San Francisco Unified School District Board - workshop

Well, the test test test.

Oh, yeah.

Test test test. Okay, great. The study session of the Board of Education for August 18 2026 is now called to order at 641pm. Can you roll call please?

Commissioner Alexander. Commissioner Fisher. Here. Commissioner Gupta.

Here.

Vice President Hewling. Here. Commissioner Ray. Here. Commissioner Weissman-Moore. Here. President Kim.

Here.

just a couple notes uh as we get started so one uh and we there is we are getting fixed the code to join the zoom oh it is done the code has been updated thank you very much for folks who pointed that out and then um I don't have to say everything else right except for the commission We do have one member of the board of education, who will be participating by teleconference and their information is available online. And we will move on to item be public comment comment public comment on this item can be limited to 1 minute per participants we'll start with in person. There is no in person comment comments for members of the public online.

So for those of you who would like to make public comment virtually please raise your hand.

um hello are you calling on me i can't i don't think a mic was on in the room i couldn't hear anything okay is that better can you hear me i can hear someone now uh were you calling on me to give comment

Yes, I will. Oh, great.

Thank you. Okay, great. I will be quick then. My name is Erin Antcliffe and I'm a member of the San Francisco chapter of Integrated Schools. This is a national organization that was founded in 2015 and our aim is to encourage families with systemic privilege to enroll their children in non-resource concentrating public schools. To show up at those schools in a way that respects the existing communities and their priorities and advocate for educational justice, we believe that public schools are foundational to a well functioning multi racial democracy and we would like to see a student assignment policy that reflects that core belief. Just to know we've seen throughout the history of SF USD many student assignment approaches that have attempted to create diverse schools. And many of those have largely failed, resulting in significant racial and socioeconomic segregation today and a concentration of resources within a select few public schools. So we are aiming to change the narrative around school choice from good and bad schools to see that every school is unique and serves its community in different ways. And a well-designed enrollment system can assist in dismantling some of these toxic narratives. So we just hope that you'll keep that in mind while we're discussing the enrollment system today. Thank you.

Thank you, Aaron Yancliffe. Lori, can you hear me? You can unmute yourself now.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Great. Thanks. So I'm looking at the agenda and it says that site level school closures are in scope and will be informed by site and community engagement. And so I'm hoping you can please define community engagement. Does that refer to the entire SFUSD community as a whole or are you referring to school communities? And if it's school communities, are you Will the engagement include welcoming schools as well before any decisions are made? And then finally, will the board be discussing and voting on the site level reorganizations?

Thank you, Lori. How about Kelly?

Hello, my name is Hava Kelly, and I'm a special education parent. I wanted to call in tonight to ask a question that I've been asking on and off for about six years. The question is, will every neighborhood zone offer a meaningful range of special education programs and IEP services to meet the needs of all special education students within that zone? Or will the district still continue to send special ed students across the city to access school services? If so, how will you address inclusion and integration into these new neighborhood zones for special ed education student families? And definitely please reach out to all communities to solicit further feedback. Thank you so much.

Thank you. That concludes our public comment.

Thank you to members of the public for joining us as a reminder board rules in California law do not allow us to respond to comments or attempt to answer questions during the public kind of time. But we appreciate you taking the time to be with us here today. Um. Okay, moving on to item, uh, see 1 study session, I'll pass it over to the superintendent to introduce this item.

Yeah, if you let's go.

Yeah. So if we leave them like this and you just leave them on, it's hard to hear them.

We have the microphones. So project lovely.

Yes.

OK, so I will be very quick tonight. We are working. This is a a study session where we want to share with the board. the data that we are receiving from our demographers and the maps that we are looking at in terms of where students are and where our schools are. We are looking to seek guidance from the board as we are looking at this data and we're asking the board to help us think through how we should pivot the enrollment process. This is the first of many study sessions And in each one of these study sessions, we are going to be asking the board for guidance on small parts of each of the work of the student assignment redesign work. And what we are aiming to do is by April of 2027 to come to the board with recommendation for a student enrollment redesign.

and now i'm going to pass it to me who will then introduce the team thank you thank you superintendent good evening commissioners um to reiterate what the superintendent had shared uh tonight is a working session not just a presentation um we are here to share our understanding and analysis out loud with you hear from you to seek your guidance and input on a very complicated set of decisions that we are teeing up leading into next april i just want to say thank you to all of you especially to board leadership and providing the kind of input and direction to us as we continue to co-design this process with you this is the first of seven study sessions that we have paced out on our supplemental governance calendar Just by way of background, the zone policy board policy 5101.2 was voted on in December 2020 and having started the work several times since 2021 to 2024 as a district, we have the benefit of having learned quite a bit along the way. And while enrollment has changed, we know that we have to adapt and the zone design You know, and what it actually requires means that we have to really think about how the assignment system and program placements interact with one another as part of one decision rather than two. We do want to pause it for you as we set the table here that solutions sit on a spectrum. It's not a binary. And as we begin to show you the options, we will ask for you to help us understand what are you prioritizing so that when we get into a deeper conversation in the next study session, that we can get into a conversation around trade-offs and that we are on the same page as a team. And so we will keep building on this conversation with you, with your input, with your direction. I just want to be very clear, since we have heard from members of the community and the public, we are not choosing an option tonight. It is more about building collective understanding and being able to define and get better understanding of the problems we are facing as a district in this moment to take your guidance around being able to set a direction and that we are able to from your input, get a clear option to you by October 13. And if you can name things that we should not be pursuing and why, that is also always helpful for us. And you will weigh different options differently, and we want to hear that as well. And working through it now and throughout this process will allow for us to hear your perspectives. And with that, I do want to take this opportunity to introduce a team of very stellar experts who have been working with us, as well as an extended working group on this effort. First, Lauren Kohler, who is the Executive Director of Enrollment Center. Reid Levitt, who also leads our enrollment work, particularly community engagement. And then Jeff Kang from Carve Collective, who has also a deep history with our enrollment systems at SFUSD. So I'm gonna turn it over to Lauren and Jeff to walk us through the presentation.

Thank you very much. Can we have the next slide, please, Irene? Thank you. All right, so as... It's true. I can't see that. Thank you. So as Hongmei mentioned, we have done a lot on the assignment policy since 2020, since the last board vote, and we have learned a lot of things. So we want together to come to a shared understanding of all the lessons that we have learned and the things that we will have to deal with in any zone policy or neighborhood policy that we pursue. We want to get your feedback on the revised priorities for the new policy that we will bring you in April. And we also want to show you for potential policy options for directions that we could go and look at how these policies. Align to the different priorities. This is the 1st look. We'll do a deep dive into each of these. Next time we meet in the next study session. In the next slide, Irene. So there's 4 questions that we're going to be asking you tonight. So the 1st question is, do you agree that choice or access should also be considered when choosing the policy option? We'll present dynamics around access and how it impacts different communities. We're hoping that you can provide us direction on which priorities are most important. We'll talk today about some of the trade offs between the different priorities. And then we're asking you today, whether there is anything that you would take off of the table as an option so that we can reduce the number of things we have to dive deeply into at the next study session. We'll show you four options. And if you would like to take anything off the table, that's fine. If you would not like to, that's also fine. And then the last question that we'll ask at the end is, what do we need to learn from communities that we do not already know to shape the decision? I'm going to pass it to Jeff to get us started on some background.

Great. Yeah, next slide. So just how we're going to be spending our time together. I think obviously we'll be, we can be a little bit flexible, but just to give you the intention that we want to get through the background and framing and the zone policy goals from the 2020 zone policy fairly swiftly as this is information. I think that the board has received and does understand we do want to ground again in that together. And then Lauren will take us through more deeply with with read lessons from zone planning. So I know there's been a question about what did we see? How far did we get? What did we learn from that process? So we'd love to to dig into that together. And from that we will kind of we will land at where we believe there are some implications on the priorities that we have already named and how we look at them today versus how we looked at them in 2020. um and then secondly i wanted to start to surface the policy options and how these priorities the way we see them are playing out across these four options as hong mei said they're along a spectrum so we'd love to be able to start to look at that together um next slide please okay uh the The the place that we'd like to that we're all starting with is, uh, really why this matters for students. Uh, the vision statement that we have here, um, is is meant to to to kind of signify the North star that this work is is really, uh, connecting to and helping us to connect to our goals. Um. every student attends a strong stable school close to home with a a program and consistent staffing and where every family can navigate the process with confidence um there are details I think within that vision statement that that we know that there might be questions around and uh just know that staff are working on kind of clarifying things like what do we mean by what is a full program or what does full staffing actually mean? How does that translate when it comes to enrollment? But that is the North Star. And today's conversation really unpacks two problems that I think have been surfacing. First, the program problem, which is our supply, where seats and programs sit, and why we place them there. As a result of years of just kind of changing different policies and having a lot of choice within the system, we have about 40% of our elementary seats that sit in citywide programs and language programs today. That serves a lot of families today. It also causes a lot of challenges, I think, when it comes to trying to get seats available to families close to their neighborhood or close to their home. So that is one challenge. And related to that is the assignment problem that we're all well aware of, which is how do we actually, what are the rules that we're using to get students to schools? These are the problems that were named in 2020, and they still stand today largely. Families can't predict exactly where their child will be placed. it's stressful there's long travel distances for families, some intend for that travel to be long because they're choosing a program or a school that they actually would like to travel to. But, by and large, travel is long for many, and there is still constant like what we're measuring and what we've always tried to measure as a system is concentration and reducing the concentration by race and income. um. So what we're here to do this is this is teeing up kind of the two sided problem that you'll see, I think, in our observations of how the current policies working but really how the zone policy was trying to address this. It really these two things were kind of tangled and what we're trying to do is show how these these problems sit on their own a bit, but also how they interact with each other.

yep.

So. Yep. Next slide.

So if you want us to hold off our question.

