City and SF BOE Should Work Together

Last month, the San Francisco Board of Education refused to act on a resolution sponsored by Supervisor Mirkarimi to accept $660,000 in exchange for keeping John Swett Elementary School open for one more year and conducting a study on whether John Muir Elementary School should be K-8. Supervisor Alioto-Pier has also proposed an initiative that would create term limits for school board members and divide the representation on the SF Board of Education into districts. Last week, the Board of Supervisors' Budget and Finance Committee amended the original resolution to forward funding for Proposition H to include an inkind service valued at $150,000 to televise the Board of Education's regular meetings on SFGTV Channel 26. In an email newsletter last week, Supervisor Dufty asked his constituents to respond to the idea of having the Mayor have direct control over the San Francisco Unified School District.

Running a large urban city can be a challenging. Running a large urban school district with declining enrollment, aging buildings with limited funds for repairs, less federal funds for federally-mandated programs and more restrictions on state funds (where SFUSD gets the majority of its funding) can also be challenging. That is why the voters and not the Mayor should be the ones that determine who is on the San Francisco School Board.

But having a school district that produces highly-skilled graduates benefits both the City and the School District. So the City and the School District should explore ways where they can work together towards that goal.

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