."

Advocates for students with special needs asked for clearer data and more program capacity. "We have no data on how many spots are there per school, what kind of programs are really available," said Dally Kuo, representing parents of special-needs children, describing the first-round enrollment experience as "like, you know, shoot an arrow in the dark." Staff responded that the datasets presented include special-education and general-education students, but acknowledged they do not yet provide identical post-round-1 detail for special education and said they would explore ways to improve those reports.

Commissioners pressed staff on technical and policy questions: Norton asked whether simulations would be based on currently enrolled students (staff said yes) or incoming applicant pools (staff said that could be done later but with less granularity). Several board members said equity and rapid desegregation should be high priorities; Commissioner Kim said equity was her "top priority" in the assignment work. Commissioners also raised transportation and budget constraints, asking staff to show how different models would affect transit needs and costs.

Staff and board members emphasized that the assignment redesign is only one element of a broader reform agenda that includes curriculum, teacher assignment and wraparound services. The district plans a series of community conversations and additional committee meetings; staff asked board members to email them specific data needs and model features to ensure the simulations present the metrics the board wants to weigh.

The committee set a Committee of the Whole for Feb. 12 and said it will publish a schedule of meetings through April. The board did not vote on any policy at the session; staff will return with models and simulations for further review before any formal board readings in April.