Yes, that'd be great. So what we're what we'd love to do is get through. I think when I get to We could pause at the end of this section actually slide 12. Yeah. Um, the decision for this year, it's already been said, uh, so we'll just. Uh, go pretty quickly through this, which is, uh, we're, we're really aiming to set in an implementable enrollment policy for elementary schools. Uh, that is the focus for this current year along, uh, which comes along with, uh. Changes to program placement and, uh, portfolio decisions. Um. The context is, is that we have two board policies, the zone policy that was voted in and the current policy that we're operating in. What we'll also show is that things have changed since then, and that what we believe is that enrollment, the order matters of which ones we're addressing first. And so when we do address enrollment and assignment policy first, what we're able to do is set a new pattern of enrollment across the system and then observe those patterns and see how that will affect what kind of structural changes we're going to be wanting to make in the future. So bottom line, as Lauren said, and as we'll repeat, October is a milestone for us to say what is an option direction that we feel really strongly about of the four that we're presenting today. And then in April, we want to get very detailed things like zone boundaries, things like what program shifts are going to be made. Those are not decisions that we made last time we adopted the policy, but we believe that's very important for us to move forward when we do adopt at the same time. Next slide. Uh, these are the board study sessions, the sequence that we talked about. So we believe that it's just really important to, uh, yes, to to make sure that we are moving the ball forward. And at the same time, making sure that we are answering, I think some of the really critical underlying questions. Um, and making sure that we're doing that at a pay at a pace, uh, that balances really getting to the decision as as as. Michael Bresalier, quickly, as we can, for our kids but also making sure that we're all on the same page and that we're we're going off of the right priorities right understanding. Next slide. Just a couple more. The focus, it's important to name, I think in this first session and we can revisit it, the current focus of staff to this point has been a focus on TK through five student enrollment policy with board policy 5101.2, the zone policy did apply to the TK through five students as well as our K through eight schools. And so along those lines, that was really the starting point for the focus for this year. That will include language and citywide placement. It now includes TK expansion and feeder patterns. Of course, special education program placement and middle school feeder patterns. In this phase, we're naming things that are either not addressed or, like, in other words, not the focus at this point. And so we've named school closures at scale. Just a broad effort to identify facilities at that level to close down is not the focus for this phase. Christopher McConkey- High school enrollment policy design is definitely a whole another challenge. Middle school enrollment policy is somewhat covered by the feeder patterns, and where else we see connections from the Tk through eight kind of elementary policy. We will make those connections at the middle school level, but just that that is our primary focus, and middle school policy itself is not just yet. So that is why we've named it as a not addressed in this phase bullet. Um, and then, uh, not addressing this phase. This is this policy is really, uh, focused on new and incoming families. So entry grade level and new families that are going to be new to San Francisco. Um. It will all of this in the timelines are so that we can have this all take effect in school year 2028 29 and, as you know, the enrollment fair in 2027 is really important in framing all that up so all of this has to be lined up by that. Next slide. This slide is a recap of of materials and data that have been shared with the board. So I won't go through it in detail. This shares information about the kinder population that we serve. A lot of our analysis does focus on kindergarten. we also know that tk is um not just now a new factor but also growing um and so we will have to incorporate that more into our modeling and you'll see more and more coming with that but uh the big base of knowledge and understanding we have is largely through kinder analysis um and we're we've showed other data here around enrollment trends and where students live which you can see both in some of these slides and in the appendix slide And the last point before we pause is some of the, I think what we continue to try to surface in these conversations is what families' voices are saying and what we're hearing. And this doesn't capture everything, right? Obviously, when we say what we hear from families, that means we're hearing this from different pockets and different populations. What we're sharing here today is actually all quotes and all insights from community workshops that we did in 2020 in the Bayview neighborhood. And as you can see here, a lot of the family feedback that we get, and this is consistent not just in the Bayview, but across other neighborhoods as well. At the end of the day, families want high quality schools. This really puts student assignment, I think, in its place. We are addressing a real challenge here, and ultimately A lot of this is so that families can access schools, whether it's in their neighborhood or elsewhere that they feel like they, they feel safe. In those schools, they feel like their kids can connect with staff and other families. Um, so that's really what it comes down to. It's, it's just something that we will, I think, continue to name when we have this conversation, because we don't want to miss the point. Um. So that's the windup. I think before we get into it, I'll pause here if there are any questions just about those first couple slides we covered.

This is Parag. If no other board members have questions, I certainly do. OK, great. So first of all, thank you so much for the framing. Just really appreciate these study sessions and our ability to get into them one at a time as we have a few. I'll try to keep this brief. Just a question on page 10. So I I appreciate what you naming what we are focused on. What is not addressed and so a couple of quick quick questions on that. Why not middle and high school and if not in in this

go around when will those be addressed and for what timeline yeah so we didn't want to address middle school and high school at this time because since we want something to be implemented for 28-29 that means all of the software for it and all of the algorithm for it needs to be ready next fall in october 2027 i when we take too much of a bite of the apple, it's really hard for us to guarantee that we will do a really good job. So high school and middle school, we haven't done any simulations or research with any of our research partners. We don't have any existing policy frameworks that we are working from. And so creating new things seemed like a much larger bite of the apple than we were ready for. I think that we can deliver a really good new policy for elementary TK taking But middle school and high school, I prefer to consider next year as preparation for 2930 or. At the juncture when the superintendent and the board prefer.

Got it. Okay. That that makes a lot of sense. And I appreciate the clarification that there's been a good body of work that's been done on the TK and elementary level speaking as 1 board member. If it's the subsequent year, I imagine they're going to be some learnings from doing this with elementary and TK. So I. I think that makes sense in terms of not biting off too much and then still doing it in a timely fashion subsequently, as long as it's not something that's delayed two, three, four, six years. One other question I had on slide 11, I appreciate some of these numbers here and a bit of this. I'm really curious in terms of the profile of not only who stays, but also who leaves. So when we look at who's leaving, Do we have a sense and can you provide the board more information around race around socioeconomic for those who've left? Do we have anything like exit interviews or surveys of folks who left? So that we understand what may be some of that decision that people are making.

Yes, we can definitely provide more detail there before we move on from your last question actually I did want to mention the middle school feeder patterns are in scope of what we were considering this year. And with that means some changes for how middle school assignment will work so definitely we can take that on as part of this. When we look at who is leaving read I know you pulled this up earlier today so i'd like you to speak to this, the one data point I remember was that families who make over $200,000 a year are some of the most likely to leave. We have all this information, because in 2022 we had an intern who called I think 50% of the families who applied for kindergarten that year and asked them a series of questions, so we have very rich data on what families are choosing and who's opting out and why go ahead read.

Yeah, thank you commissioner. We, we can get you more details. I think it would be the best use of our time to provide that more robustly at the next meeting. But yeah, to echo Lauren's point. Um. So, economic status is 1 of the biggest factors and more affluent families exit the district at much higher rates, which may or may not surprise you. And then the other data point that. I was just looking at earlier today is that families who apply to a private or charter school option. Are overall more likely to exit the district than families that just apply to that sort of self evident, but then in particular families that apply to a private or charter school and do not get their 1st choice in. There's a big drop in eventual enrollment for those families.

Thank you for that. And thanks for that snapshot. And I agree, it'd be great to get further into detail, especially if you have, and I don't know, you all have a lot better sense of this data, but to get a sense of who would have left regardless and who is leaving because of some of these choices. I mean, obviously I'm really interested in keeping All our families, there's no reason that a family over 200 that makes over 200,000 shouldn't consider this their top choice either. So I look forward to that data subsequently. Thank you.

Hi, everyone, thank you so much. I. Really been looking forward to sorry about the echo. I've really been looking forward to this study session and have a couple of questions. My first question was about slide 12, where there's a statement that staff will bring an engagement plan with a sequence and approach to reaching families and communities. And I'm wondering when we will get that engagement plan and when you think engagement will occur.

Yeah.

Did you want to speak to that?

And so part of what we are really invested in here is being able to look at existing data community engagement included as part of how we are building out future community engagement plan. The question that you're raising is a really good one, Commissioner, because based on the schedule on slide nine, you can see that there are actually a pretty large number of decisions that are nestled within the two decision markers between October and April. For each one of these decisions, including things like language program redesign or really looking at the connection for middle school feeder, for example, we are planning to build our community engagement plans against these milestones so that we are able to not just do community engagement as satellite activities, but really being able to engage and activate the systems and build infrastructure and really integrate community engagement into how we engage or conduct business as a school district. So there is actually a working group that is convening, that have been convening across multiple different functional areas with several different staff members and experts who have been engaging with advisories, working with our community schools, working with our community-based partners To really inform and advise on the Community engagement plan against these different milestones so what you can expect is as we head into the study sessions. And based on your input and guidance on what are important questions to you that you would like us to go engage the Community with that we are bringing a plan to you. Um, that reflects the specificity of how different decisions impact specific communities, school communities, regional communities, focal communities. Uh, but also, as as it relates to really being able to, um. Put in action the work that we've been doing to build up our real 1.

Man. I was going to respectfully ask if we might move on so that we can talk in depth about some of the different. Challenges, but go ahead commissioner.

Is it a clarifying question?

Well, I wanted to follow up on. Commissioner does statement just around the what is in and out of scope. Um, looking at slide 38, which is in the appendix, it shows that, you know, last year we lost about 8% of all San Francisco students between, um. fifth grade and sixth grade, which is about 13% of our total enrollment and sometimes that's 10% of all students. It you know at 13% that's like one in seven SF USD fifth graders choosing to not go to middle school, and I do think that the feeder program and middle school enrollment is a big contributor to that, and I know that one of the goals of this. is to help us attract students to stabilize our enrollment and so i'm curious whether there are other Commissioners who might want to see. middle school assignment specifically included in the scope of work here, because I think it actually is some of the most important urgent work that we can do to help you know fill up our middle schools and improve the educational experience there, as well as stabilize the district.

