New school student assignment process proposed

Elementary and middle school families would be offered a school near their homes under a plan submitted by schools' Superintendent Carlos Garcia to the Board of Education in February.

The recommended policy would allow elementary and middle school students who live within the attendance area of a school to receive an initial assignment to attend that school.

This is a shift from the current system, which requires families to submit up to seven choices and participate in what is called the "diversity index lottery." The current system has had limited connection to where students live and has resulted in racially isolated schools, the dispersion of students throughout San Francisco and under-enrolled schools in certain areas of the City.

The high school assignment process will be simplified, but will remain a choice process. School staff members who spent more than a year working with researchers and gathering community input to develop the superintendent's policy say the proposal allows for predictability and reduces the amount of parent effort required to enroll children in school while maintaining a degree of choice for families who may not wish to attend their neighborhood school. The plan also provides an opportunity for the district to use multiple strategies to create diverse learning environments instead of relying on student assignment alone. The increased predictability also provides the district with an opportunity to more cost-effectively create instructional coherence from preschool through high school.

"This proposed method is simpler for families," said Orla O'Keeffe, a special assistant to the superintendent. "All you need to tell us when you sign up for school is where you live and where you want to go to school. This will require less time and effort for parents. If they choose to, elementary and middle school families can participate in a choice process that will allow them to apply for citywide schools and programs in attendance areas other than their own."

The Board of Education established three priorities for the redesign of student assignments: reverse the trend of racial isolation and the concentration of underserved students in the same school; provide equitable access to the range of opportunities offered to students; and provide transparency at every stage of the assignment process.

Creating a policy that met these goals was difficult. After months of conducting simulations for more than six different options, staff concluded that different choice systems are limited in their ability to reverse the trend of racial isolation - and the concentration of underserved students in the same school - because the applicant pools for individual schools are racially isolated. In addition, not all families have the same opportunity to understand which schools they might like and submit their choices on time.

Neighborhood schools are similarly limited in their ability to reverse the trend of racial isolation and the concentration of underserved students, although some schools may become less racially concentrated than they are today, and many schools would have a more robust enrollment.

After thoroughly investigating the options and consulting with national experts, staff concluded that to reverse the trend of racial isolation and the concentration of underserved students in the same school through student assignment alone, the Board of Education would need to assign students to schools they have not historically requested and to schools far from where they live.

The Board of Education is planning to take up the school assignment process at its meeting on March 9.