School Board has several proposals for student admissions

by Thomas K. Pendergast

At George Washington High School on April 13, board members of the SF Unified School District were presented with eight guidelines or "simulations" for changing the way the district matches up students with schools.

"This first set of simulations we're talking about is purely about boundaries and how we draw boundaries around schools and what we would factor in," staff liaison Orla O'Keeffe told the board. "We anticipate that if there is going to be any choice seats in our system that we would need to then develop the mechanism and that could be anything from a pure random lottery to an index lottery. But first we need to work on getting an understanding of the boundaries."

The first three simulations concerned elementary schools. One would limit the choices of parents in choosing schools in favor of increasing predictability. Another creates "clusters" of elementaries inside zones with limited choices for parents, and a third would create zones with a certain number of seats set aside for parents choosing to send their children to another zone.

Two simulations were for middle schools. Both of them would create "attendance areas" for each middle school by combining the attendance areas of nearby elementary schools. However, one would base seats open to parental choice strictly on availability, with no set asides, while the other would allow a designated percentage of seats to be reserved for students from other areas of the City.

High schools got the other three simulations: One lets parents submit five ranked choices first. Should they not receive any of their choices, however, they would then be assigned the school with seats available that's closest to their residence. Another creates attendance areas but does not initially assign a school, opting instead to let parents make ranked choices. In this simulation some seats will be set aside for parents who list a school in their own respective attendance areas first, with a lottery perhaps for any seats left over.

Not getting a choice would also mean assignment to a school with seats available that's closest to home. The final high school simulation assigns every student a seat right away and creates attendance areas for them. Then parents have the option of requesting a transfer for up to five other schools. Any such transfers would be based strictly on seat availability.

"These descriptions, when they say there'll be some seats for choice ... we need to reiterate to the public, throughout this whole discussion, what that means is that it will be very limited choice," Commissioner Jill Wynns said immediately after the guidelines were announced. "That essentially means, in these so-called attendance areas, that most families will have no choice. They will have only one option, their attendance area school. People want choice and more predictability."

All eight guidelines give priority for school choice to special education students and the younger siblings of students already enrolled in a city school. Some guidelines also favor those whose first choice is in their own area or zone. But it is the stated goal of diversity, eclipsing distance between the school and the home, that rankled many parents who spoke during the public comment period.

Every guideline stated that "proximity is not a priority but should be considered when it does not compromise ... diversity."

"I'm here to represent the hundreds of parents who are at Ulloa Elementary School who spoke in favor of having more certainty about the areas where they're going," District 4 Supervisor Carmen Chu told the board during public comment. "I'm speaking on behalf of all the parents who come to my office crying about the choices that they're being forced into and I really hope that you will consider having a system that is actually a little bit more fair. I think the thing that people are really concerned about is not the fact that every single parent has an equal opportunity. What people really feel, at least in my part of town, the Sunset, is the fact that if they apply for a school they don't have the same opportunity, the same equal opportunity, to go to a school that's close by to them. And I think that is the big problem."

But school board Commissioner Hydra Mendoza said not everyone can go to a neighborhood school because of limited availability.

"The schools that you're applying to we have over 2,500 applicants for 500 seats. We're not going to fit everyone in the schools," Mendoza said. "I can name 10 schools off the top of my head that, over the last five years ... people would not go to those schools and now people are scratching each other's throats out to get into those schools. So it's a team effort here."

Commissioner Rachel Norton responded to some in the audience who openly questioned whether a racially diverse student population should trump considerations about how far a student has to travel to get to school.

"At the last meeting we presented a lot of data that convinced me that racial isolation in schools results in less academically-successful schools for all students," Norton said. "So, I really want to reject the assumption that somehow we're social engineering and that we're going off in a direction that does not result in a quality academic program because the data that we've seen and that we've shown to you, really convinces me that this is an important part of the objective for us."

"Since the vast majority of the people using this system are not choosing the school that they would probably be limited to if we don't have choice, if in fact we move to a system where predictability would be the most important thing, I would not be supportive of it," said Commissioner Jill Wynns. "And I understand that where we put this along the continuum is essentially the question. And that trying to build in more predictability is something that I am supportive of, to explore ways, but we could do that without taking away all, or essentially all, choices for people because the choices that they're making do not support the idea that they want no choice."