So to answer Vice President Hewling's question as, again, one commissioner, I'd be interested in understanding why that drop-off is. So if it is related to the current enrollment system, that would be of interest to me to potentially increase that scope given how needed it would be. But if it's something related to just people not believing in our academics, then to me, that may be a different issue. But certainly diagnosing what that is is of strong interest to me.

Okay. So you don't need me to start over, right? Okay. All right. So I really appreciate a lot of this data, but for me, you know, like the resources that are available at the school, I appreciate the enrollment as an intentional learning before we go into any portfolio changes, but also recognizing That some equity adjustments might have to be Nate made just out of fairness, like if we're if we're talking about you know potentially assigning students to a school that has a K one split as opposed to letting them choose a citywide school that has three kindergarten classrooms. and I see some real real significant equity issues there so, so I think as much as we want to wait for portfolio planning. And you know potentially school closures until afterwards, like we really have to look at some equitable resourcing to build out what we're offering to families as well.

And then I'm going to move this forward.

Um, so just to build on that, acknowledge a conversation that we had in leadership team on Monday. Um, this kind of goes back to this, uh, Jeff acknowledged on slide 6 of how are we defining. What a full program and strong stable school are because that in in some part has to. We have to be driving towards something and resource towards that and then move all the pieces according to that. And so I think it's somewhat acknowledged in the bottom where I see capacity limits kind of are determined in part by where we go directionally with our enrollment policy. But if there's anything else you want to add around that, I think that was just an acknowledgement that that is true.

give me give me give me so thank you as a follow-up okay well i want to be mindful that we have people online who have auditory processing disorders right and so like i i as an accessibility issue since we don't have capture you know we don't have an asl interpreter like i want to make sure that i'm as close to the microphone so that so captions can pick it up anyway having said that now i lost my train of thought um good god you're doing great what were you

Defining a healthy and okay.

I appreciate that. Thank you. I appreciate that. That conversation happened in a leadership. Conversation, but considering the nature of this conversation and how charged this is both enrollment and school portfolio planning for students. I think for families. We really need to be very mindful of how what we're putting in our materials. And making everything that we're talking about available in the materials in an accessible way for families, maybe landing page website, something like. I did a lot of outreach around this meeting tonight to families and of the six people I reached out to none of them even knew this meeting was happening so. I think there's a lot of work we have to do to make sure that we are being open and honest and transparent now in order to end sharing the information now to make sure that we have buy in when it comes time to decision making.

Great yes.

I appreciate Commissioner Fischer's point about making sure folks know and the information is accessible to all. I wanted to respond to Commissioner Hewling's specific question earlier about whether folks want to see middle school assignment included in the scope. I generally agree with Commissioner Gupta that If, you know, if we know that there's a relationship here, it makes sense to me to include this in the scope. If it's something more core around academics or something else, then it makes. It doesn't make as much sense, but it's still an important thing to consider. Um, so, and then with regard to, um. Outreach I also wanted to say, like. It makes sense to me in a lot of ways to look at what folks have already said and what we've already done. But if all we do is talk to people who are already in the system, we are missing a huge, huge swath of folks, including the roughly one-third of families that do not choose to send their children to SFUSD at all. So I really hope that we are going to be reaching out and talking to the broader community talking to people who never apply, like so many of my colleagues when I was working, for instance, and had my kids in daycare, did not even apply to SFUSD. They wouldn't even consider something like doing so because of the uncertainty as they expressed it inherent in a lottery system. And of those who did apply, a number of them then did not take the assignment when they were offered something other than any of their Preferred choices, so I really hope that we are looking. Beyond certainly important to talk to talk to you, but if we're trying to address enrollment, we have to look much more broadly. Thank you.

Thank you. Alrighty, we are going to do a little bit of review of what's in his own policy. We're going to do this very quickly and then we'll talk about some of the challenges that came up as we were trying to implement his own policy from 2020 to 24.

Great just 2 slides that read ahead.

Next next.

Yes, thank you. Okay. So, uh. The zone policy again voted in it is 1 of the 2 policies that are, uh, that we have, uh. That have been adopted, um. This is the 1 adopted in 2020 and here are the problems that it set out to to solve. Or in 2018, our point here is that. How we see these problems today is largely still true. There are a couple of small nuances that we've picked up on obviously stress and anxiety. The citywide choice system is very difficult to navigate for some families, largely because there's a lot of different programs, obviously a large set of schools to choose from. The 2nd point was to solve for unpredictability for families. Our view on this is like. Remained that yes, we know that this is stressful for families to not know what guaranteed school they will have. What we've also found in part of how we used to talk about predictability is what are you. what is the likelihood you'll receive a top choice or a school that you would like to um that put on your application and so uh i think a data point that we're naming is that in like just over the years i think it's notable that in the current system it still has it's true that there has been an improvement, right? Like in different ways on how likely you are to receive your top three choices. It's highly likely you receive your attendance area choice if you so choose. So just wanted to make sure, and we'll get into that in a little bit. And the other two problems for travel distance and racial and social economic isolation named in the policy named as problems and we're we are continuing to measure those and see those still is largely true. Next slide. Um, these are not just the 3 priorities that came from those challenges for the policy. These are also the order in which I think those priorities were, um. We're set and ranked so diversity 1st, integrated elementary schools that reflect the diversity of San Francisco. Um, this. We'll show up in part of the policy later. Predictability, families knowing where their child will be enrolled. I think a lot of that was how can we shape and decrease the choice set. And proximity, can we reduce the amount of distance? And zones were chosen at the time because zones were a promise and initial simulation showed that we could solve all three together. Next slide. This is a again for folks newer to the concept. The zone policy that was adopted broadly defined that the policy would implement zones again along a spectrum. We did not name the number of schools in each zone, but it named that there would be zones that would balance diversity, proximity and predictability. Um, 1 notable thing is that in the policy, it says that each zone will represent or have schools that are within, um. 15 percentage points of the, uh, free and reduced price meals mark average for the district. So the every zone has to be selected. That that was a really kind of important constraint on how we draw our zones. It's why they look the way they do. The other two categories on the right are more assignment levers, diversity categories, and tiebreakers. This is essentially how students within a zone would be assigned to school and diversity categories were, I think the concept that we'll show you in the next slide, but it's really one of the biggest levers to make sure that we are students within the zone are at like distributed by socioeconomic status. And and that does put constraints on families, but it was something that was designed in. Next slide. This is an illustration of the zone policy in action. These are not actual, these are maps that were very like seriously considered as candidate maps, but they, or at least the map on the left, but just more illustrative to show you how it works. So this was a, what we're calling, what would we call a large zone? These maps were drawn on the current program footprint. So they were drawn based on the assumptions of our current citywide programs, language programs. They were also drawn to, again, you can see how they traverse broad parts of the city, largely to meet the diversity metric. On the right, you see how diversity categories are defined. So it is essentially at the, I believe, the block level. And it's a measure of not an individual household, but the socioeconomic kind of status of each block, which would put it into one of two categories.

All righty. So let's talk about what we learned and then we'll take some clarifying questions on the policy when we talk about your input on our questions later. So we learned four really important things as we tried to figure out how to implement the policy from 2020 to 2024. The first one is that the three goals compete. You cannot improve diversity, proximity and predictability all at once. Making a meaningful improvement on one of those goals comes at a meaningful loss on another one of the goals. And another thing here that's really important is that diversity is really difficult to change with the assignment policy alone. We'll talk a little bit about that. Another problem that we ran into is that it was not possible to guarantee a seat in all of these zones, no matter that they're like six mile long wiggles in some cases, like we could not tell every student who lived in each zone that we could promise them a spot at one of the schools. And that is because of the programs that were operating underneath. So we'll talk a little bit about how program placement impacts whether we're able to do whatever policy it is we choose. The third thing we learned is that access to programs choice is a really important lever to protect enrollment. We'll talk about how families are more likely to opt into SFUSD when we can give them something that they prefer. And this is not just about me being able to rank the schools far away from my home in their GE programs. This is about Spanish immersion and Cantonese immersion and Japanese bicultural program. All of those are choices and access that our families have right now that help them choose to come to SFUSD. And then the last thing that we learned is that large zones still require families to rank the schools in a lottery, and there still feels like a lot of uncertainty and unpredictability as you're thinking about which of the possibly 11 schools in my zone will I be assigned to. So we'll look at each of those in a couple of graphs. Next slide, please. The first thing that I think is really important is that all of these trade off against each other. So diversity and predictability proximity sort of trade off against each other and choice and predictability and proximity trade off against each other. What do I mean by that? When you have more predictability, you have less choice. The more choices you give families, the more you allow them to choose language programs, K-8s, programs in other neighborhoods, the less you were able to predict which school they will be assigned to because they have many different possible choices. And then diversity, because of the segregation in San Francisco, the more you're focused on proximity, the more difficult it is to get zones or neighborhoods to be really diverse. We talked a little bit about this, the zones look the way they did in the maps that we saw one example, and we'll look at another example in some detail in a couple of slides. They look like that because we're trying to get within 15% of the district average for free and reduced price lunch, produces sort of long squiggles that radiate out from the center of the city. And we talked a little bit about diversity being really challenging to move with assignment alone. So we'll also be looking at programs Okay, next slide. So this slide shows first in 1999 SFUSD decided to stop using racial caps in our enrollment. It is no longer legal to use racial caps in our enrollment. That is part of why it is so hard to get very diverse schools because we cannot tell families to go to one or another school based on their race. What happened after the end of the use of racial capacity was that our schools resegregated. And so the first assignment policy we had was the diversity index lottery, and then we moved to citywide choice. You can see that these two assignment policies had very similar impacts in terms of the number of schools that were sort of had a racial majority or a very large percentage of students of one race. But another thing I want to point out is that in citywide choice from 2010 to 25 there's sort of a really big range of. How many schools have a racial majority, so it goes from about 45 schools to about 25 schools and that's within one policy, so I think what we're seeing here is that it's kind of difficult to change diversity, with the policy all by itself. um in our zone simulations we really don't see a lot of improvements in diversity without making zones that are really, really long so increasing the distance significantly. Next slide. Alrighty. This is my favorite slide, and I think this is the slide that encapsulates the entire problem of our assignment system today. So in a lot of our attendance areas, we just don't have enough spaces for the kiddos that live there. What we're seeing here is red, where there's many more kids that live in that neighborhood than there are spaces in that neighborhood, and green, where there's more spaces than students in the neighborhood. The dots are our language programs or our citywide choice programs. So those are sort of separate from the general education spaces available to kids in that neighborhood. So dark red means, and this is 2023 based on the demographers projections, dark red means in 2033, we think that we will have way more students in that neighborhood than we will have spaces in the local schools. And so what you can see is that out here on the east side, Mission Bay, The population is growing we don't have enough spaces over there, so without some changes in programming in that neighborhood we will not be able to accommodate all of the students in the neighborhood in the local schools. So accommodating all of these students will require both redrawing the neighborhood around the schools, it will require probably changes in which schools are K eights and possibly in language programming in that neighborhood and go ahead.

