San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), established in 1851, is the only public school district within the City and County of San Francisco, and the first in the state of California. Under the management of the San Francisco Board of Education, the district serves more than 55,500 students in more than 160 institutions.
SFUSD utilizes an intra-district school choice system and requires students and parents to submit a selection application. Every year in the fall, the SFUSD hosts a Public School Enrollment Fair to provide families access to information about all the schools in the district. This system is set to change as the school board has resolved to overhaul the system to ensure that more students (at least at the elementary level) are placed at neighborhood schools.
SFUSD has the second highest Academic Performance Index among the seven largest California school districts. Newsweek’s national ranking of "Best High Schools in America" named seven SFUSD high schools among the top five percent in the country in 2007. In 2005, two SFUSD schools were recognized by the federal government as No Child Left Behind Blue-Ribbon Schools.
History
Arlene Ackerman began her tenure as the superintendent of SFUSD on August 1, 2000. In May 2004, the district received $3.3 million for whistleblowing a company defrauding a federal program meant to provide internet to disadvantaged children. In June 2004, Ackerman announced that Progress Energy Inc would pay SFUSD $43.1 million to settle a case accusing its subsidiary, Strategic Resource Solutions, of defrauding the district in an energy deal.
The David Lynch Foundation sponsored the Quiet Time transcendental meditation program at various SFUSD middle and high schools. Visitacion Valley Middle School was the first school to adopt the program in 2007.
SFUSD dropped Columbus Day from the school calendar in January 2017.
In early March 2020, SFUSD temporarily closed Lowell High School and adjacent Lakeshore Elementary School after some family members of students reported respiratory illness at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. All schools were then closed on March 16th, for 3 weeks, which was subsequently extended until the end of the school year with distance learning implemented for students. In July 2020, they announced that schools would remain closed into the next school year.
On February 3, 2021, San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera announced that, on February 11, he will sue the San Francisco Board of Education, SFUSD, and Superintendent Vincent Matthews for violating state law by not having a plan to "offer classroom-based instruction whenever possible". The lawsuit was the first of its kind, wherein a civil action is filed by a city against its school district over COVID-19 school closures, within the state of California. The suit is supported by Mayor London Breed, who has criticized the Board for focusing on renaming 44 SFUSD schools during the pandemic. Both the Board and Matthews have criticized the suit, calling it wasteful and inaccurate.
On February 15, 2022, three members of the school board were recalled in the 2022 San Francisco Board of Education recall elections.
Student admissions
SFUSD previously practiced a race-based admissions system, presently operates under a choice assignment system.
San Francisco NAACP v. San Francisco Unified School District (1980s) In 1983 the NAACP sued the school district and won a consent decree that mandated that no more than 45% of any racial group may make up the percentage of students at a single school. At the time, white and black students were the largest demographic groups in the school district. The decree was intended to benefit black children. When it was discovered that Hispanic children also had low test scores, they were added to the decree's intended beneficiaries.
Ho v. San Francisco Unified School District (1990s)