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After more years and community advisory committees than anyone would like to remember, San Francisco finally has anew policy for how students are assigned to its public schools. Last week the Board of Education (BOE) of the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD)unanimously adopted the new strategy. Designed to support a set of ten important but challenging goals from increasing diversity, to expanding access to academic opportunities, to being simple, transparent, predictable and supporting choice, only time will tell how well the plan will encourage progress towards meeting these aims.
Some aspects of the new plan are very similar to the old plan. At all levels – elementary, middle and high school – families will have an opportunity to submit a list of schools ordered by preference; at the high school level, this will be required. The choice option also brings along with it a lottery process, given that at many schools there will continue to be greater demand than capacity. Finally, there will continue to be a set of schools and programs considered “city-wide,” (newcomer, language immersion, K-8, Lowell, and School of the Arts/SOTA), meaning that assignment to those schools or programs will have no attendance area preference and in the case of Lowell and SOTA, will continue to require a separate application.
That is where the similarities end. The differences are many. Most significantly are the introduction of and greater reliance on new attendance areas, a drastic simplification of the socio-economic criteria used in lottery process and the assignment of students requiring special education services within the Individual Education Plan (IEP) process.
New attendance areas will be drawn that associate families with a particular
Some aspects of the new plan are very similar to the old plan. At all levels – elementary, middle and high school – families will have an opportunity to submit a list of schools ordered by preference; at the high school level, this will be required. The choice option also brings along with it a lottery process, given that at many schools there will continue to be greater demand than capacity. Finally, there will continue to be a set of schools and programs considered “city-wide,” (newcomer, language immersion, K-8, Lowell, and School of the Arts/SOTA), meaning that assignment to those schools or programs will have no attendance area preference and in the case of Lowell and SOTA, will continue to require a separate application.
That is where the similarities end. The differences are many. Most significantly are the introduction of and greater reliance on new attendance areas, a drastic simplification of the socio-economic criteria used in lottery process and the assignment of students requiring special education services within the Individual Education Plan (IEP) process.
New attendance areas will be drawn that associate families with a particular