This prediction. doesn't take into account the opening of the new Mission Bay Elementary though, correct?

It does actually. So Mission Bay Elementary is on here.

Okay, so even though this was 2023?

Yes, so 2,033. So this is a projection of 8 years from now. Another neighborhood where there's an issue is in the center of town in West Portal, Clarendon and Alvarado. We still need about a 150 seats. So without some changes to K. eights and language programming in that neighborhood, not possible to guarantee everybody a seat. You see a similar problem in the Excelsior. So in some neighborhoods like closer to Chinatown, closer to Malcolm X in the Bayview, it's possible to redraw the attendance areas to sort of get away from some of these lack of seats. But in a lot of places, we're going to need to change programming to be able to make any of these policies work predictably.

All righty. This is specifically for general education. This is not taking into account special education pathways or anything else.

So in this simulation, we have held space for the special education pathways that is outside of the general ed classrooms. So making sure that we have space for those students is a priority. So they're just included in the classroom count, but not in the count of students that aren't served.

Hi. Sorry, I just had one other clarifying question. So this accounts for, as I understand, we have two-thirds of all children attending SFUSD and a third are attending independent or Catholic schools. So just for clarification purposes, is this saying we cannot, in a lot of these places, we cannot accommodate if 100% of the children went to our schools?

Correct. It's not that we can't accommodate them. It's that we can't accommodate them in the GE neighborhood programming.

Sure. But that's saying 100% rather than 66% within each of those areas. Is that correct?

I think so.

Okay. It would be distributed differently, I think.

With all the applications? Sure.

Yes. It's not like, but yes, I think.

Okay. Okay.

So one of the things that I see here, because this is sort of what broke our attempt to implement zones is that unless we can make this work so that we can guarantee everybody a spot we're not going to really be able to guarantee predictability in any of these systems, yes.

Just to follow up on Commissioner Gupta's question, because I think it's an important one. Is this saying that we couldn't accommodate all of the SFUSD students who live there or all of these school-aged children, including students who are enrolled in private school? Because I think it's quite different. Because, for example, you could capacity plan to say, we would love to increase the percentage of students in SFUSD to like 75%. It hasn't been 80% since I was born. Yeah. And so we could say we want to increase our percentage and make an assumption that we're not going to get back to 80% of all children. Is this based off of 100% of all children or 100% of SFUSD enrolled students at the current rate of enrollment?

This is the second one, projection of enrolled students by our demographer. So if you're trying to think about where we're trying to accommodate all children, the red only gets redder. Next slide please, Irene. Okay, so another thing that we learned is that choice is really important to certain groups of families. And again, this is not just the ability to write other neighborhoods, attendance areas, schools on your list. It is whether you can go to a language program or a K-8. So The darker colors here, you're seeing a larger percent of applicants listing their attendance area school is their 1st choice in lighter areas less. So, the 2 lightest, I think, are Cleveland and Malcolm X. Both of those. I see 4% of people listing their neighborhood school is their number 1 choice. And it goes all the way up to, like, a very high percent in the 60s or 70s at sunset. That's the dark bubble on the left. So what we're seeing here is that some families really value choice in their neighborhood, but a lot of families don't and value the ability to go somewhere other than their neighborhood school. So options that remove or constrain choice might have differential impacts on our focal families based on where they live in the city and also have differential impacts on who enrolls. So let's look at the next slide. this is showing the difference between families who get their number one choice in terms of whether they enroll and families who don't get their number one choice. So what you see here is that like almost 90%, more than 90% of families who get their number one choice enroll in SFUSD. For families who do not get their number one choice, like 65 to 70% enroll in SFUSD. Obviously that's stepping down. So your second choice is better than your third choice is better than your 17th choice, but This difference is really important and it's one that I have struggled with a lot as we've talked about zones in different assignment systems, because I'm worried about constraining choice so much that we accidentally reduce our overall enrollment. Yes.

Do we know, though, how this operates across different scenarios? Because a question that I have, for example, is if only 4% of families in the Carver AA listed first, that's under the present situation where Carver is heavily under enrolled and therefore underfunded. But it's in a red area where if maybe there was less choice, And students were assigned there based on living there, it would be fully enrolled and fully funded and it might actually change families preferences for that school. Because it would change the educational opportunity that school is able to provide the community.

Yeah, go ahead. I was just going to say, um.

speak more about like the different policy options and what we know and don't know about them. But you're correct that 1 thing we don't know is how family behavior may or may not change in response to policy changes that we might make. So that's a point well taken. Um, however, also we've. we've, I think, earned a lot of mistrust from that community over decades. And so certainly when we spoke to constraining choice via zones back in 2020, there was a lot of, I think, earned mistrust, right? Maybe justified mistrust that like, well, are you really going to, are you going to be warehousing me in a low quality school or is this really going to be a robust and rich learning environment? So, but yeah, point well taken about change behavior.

There is a lot of great learning happening at Carver, not to pick on Carver, right? So I just, thank you, Principal Manning.

Yeah, I was just looking at the community feedback on slide 12, which says, you know, none of the concepts would matter as long as the school's high quality.

Right, I appreciate that. I also, and this is a conversation that we had during RAI, right, is that, well, if we're going to, like, what what is going to be the carrot that we're going to offer and we never got that far along in the like to are we it and there were things tossed around like well if we offered free after school tutoring or if we did other enrichments if we maybe insured xyz services and supports and extra programming there would that be enough to in fact draw families in and so i think that Like that, that is where some more robust community engagement could really help us here is understanding, like, what would it take families to make this look like an attractive high quality school to you? Um.

Yeah, the things that we heard over and over again were school quality, safety, and a sense of belonging at the school. So like, what could we do? The problem that we have is like, it's really difficult to model those. And I have so much respect and admiration for our research partners at Stanford who have done so many simulations for us. And this is the hardest thing to model is what families will do in a different assignment policy or under different conditions, because there's just so many factors that play into each family's choice. Did you have a question?

Doan Nguyen, Yes, I do thanks, which I think it's somewhat fits into some of the discussion is happening here on slide 16 under equity and predictability there's a reference here to. Doan Nguyen, Like public housing or historically underserved areas and that that. caused me to wonder about a couple of things. And I had checked in on some data with folks about this. First of all, I'm just sort of generally wondering what we see historically underserved areas. There could have been significant demographic changes in some areas. I'm wondering how much of that has been taken into account. When I took a quick look, I was actually really like when I think of historically underserved areas, right, like we may think of very similar things. I don't know what everyone has in mind, but It was actually like, kind of looking at at the Bayview, for instance, now, which a lot of folks would cite right? I was actually really surprised to see that, uh, like, the demographics of the area is is actually. Majority Asian, you know, it's like 40% Asian, 24% Hispanic, 21% black and so forth. Um, so I don't know. I just, I'm not sure how much of what we're saying here is accounting for shifting over time or not. and uh also some areas that had a really a higher poverty rate like chinatown had a 30 poverty rate you know the tenderloin had a 28 poverty rate soma had a 23 poverty rate lakeshore to my great surprise had a 21 poverty rate um whereas the you know the bay view is 18 so like all these things made me wonder about possible shifts in populations and whether we're accounting for those and how we're addressing these factors thanks

Yeah, that's a great question. So every time we simulate, we're looking at the most recent assignment run. So looking at the different populations in their current distribution. And I think a lot of these things, the tiebreakers that you're referencing on slide 16, like, we will do a different cut of the tiebreakers. So we'll look at a different way of measuring which neighborhoods are historically underserved or currently underserved. These are all details of the policy that will work out once we choose sort of the larger policy direction. Can I have us push on to the next slide, Irene? Okay, so this slide is looking at 1 of the possible large zones from 1 of our different maps that we made as we were thinking about trying to implement the large zones. So what you can see here is. This is a 4 mile long area that goes from Glen park over to Malcolm X. it's about 2 and a half miles tall from Webster all the way down to Taylor. Uh, there's 11 schools in it. And so what we find is that. this sort of feels like a mini lottery just the what's going on right now in the city in a smaller part of the city and so it's not necessarily more simple because we're still using these like diversity categories and you know all of the tiebreakers that we just talked about about predictability to assign families within this much larger zone and so it actually becomes less predictable which of these schools you'll be assigned to than in the current neighborhood assignment model Because with diversity categories, we're trying to make the socioeconomic composition of all the schools look the same. So you're kind of likely, if you live over by Glen Park, to be sent over to the Bayview and vice versa so that we can even out the socioeconomics of each school. That doesn't feel predictable to families necessarily because now instead of my list of five schools where I have a 95% chance of getting something on it, I have like 100% chance of getting one of the 11 schools in my four mile long zone. yeah so and to the proximity question there's definitely four mile trips in here some of the problems we have now with tk where we don't have enough facility space on the west side of the city is that families are being assigned to school seven miles from their home that would never happen in this four mile long zone but you might still be assigned four miles away from your house so a long commute but not a super super long commute potentially yes

This is my zone and I've applied to half of the schools in this zone. At least I think maybe more between my two kids. And some of them, some of the farther away ones, and I'll just say for me, when I think about predictability, I think about predictability of whether this is something that can function for my family and maintain employment. And so the difference between the FAR schools I would apply to and the FAR schools I didn't apply to is whether they're on my way to work. And whether they are something I can take public transit or a bike to get between my job and my kids, or pick them up in an emergency. And so. To me, I think that is a really big deciding factor and I'm currently in and, um. off-site TK and seeing a lot of kids being picked up late because siblings are across multiple locations because the drop-offs and pickups are at the same time and there are multiple kids and parents can't be in multiple places at once. And those, I think, are the types of things that break families' will to be in public schools, families who want to be in public school when we make it not functional for them. So not just predictability, but like, just predict, like, will this work for me? Will this work in some capacity? I would rather be guaranteed a school next to my office than a school that is, you know, known, but the opposite direction and not on, you know, not workable.

