Contact: Chelsea Fink, Chelsea.Fink@seiu1021.org, (510) 435-8282

SFUSD Superintendent Matt Wayne announced today that the Board of Education will consider closing and merging thirteen schools at its meeting on November 12. This list of schools raises serious concerns about the fate of San Francisco students and families and the dedicated staff who support these schools. Dr. Wayne claims these closures meet their 2023-24 school year criteria, but what does that mean for our community? 

SEIU Local 1021 represents almost 1000 SFUSD school custodians, student nutrition staff, and school secretaries and clerks. Many of us are also families of students. We are all concerned about the District’s capacity to close schools and move entire school communities without harming students, families, and workers, given SFUSD’s difficulties with basic operational functions like payroll and hiring, addressing a bloated central office, and closing its significant budget gap. The District needs to fix these problems before it can successfully undertake a project to close schools, which could cost even more money and cause further long-term enrollment declines. 

The District lacks transparency regarding school closures and has conducted an inadequate, inequitable community engagement process up to this point. The current plan to rush a closure vote through a lame duck School Board is anti-democratic. While Dr. Wayne has committed to five weeks of town halls and meetings, the District has not yet shown the public a detailed breakdown of schools’ scores based on its own criteria. After years of parents’ advocacy for neighborhood schools, many students on the closure list will be relocated to schools up to three miles away. The schools targeted for consolidation are all on the City’s East Side, primarily serving communities of color. Wayne’s plan is a civil rights crisis in the making. His message suggests that closing schools will help resolve the budget crisis and avoid state receivership, but the District so far explicitly admitted to the District Advisory Council that closing schools on its own won’t save much money. We understand that closures will only help the budget crisis if they justify massive cuts to an already underpaid, undersupported, and overworked District workforce. This latest announcement comes at the end of a year of a sham public engagement process. No further fake and hasty public engagement will solve the harm that’s already been done.  

Most importantly, the District has yet to demonstrate how closing existing schools will benefit students. Without a clear and detailed commitment to the well-being of SFUSD students during and after this process, closing schools is irresponsible and senseless. 

SEIU 1021 members demand that SFUSD stop the school closures unless the District can produce a detailed, transparent plan demonstrating how it benefits our school communities and all students. Since the Mayor has appointed or endorsed a majority of the Board of Education who hired Dr Wayne and sent a team of “experts” to assist, Mayor Breed has also made herself responsible for failing our children. We will join other SFUSD unions and the community to fight the closures and support our members at the school sites that may be affected. 

– Antonaé Robertson (She/Her/They), SEIU 1021 – SFUSD Interim Chapter President