Yeah.

I think that's a great point. School start times, I think is something to add to that list of what works for families and what doesn't. um and i appreciate that you named the difference between riding a bike or right taking public transportation versus driving as well as as keys you know because how we how we decide you know like something taking 20 minutes um via car can also at the same time take an hour and a half by bus for some of our students in the morning.

Yeah. And for some of us who don't have two cars or can't drive to work, it actually means driving from your home to the school, driving back, then leaving for transit or getting your bike. So it can be tricky.

Oh, to be respectful of your time, we got to close at 830 and so want to make sure that we are able to get your input. So on the next slide. The question that I have for you is we've looked at some new ways of thinking about diversity, predictability, proximity. We talked a lot just now about predictability. So it's sort of knowing it in advance where you'll be given a school. The question that I have for you is, do we agree that choice or access is also an important thing for us to prioritize in this system? Yes.

Okay, so I guess I want to, I want to sort of level set and make sure we're actually all talking about choice in the same way because it feels a little bit intellectually dishonest in terms of choice because I think choice as a privilege versus choice as an escape hatch. Because in a high resource Western central neighborhood, we see the 70 to 95% of kiddos. Families are choosing and attending their top neighborhood school versus families in the Eastern and Southeastern districts. Only 12 to 20 ish percentage are choosing their local school, right? Choosing. And so for, it seems like some of the communities that are sort of historically been have. been furthest away from access to power like choice is not a luxury like it's an escape hatch to get to a school that has historically been better resourced and so it seems like choice is only meaningful when every option on the menu represents a well-resourced high quality program and i know that we've talking about that but i just i have a little bit of an issue with like it's about choice like choice to do what Like I am not there's a lot of families that are yes choosing to but that's because there's not an alternative that they feel is a viable alternative versus. I want to be able to choose between this neighborhood that's right by my school that I my house that it also feel really confident and so. I know that we're, this is sort of how we've sequenced it, but I do have, it worries me that we're not focusing on the resources in the schools without, I know it's a chicken and egg thing. And it's like, well, you, how do you, you know, are you going to increase resources in a school knowing that kiddos are not going to be there? And that is silly, but that's just where I'm a little bit uncomfortable. And so I think choice without resource parity feels like dishonest and an illusion. So I just want to name that.

Yeah, and I think the thing I would add, I completely agree. And I think this is where I know that we're going to get to a conversation talking about the implication of our enrollment policy to our portfolio. But this is where I do think that there are intentional decisions that are made around our portfolio and how we resource our schools that actually may implicate people's ability or desire to choose and what that means. Because the other part I i i think is what what i want to better understand is is is what what well are we defining choice by if a family goes to an attendance area school that they've actually chosen to go to that tenant area school or that that is just the school they were assigned and they didn't actually participate in the lottery at all do we know that

I don't quite understand your question so choice here is, can I choose something like can I choose language programs can I choose K eights or can I choose other attendance area schools they're all possible versions of choice.

Okay. Let me work on my question my brain before I say it again out loud. But my next question was part of what I think difficult to understand with some of the kind of graphics that I see is. What is something that includes data for city wide programs and schools and what is just within attendance area schools that folks are talking about? So, if, for example. Like, like, there is a scenario in which. we preserve choice for citywide programs because they're citywide programs. We're not going to have a Korean immersion program in every zone. So it will have to stay as a lottery system. And I would imagine that's pretty common for probably most of our language pathways. I don't think we're going to have a single language pathway that's going to be present in every single neighborhood, however we define it. And so the question to your question here, I don't know, unless you all see it differently, I don't know of a world in which we can move totally away from choice because there's always gonna be some level of that. And so then my question becomes, are we talking about simply attendance area boundaries and the families who are choosing to stay or not within their attendance area? Because that does actually kind of change how we use the language of choice, right? Because then it becomes a question of, for folks who are not choosing a citywide program, what are we talking about then? Right. Which I just think is a slightly different question than do we want to keep choice or not? Right.

Great question. So choice is sort of on a slider. Like you can choose like you could say just citywide programs or just citywide and language programs or also neighborhood schools and other neighborhoods that are not my own. And so the options that we'll look at are sort of on that spectrum. And you guys will get to consider the trade offs between them. Does that help?

Yeah, because I do want to acknowledge because I think back in the RAI process. Sorry. the process who should not be named. And back in the REI process, I mean, it was explicitly named as language programs and SPED, right? Were the two kind of major programs that were, for lack of better words, programs that were not gonna be touched necessarily, right? We will always provide a language program pathway for families who want it, and we have to meet our obligations for SPED. It was everyone else that we were talking about, right? And so we made it very clear that that's what we were talking about. But the reason why portfolio mattered was because we can also choose to move a language program from this school to this school that impacts the availability of seats in the neighborhood. Right.

So, and you were actually leading into my next point that I wanted to make. Great. Any other comments about choice before we move on? Commissioner Hewling?

I would not agree that choice should be considered when choosing policy option, and I don't think that we should add it as an additional priority, except to the extent that President Kim has laid out where I think it's important that every family have at least one option that they could seek for each language pathway and perhaps also for a K-8 option. But I wouldn't say that we would need to do Maintain every student having every. Or every, you know, Spanish immersion program available to them to me. I see choice similarly to commissioner Weisman award where I feel like choice choice actually, I think has done a lot of harm to the diversity of our schools in a way. You know, the slide says that the racial segregation has been constant, but I actually see it. It looks like we've increased from 30, about 30% of schools with a, you know, racial majority to. 40%, which is actually a 33% increase under the choice model and I think choice. the way that it can operate with families is one, for them to kind of be invested in whatever they've convinced themselves is the best school for their children, you know, quote unquote best. And then if you don't get that to be maybe disappointed, to maybe opt out, and also for folks to think that it might be better for their child to leave their neighborhood. And thinking about if it's actually better for us to invest in those neighborhoods and make those schools better, I think, is really more what we should focus on. And we should focus on the resourcing of those schools. We certainly have students to make them full. It's possible that we actually have, to Commissioner Ray's point, more diverse students in some of those neighborhoods to make them both more full and more diverse. um and better resourced and so really focusing on providing that academic equity um i think would be the highest priority rather than choice

i would plus to build on um and also follow up on uh commissioner healings and commissioner weisman awards points i i would just note i don't think we need to think of resources as you know as money um there's there's time there's experience there's you know different subject matters and programs and you know access to aftercare and morning care and so forth it's not always or only a purely a matter of of money when we think about resources so um i i'm always it's hard for me to to argue against choice in a way because i just definitely strongly believe that we should give folks choice but i'm very mindful of the types of issues that commissioners weisman award and hewling are raising and the fact that we see about 2500 students or so being bussed out of the bayview um or the southeast in general uh currently suggests that we have done something we've gone very wrong somewhere We need to be able to have schools that folks want to send their children to no matter where they live and in the neighborhood where they live.

I would just plus one what Vice President Hewling mentioned in terms of how we look at choice and the nuance with it.

I also want to go back to the, um. The statistic earlier about families who make more than 200,000 dollars are more likely to leave the district. That's a choice, right? And so when we don't have equitably resourced schools within zones that families can choose. Instead, we lose families to charters or leaving the city altogether. Right? So. Well, I mean, but not every family has the choice of a of a private. To be real right in some families it's it's move out. Um, and then the city loses that whole economic base. So this is a whole city wide issue for us. Um. But Commissioner Ray, I appreciate your comment about the busing. When we did the ad hoc committee on student assignment back in 2000, we spent an entire meeting talking about the historically racially resourcing. We're built on a big bedrock of racially inequitable practices here in this district. We have redlined our schools. We are part of the problem. And I think It is a board is our obligation to undo that harm as much as we possibly can mention the busing. You know I we hear from guadalupe families all the time, who are frustrated that they don't have language programs here that kids get bused up to us portal to attend. All of that is so true, and this is the opportunity like if we're really going to do this work let's do right by our families.

I'm sorry I didn't know it was only so. A couple of implications here for program design. Because we're saying that capacity match is a floor that we need to have enough seats for the kids who live in the neighborhood or the zone or the attendance area in any of these policies, we will need to make changes to language programs. In any of the systems that we are approaching, we will need to change language programs where they're placed and how many seats there are in language programs to make space available to families. So I just want all of us to realize that the more predictability we want, the more changes we will need to make in language programming and K-8 programming. um program placements are really important part to what commissioner kim was saying like you can choose the the cantonese immersion program goes here or that it goes over here that's an important lever for us to make sure that we're able to accommodate everybody in whatever neighborhood or zone school we're assigning them to um it also has a really big impact on diversity because different groups of people choose different programs and the way that we're sorting people for those programs based on language tests, et cetera, has an enormous impact. In fact, a much bigger impact on the assignment system or on diversity than the assignment system. And then we will talk in December about program placement decisions before we finalize any boundaries so that you guys understand all of the things that are going into the maps that we'll show you in April. Chris?

Before you move on from this, could you just tell me? board to understand uh as a practical matter when you're working on zones and borders for your zones or neighborhood schools or whatever the solution is what's the practical practicable time that those have to shift to accommodate demographic changes how often will we need to redraw them Every 10 years. Would you say that so that everybody explicitly understands?

So I think every time we do a census, we would probably want to redraw them because the attendance area boundaries as they're drawn now reflect 2010. There's a lot less people in some neighborhoods of the city and a lot more people in other neighborhoods of the city. That's why our attendance areas have so much red and so much green in different areas. Alrighty, next group of slides.

And a follow-up to that, we've got the housing element.

Yes.

Right? How does that, Does that impact or direct like, are we taking that into account here at all?

Yes, yes, yes, we do. We track all of that through facilities and through our real estate development with the city. We're always tracking that and we're adding it into our demographic information, which is why it changes so quickly. And so often, I just want folks to be well aware that this means boundaries would have to change every 10 years to accommodate those changes.

Holy ad hoc committees Batman. Yep. All right.

Great. Okay. So we're shifting into the last part here, which is starting to surface some options. So what does all this mean? What are all the lessons and insights pointing us towards? Here is one way to think about how to share how we are starting to think about evaluating the options. There are three different lenses that we're taking. First, I think we kind of slept on this, I think, in the first implementation in the first round, which is, can we meet the floor requirements? A lot of these were named in the policy, especially the capacity match issue, what we're calling capacity match, everything we just talked about, making sure that we make enough room and seats available to meet the promise, whether it's a zone or a neighborhood option. Capacity matches is very much bolded and underlined because that is the first thing that we're going to do more of a rigorous analysis around and actually show exactly where we are falling short if we are and what options we have to get through that. The second lens then becomes priorities. So how is each option performing on the priorities? We've heard from you, I think, some helpful information on what priorities, how we sequence them, but also I think what we're hearing, and we'll debrief on this, but choice should have a question mark next to it, because that is exactly what we were asking you all. And I think we've heard... We'll take that into account for sure. And I share at least on the Thursday.

We've heard a diversity, not a predictable number of it.

David Price- Third, is, I think the other thing that we're going to surface but not used to like exactly select the correct the options but it's something that's very important to name, I think, as we're showing you each of the options which are implementation what we're calling just implications right. David Price- Both from the standpoint of what is going to be the degree of change for families and communities with some of these options. And, like, if it's a large degree of program shifts, it is, if it is a large degree of right, like, um, seat shifts and program shifts and maybe even attendance area shifts, for instance, in an option.

Can I just I think part of what we've talked about as a board, too, is what we really are looking for from the leadership team is the strategy. You know, rather than make certain assumptions about what is what will be what shall be like, what are the strategy shifts that we need to make as a district to actually get to the place that we want right? I think. I've heard that in, I don't know, maybe I'm channeling Matt Alexander because he's not here, but we hear that from him all the time. Like, let's talk about what are the major strategy shifts, right? So, I mean, like going back to when we talk about what can it take to shift enrollment? Think about when Willie Brown Middle School was opening and everyone got the golden ticket for high school enrollment and the seismic shift that created and families being willing to actually attend Willie Brown. What other strategies, preferably academic strategies, but how do we put other things in place rather than make assumptions about what we have, I think is the bigger issue that we'd like to see.

The question I was going to ask was actually, do you have what you need around choice or do you need more clarity?

I think I hear still like everybody should be able to choose some things around language programs, et cetera, but not necessarily that it's prioritized above other things. So we'll look at the options and we can see how choice ranks in each of them. I think that'll be helpful.

Well, I do want to make sure that is that right.

I still would go back to Commissioner Westman Ward's question about how we're defining choice and making sure that we're being authentic. I think that to me was a very, very key point that I still, before we move forward, is going to have to be clarified.

I think what I heard was that there is a prerequisite for us to be able to name what are the conditions for student success and improving student academic experience so that we can really address the issue of providing high quality education no matter where we are in the school district and that the question of choice then follows that being in place as sort of like the through line across the different input um from different commissioners that's that's something that i heard as a through line tonight

And the only other thing that I would add is the choice component really then focuses on making sure families have access to a K-8 or different language programs as President Kim, Vice President Hewling named. Now, whether that's within particular zones they have access to at least one K-8 or if that's citywide, I think, you know, I'd love to understand further implications, but I'm on board with that where we would, I don't necessarily need nor do, i don't necessarily think it's wise given all the different constraints you've named to have choice where people still get to name any school across the entire district but uh have access to that k-8 or language programs yeah to me what i heard is not adding choice as a priority but making sure that there we meet a baseline guardrail of equal access to

Specialized program, um, offerings not to all program offerings, but specialized.

Well, the thing I would.

Well, sorry you wanted to well, yeah, I think it's that and I also, I think folks should feel like they have a a meaningful choice to choose a school in their neighborhood. as well and and when i say choice like yes i can rank whatever but if i don't feel like this school has the resources it needs to so my my kiddo can thrive then it's not actually i mean it may not feel like it's a meaningful choice but that's not necessarily choice that's just

baseline, equitable funding of all the schools.

But you were saying, you were talking about different pathways. And I also want, just if I just want to go to my general ed school in my neighborhood.

Yeah, I mean, I guess I'm envisioning a scenario where there might not be any, there could be no choice of schools. It could be you go to your neighborhood school unless you get into like the one Mandarin immersion program that you want. But we will guarantee that that school will be.

Fully staffed early funded because I think we're all saying things just for a different because I, I agree. And because I, I actually. The 1 tweak I would make to what you named police commissioner was tweaking. The 1 thing. That I would respond to that you have named commissioner Weisman ward. is that it's it's because because i i do think this is a really important point that vice president healing brings up i i don't know if it's about the fact that an individual in any place in our city um feels like that they can they have a choice of an excellent school around them i think it's there's an obligation on the district to ensure that we have an excellent choice that we are assigning students to So the oneness is slightly different on that end. And I can imagine a world where we say, because of that guarantee or because of that expectation that we are filling we say you you don't actually have a choice we're telling you that you're going to be assigned to this school right so so which is the more classic neighborhood model of a school right so I think that's the the tug and pull intention there of the word the word choice feeling a little loaded of like what is that what goes into that you know

I hear all of this. I want to look at the options together before we close so that you have a preview of what we'll look at next time. Can we go to the next slide, please, Irene? so good okay so these are the four systems that we can think about that we could present to you as a policy for how we enroll kids in schools so the first one is large zones that was policy 5101.2 we talked a lot about that one today and the lessons that we learned from it the things that Are guaranteed or a space for the student in the zone and it could be at any school. It's not a specific school. This prioritizes diversity by drawing these boundaries across sort of mixed income areas. We could also look at small zones instead of the 11 school zone that we looked at. That would be 2 to 3 schools. This 1. families would be able to apply to the schools in their zone. We would offer a seat at one of the schools close to home. This prioritizes proximity and predictability. So it narrows choice and it makes sure that families have something that's close to home so that they can name one or two or three schools that they would be assigned to. We could also do a neighborhood school, so a guarantee of a neighborhood school with full options. So what this means is if I live in the Cobb attendance area, I am guaranteed a space at Cobb and I can apply to any other option within the city. I think I'm hearing that this is not the choice that we want to go with or the idea of choice. That's where I can apply to any language program, any K-8, any other attendance area school that has space. And then the last option that we've thought about is a neighborhood school with more limited options. So if I live in the Cobb attendance area, I am guaranteed a space at Cobb and I am able to apply to language programs or K-8s. And I am guaranteed to have an option of the Korean and the Japanese and the Cantonese or Mandarin, et cetera. But I'm not necessarily going to have all of the options for language programs or K-8s in the city. Or apply to like a school in the South Side.

I guess a clarifying question for the latter two options, though, is because I do think the way you have reflected that back makes me wonder. So to Commissioner Hewling's point of like, okay, this is a very, I'm like, do I want to say this on the record?

That was the best way to say it. No, no, no, no, no, no.

But it's a genuine scenario that I'm thinking about. I just want to preface this by saying I love my partner and I never imagined a divorce because I'm going to be with them forever. But I'm imagining a split household that maybe lives on two ends of that neighborhood. Let's say that they do want to pick a school that actually has space in the center between their homes.

are you suggesting that the neighborhood with limited options would not allow them to do an inter-district transfer to go to a school that's in the middle of the city versus requiring them to go to a school that's on the west side or the east side or south side does that make sense means that they would have options we would have to decide what the limit is so k-8s and language schools so potentially there would be a school equidistant between their houses but this would certainly limit the number of such choices right yeah

Because then I think there's a scenario here where it begs the question. I'm curious for the commit commissioners. Oh, you are commissioners. We are commissioners. We're all commissioners here. I'm curious for my colleagues. Thank you, Commissioner Weissman-Ward. Stand with with that nuanced difference, right? Because I do think that that actually has a significant impact of like, are we suggesting What what are we suggesting with that right? Because I I there is a I'm trying to push back on my own energy around this of like what? Why would we limit an individual from being placed?

Yeah, I okay for for your scenario, for example, I think that there are other school districts. Portland, Oregon comes to mind where It's neighborhood default, but in a situation like you described, or maybe even in a situation where one parent is undergoing chemo, and they need to be near the a guardian caretaker or near the hospital or something. There are hardship exemptions where you can say, you know, Annette Dubreuil, Ph.D.: Gart, you know. Parent one lives in Seacliff. Parent two lives in the Bayview hardship exemption. We'd like, you know, a school in Twin Peaks. It's in the middle. So I don't think that Annette Dubreuil, Ph.D.: having the default be neighborhood with limited options prevents us from crafting a policy that has exceptions to meet more unique circumstances of families.

I both agree with that and find it to be like challenging to have in mind this hardship exemption because in our office we get like 20 emails every day that are like, I have the following hardship scenario. Will you consider giving me a tiebreaker to XYZ school based on that? And I just like it becomes very challenging to navigate like, is this a scenario that we think is unique enough to give a hardship tiebreaker to? And so As there are many, many split households in the city, this is a very common scenario. I just want to be clear.

I don't know where I stand on that. I think the reason I bring it up is because you brought up when you were speaking about neighborhood with full options, you said you weren't sure if the board was leaning in that direction and that's where I wanted to correct. I don't know if the board was leaning in that direction or not. And so that was what I was flagging as opposed to interrogating that option. Um, if that makes sense. Yeah.

So I would just like to flag here that as as important as it is what we think, like. My youngest is a senior in high school. Honestly, it doesn't really matter what I think what it matters is the community members who I represent here. Like, I want to know what my neighbors in the Excelsior and the Lakeview. Oh, am I like, um, I was surprised to see Sheridan, uh, the way it seemed that there aren't enough families in to fill Sheridan. That really surprised me based on where it is and 94112 being our zip code and all that. But I trust her demographer. So, um, but the, this is the long way of saying like. I I still think we need a lot more information from community so that we're not designing in a bubble. I mean, when I was the chair of an advisory committee, it used to drive me nuts to see the board sitting here having these conversations and making assumptions without all the information that very often was just on the other side of that little half wall. So

i want to caution us against getting too far along in this process and making some assumptions without fully understanding what it is that really are the trade-offs that the community the community will accept yes so i i also just want to add oh yeah if i if i take what the slide you know at the beginning there were slides that presented some of these community conversations and of course we you know we i agree with commissioner fisher we should kick the tires in terms of you know How many communities were approached? Who was approached? Does it represent diversity? But if fundamentally the deciding factors of what community members have already told our staff is we look for safety, we look for quality of education, those should be Incoming upon us to provide across you know and not create these workarounds but rather make sure that everyone is comfortable with their neighborhood school to be able to send their child, so if we we need to meet that commitment to to our our communities and if that's what they've indicated. is what they're seeking, then it feels like the way we then get to fully staffed schools is by then making sure that we have, we've fulfilled our commitment to be able to send enough children to each neighborhood school to then be able to fully staff them, make sure they're safe, make sure they have a high quality education. So for me, based on what's been presented, based on the community feedback that it looks like we have six years of gathering this information from, you know a neighborhood option with somewhere between limited to full and it feels like there's nuance in there would be something that you know provides that predictability and proximity that that we've been craving for the last six years so i have a last question for you guys before we leave can we go to slide 33 please irene uh chris

David Price- Could you Jeff and or lauren please explain if we say neighborhood with full options, and I know I work with this stuff on with bar too much with you, so this might be a data technical question. David Price- explain how that's different or if it's not different from our current lottery system with a default of going to your local school, which means that everybody is still choosing wherever they want to go and we end up at the same place.

The neighborhood with full options is very much like our current system. So what we would say is right now, basically, you're guaranteed your attendance area school, except for some places where we're not able to make that happen because of language program. Space, um. And this would be the same thing. You're guaranteed your local school, and you can apply to any of these other things. The problem that Chris loves to bring up that this creates is what about if you move to the neighborhood in first grade, and all of the spots in your neighborhood school were taken up by kids from other neighborhoods who just want your neighborhood school. So it's like There's some challenges with predictability here. I want to look at these really briefly on sort of the scale from predictability to choice because those 2 things here are very opposed to each other. Our current systems at the top, and then the 4 systems in the order that we just talked about them. Most choice least predictability our current system neighborhood with full options. We guarantee you your neighborhood school. And I think that families don't know that. That's how our current system works. And so this is more of an explicit guarantee of that. So it's more on the predictability side. Zones somewhere in between our predictability choice, and then neighborhood with limited options, because there's less choice here. There's a lot more predictability about what you'll get. You can see one second, you can see the arrows that look at proximity and diversity, these are based on simulations from our research partners at Stanford and also from our own simulations of our current. Applications if we rerun the lottery and then simplicity is really important to me and read because we have to explain this about 1500 times every year, so we wanted to be really easy to explain, unlike our current system and then none of these actually. meet the floor in terms of capacity, we have to make language program changes for any of these to work. Reid, I'd love for you to give a little bit more detail on this because you know this so much better than I do.

Well, yeah, and thank you very much. You can really see that large zones, they do offer a degree of predictability because as opposed to now where although in practice almost every family gets a school they want, they don't know that they will. Large zones provide a Assuming we meet the floor requirement of capacity match, and that's going to be the case in every 1 of these, but assuming we meet that floor, you know, that you're 8 to 10 schools. So, to what extent that feels predictable to you all that's subjective. But there's a, there's some semblance of a guarantee in that way. Um. They reduce choice a little bit because they restrict access compared to our current city wide policy. You cannot apply to a school that's in the zone far off across the whole city. And so then, if that was your 1st choice, you didn't get your 1st choice. Um, they hold proximity roughly the same as our status quo. However, 1 thing that zones have been simulated to do is they bring average trip time closer together. So there's fewer really long trips across town, obviously, because they're blocked by the zone boundaries. But there's also fewer really, really close assignments to home because in zones, we're using diversity categories to assign students in some cases to neighborhoods that are unlike their own neighborhoods on purpose to create those diverse enrollments. So they end up bringing trip times. Uh, closer together, so everyone is traveling roughly the same distance. Um. They, uh, definitely are simulated to improve diversity, particularly socioeconomic diversity driven as we've mentioned by the power of diversity categories, which set aside seats at schools for students from different areas of the city and often therefore different backgrounds. Um, small zones obviously you can see offer greater predictability. Um, instead of knowing that you'll get into 1 of 8 or 10 schools, you know, you'll get into 1 of 3 or 5 schools. So there's that just that much more. You can plan a little bit further ahead or have that much more visibility into where you'll eventually end up. Um, this, this trades off with choice since smaller zones with fewer options obviously means that more families will be cut off from access to schools that they currently want. Um, and families can still express their preferences within their small zone schools. Of course. Um, but these small zones, which restrict you to access to your 3 or 5 schools in your small zone or city wide options, they definitely reduce choice outcomes in terms of number of applicants receiving their top choice school. Um, and small zones are without really gerrymandering them in ways that feel untenable. They're, it's very difficult to achieve socioeconomic diversity because they're not big enough to encompass diverse areas of the city. Um. Um, there obviously, uh, I'll be brief about neighborhood assignment with full option to choose clearly. It offers greater predictability because if you apply on time in a main in the main round, you know, you will be assigned your neighborhood school at worst. If not a choice that you prefer more. Um, so you can have as long as you meet that application deadline, a really ironclad guarantee. Um. So that's that's a high degree of predictability. Um. it reduces choice a little bit of course because it's more restrictive than citywide choice but it still does preserve access to like applying to nearby schools or schools that are in one neighborhood over from you so it doesn't harm choice outcomes again what families currently list it doesn't reduce access to that as much as for instance small zones does and neighborhood assignment with full option to choose produces roughly the same diversity outcomes as our current system Um, and it's certainly simpler than the status quo or the zone systems, um, since you only need to apply to your neighborhood school in order to be assigned there. We only need to apply to be assigned there and you only you don't have to rank options unless you want to. It's totally your choice. Um, last but not least is limited is neighborhood assignment with limited option to choose. Obviously, this is the most predictable because families, um. Will know what school they're getting into and since seats in each neighborhood school are held only for residents of that neighborhood. Um, assuming we can resolve the capacity issues, students wouldn't even have to apply during a main round. They could come in at any point and have that seat. But meanwhile. Seats would be sitting empty sometimes while students are applying in nearby neighborhoods. So that's a trade off. You all will have to contend with. In case you couldn't tell no. And so so that does trade off with choice because again, this more restrictive. Policy will prevent some families that want to apply to a general education program like 1 neighborhood over. They can't do that in this in this.

oh oh i'm so sorry about that so thank you can i just one clip when we talk about citywide schools i think about our alternative schools right we've got lake shore lot and we've got a whole are we keeping those as alternative schools are we going to turn them into neighborhood schools or zoned schools or like we're not we're not keeping them as talk about them another time or let's talk about that one as a separate part of programs I don't know. No, absolutely not. It's not. That needs to be part of the consideration. Those are part of the consideration. Yeah. We're not talking about keeping them as alternative. We're talking about turning them in. Otherwise, what's the point? We defeat the whole point.

They basically are neighborhood spaces. Okay, I think next meeting, we're going to talk a lot about these trade offs and the different priorities. We'll talk a lot about the floor. My question for you guys is, what is it most helpful for you to see September 1st? What do you need to help? Weigh these trade offs. Can I ask a clarifying question?

I am a little confused. So there was a statement around how our neighborhood with full options is the closest to our current system. But the predictability and choice scale are very different, and our proximity would increase. And then our simplicity would grow. So what does that mean that is our closest to our current model?

The way it functionally works is very similar to our current model. In our current model, you are most of the time assigned to the program or the neighborhood school you live in or something you prefer more. So I think 97% of the time you get either your neighborhood school or something you prefer more. That would be the outcome in neighborhood with full options. It's just, we don't promise you your neighborhood or something you prefer more now like people don't perceive it as that they perceive it as like I might get number one I might get number 17. And so it's more predictable in that way.

I mean, I will just say on the back end, that may be true, but just as someone who's gone through the system as a parent, the current system feels very different than something where if it would have just been, hey, here's your neighborhood school, and if you want a citywide program, go for it. So I'll just name that. But I think it's a good thing probably then that they're very similar on the back end. So hopefully the change management that's necessary is not as much if that's the option that we end up going with.

I worry that neighborhood with full options will essentially be. People on the West side go to their neighborhood school and then people on the East side are doing a big shuffle and are doing basically a mini lottery because those are the schools with spots left and those people are still not going to choose their neighborhood school. Even if they're not. Even if they're guaranteed a spot there, and it might exacerbate. Inequities in our systems, so to me, predictability is not. about like what you're guaranteed at the end it's about knowing what you're going to get up front because if you still maintain that uncertainty as a parent through the entire process that is what encourages people to like apply to a charter as well to have a backup option because you can get accepted into multiple charters plus a public or to apply private and i think having people know upfront what they're actually going to get, not just what the backup is if they don't get what they want after a long shuffle, will help people not have the feeling that they need to have backup options. Um, so I, I question very strongly whether the simplicity would be medium or high under neighborhood with full options and whether diversity would be the same. I would also say, I do think. And I asked this in our in our planning meetings, but whether there were kind of other maps of large zones, and I haven't seen any alternative options for large zones. So I'm going to assume that the. Option for large zones that was presented to us is essentially like the best that the district has been able to do over the years potentially. And if that is the case. I would say it's worth just taking large zones off the table because I can't really imagine asking somebody who lives literally across the street from me because I'm on the border of a zone to commute from essentially Glen Park to like North Beach. It's just not functional for people and I think that It it's not worth having staff spend an extra month of staff time trying to work that up rather than I think the more we have so many real issues like. That we need to deal with about like what the actual scenarios are we're going to plan for and, like the one that President Kim brought up about split households or about you know, alternative schools or things like that. I shouldn't say split house but multiple multiple multi home families, you know and. that if something is just really actually not going to work for the majority of our parents, we shouldn't waste staff time trying to nail it down. Can I?

Can I see a show of hands for anybody who really feels strongly that we need to investigate large zones more in our next study session? Cool. One last thing to investigate. Thank you. Can I?

So did not raise my hand for a reason. I do want to better understand what our plan is to strategically invest in specific schools in order for me to know whether or not that trade-off would be worth it. It's really difficult for me to imagine. I mean, kind of similar to there is a school that has a rotating number of high percentage of their staff who are subs in part because of significant under-enrollment and under-resourcing of that school. But I can imagine a world where we say we're going to use our one-time dollars to spend down on being able to provide some bridge funding while we slowly phase in greater enrollment into this school. So we're going to we're going to do XYZ and to try to To demonstrate our seriousness around investing in that school community that may actually change the behavior of families in that community that actually. Think would would make neighborhood schools limited options for palatable. So so I think there's some questions that I have around what that is and. And because again, I kind of go back to this question of like. You know, then what is what does it mean that we are defining is resourcing a school to meet certain bar of expectation we have around an excellent school and what that looks like that I do do wonder about.

I also want to name, you know if we're taking the large zones of eight to 10 schools off the table and we're moving to three to five schools like I also want to name. If we're saying that everyone is going to have access to programming in their zone, except for the students receiving special education services and they still have to get on buses and go across this. town while they're caught while their friends their siblings their neighbors get to walk to their local school that's discrimination. Like, that's not fair. That's just like, we need to if we're going to invest in small zones, we need to invest in all the programming there. And that includes special education programming too. And we're talking about something that's hella expensive when our SPED budget is already $350 million for this year. So like, going back to Commissioner Weisman's words, comment about, you know, if I loved your your quote, like, we're not being honest, unless we're talking about resource parity. And our Community said enough word salad from us and they're the kind right now with cyclospora whatever it is in it let's be real, please.

Anything else. I just want to say that I heard loud and clear from VP healing and actually all the Commissioners today that. perhaps for us, we need to set a non-negotiable floor, which is we have to have fully staffed, safe, fully resourced schools so that families can understand that when we do move to a model, the school that they will attend will be a high quality school. Definitely something that John and I have been talking about And I, I know that a lot of times we, we believe resource is the issue. I think we need to go back into our neighborhoods and really think about. What are the key factors here? It's like a commissioner ready to talk about just. It's not just money as resources. It's it's time. It's it's, um, sense of safety. It's it's all of these other things and I think we need to take all of that into consideration.

Yeah, and the. I appreciate that and. What I would say is part of what is hard for me to kind of think through is when all of this is said and done what do we want our schools to to look like and what do we want that educational experience to be and if we're saying that we you know just to tie this to our goals if we're saying that we want to reach these audacious goals you know what are what is the structure that we believe is going to get us there which is you know going okay back to the plan that should not be named back in the rai discussion i mean one example that i gave earlier was that There was an intentional decision made that no school can have fewer than 2 cohorts per grade level because we wanted the teachers in those grade levels to be able to. Collaborate with each other, right? Because so the rationale there was actually. Grounded in an instructional strategy that we said was then impacting our people strategy, right? And so I think there is a part of the reason why I keep hammering on this question is because I think. That to me is a strategy that we're then applying to all of our schools and saying, this is why a portfolio-wide decision is getting made. And that to me makes a lot of sense, right? Where we can say confidently, like, I don't really care about the number of seats that are available in this one school, so much so as what that enables for the families and students and educators who are in that school. And that we are going to guarantee that that's going to be the case. Right? So that to me is where kind of all these conversations are resourcing. And I know we've had many conversations about this, but a lot of the conversations are resourcing matches the conversation that we're having about our instructional strategy and ultimately the goals that we want to see for our district.

That's a great place to end. Do we have anything else that we want to preview for next time? Jeff?

Um, for the next session, what we had lined up, or what we have lined up is it's, it's just in 2 weeks. And so what we wanted to do was do a deeper dive on what we heard. So reflect back on what we heard. I think there's a lot of kind of new themes and very helpful themes. So we're going to start with that. We're also going to do a, the plan was to do a deep dive on each option going further on both, uh, the ability to meet the floor option with the program changes. So, for each option to what degree and in what parts of the city are we going to have to see different program shifts or changes to make that possible? It's going to be different for different options. I think we're also talking about, um. what love i mean i think interestingly i think we'll have to talk about what we can prepare in time for that conversation but i think thinking through both the definition of what a floor would be for a school that that's something that we have to chew on and actually see how we can start weaving that and introducing that into the conversation as well as what investments um and what kind of investments are we looking to make choice is actually an investment like it's a strategy right like is a strategy for how we are getting uh families access to schools i think We have to I think it sounds like we're trying to also within each option name what would sounds like what would be. What would be the required investment right or is it different for different options and it seems to be that we have the shape of it, but we can be more explicit around that so that's our plan is to just double click into the options show you a little bit more and and reflect back again on what we heard. Our question for you, if we have any time, would just be maybe a lightning round. What is the most important thing from this conversation that you would want to see or hear? Maybe one thing that you would want to make sure that we cover or present, like share in that next segment.

Oh, let me say that.

That's a question. Yeah. If anybody wanted to share, like, again, quickly, just what's what's 1 thing that would be really helpful.

I mean, just a commitment that we're making sure that. We are resourcing the schools the way that we say we're going to and like, and that's. That's probably something from from from you. Um, so that this conversation actually means something right? Um, in terms of that, going back to that whole choice conversation, what is. If we're looking at folks being able to be close to home that, like, and they want to be close to.

I think for me, I just to kind of take that and. build on it a bit I think my question would be the rationale around that resourcing strategy right so like understanding that the reason like the resources that we are saying are going to go into our schools that there's a there's a strategy that ties to what we believe are going to yield better results for our students so what is what does that tie look like

So for me, I would say, in addition to what Commissioner Weissman-Ward and President Kim have shared, which I think is great, if I can give a nod to Commissioner Fischer, the idea of if there is community engagement work that has been done around this, if it's included in the appendix, so we can take a look at that and understand where some of that is coming from, that would be incredibly helpful as well. Because I know there are There there has been 6 years of work on this and so I'd love to understand some of that community engagement work that helps to drive some of this.

I was also going to comment on community engagement with the, especially with what I had mentioned before. I don't know how much of any of our past 6 years of work has actually involved. The broader community beyond folks who are in and I think it is. I just think it's a huge mistake if we don't. uh ask folks and find out what folks who have left or who would never even consider sfusd in the first place so that we can we want to be a school system i think where everybody feels that we are a viable option for them a desirable option they might decide to do something else but everybody should feel they can come here

Um, I really appreciated the inclusion of specific maps and I think that the more tangible we can make. The options the better and to that end, I'd really love to see more data. I felt like some of the slides were conclusions rather than information because there wasn't a. grounded, data-driven basis for why something would be more simple or more or less diverse. And I think that that will help us give more concrete feedback, the more kind of concrete data and information that staff can provide and hopefully help guide your work in a more helpful way. And I guess the other thing I would say is I think that I'm not misreading the board in thinking that we're ready to make big changes to improve this district and so if there are other if there are pieces around we need to move language programs or we need to make big capital investments so we can make this commitment to like really develop you know facilities in the bayview that have been neglected and have bright shiny schools but we're going to need to have a really big bond like those are the kinds of things i i hope that staff don't dismiss as um not doable and not bring to us i hope that you can bring to us like big bold options with what you would need from us in order to help make those a reality to make really transformative improvements to the district yeah i i know we're building on a lot of great work that's happened before us for decades you know and this is not an easy problem to solve

And I've been engaged in community a lot. And the question that I haven't heard authentically asked is, hey, families, what would it take? for right we've asked a lot about the problems your hopes your but we don't ever i don't think we really truly know what it's going to take for families to buy in even though we have some really great examples of having done it in the past i mentioned willie brown earlier right like we have a history of being able to drive change let's build on that in collaboration with community

i will end by thanking everyone for your time today uh looking forward to the next study session commissioners um please look at slide nine and make sure that you're able to make it pat alexander um and with that i know it's a joke yeah um and with that i close today's study session at 8 49 pm