San Francisco school district hiring freeze concerns parents
Budget cuts continue to impact the San Francisco Unified School District.
Families at 10 elementary schools were notified the district will not fill their vacant assistant principal positions for the 2024-25 school year. The district says the move is part of a larger hiring freeze.
Boris Amchislavsky's son school was one of the 10 impacted.
"It does constantly feel like we're taking a step forward and then taking at least one step back," said Amchislavsky. "There's always a reason, there's always an excuse."
The 10 schools that will not fill their assistant principals are El Dorado, Dianne Feinstein, Carver, Hillcrest, Drew, Dolores Huerta, R.L. Stevenson , Flynn , Starr King, and Muir.
His son goes to Dianne Feinstein Elementary School in the Sunset District, two years ago they were assigned an assistant principal for the first time.
"When something is taken away it's that much harder than when you never had it in the first place," he said.
Another SFUSD parent, Liz Cong agrees. She says adding an assistant principal lightened everyones load.
"When we had an assistant principal you could tell that the staff, the students were really well supported," said Cong. "We had fewer attendance issues, we had fewer inturruptions in class where the teachers would have to stop what they were doing to address behaviors and needs. So this will be quite a blow to us."
In early May, the state Superintendent put financial experts in advisory positions, giving them the ability to change financial actions taken by the school board.
They were cited in the email recieved by parents.
"I know that there were financial advisors or consultants but hearing that they had the discression to cut these roles was a little confusing," said Cong.
"These sorta ambigous finaical advisors that are driving all these decisions,"said Amchislavsky, highlighting the word in the email. "I've had to do quite a bit of digging to get contact information for these individuals to find out how we work through some of these changes."
The state is trying to prevent SFUSD from going bankrupt. In a statement to CBS Bay Area SFUSD said:
"SFUSD has experienced a structural deficit for years, which happens when expenses for the year exceed revenue. Student enrollment has declined across the state and in SFUSD, and overall expenses are growing much faster than our revenue sources. We continue to work diligently with our state fiscal advisors to address ongoing fiscal challenges that have led to state oversight. Before presenting any positions to the Board of Education, we are reviewing them with our state fiscal advisors to ensure their approval. This process applies to all vacant positions as we head into the school year and is part of a broader hiring freeze the district is implementing. This week, we informed families in 10 elementary schools that we will not be able to fill the vacant Assistant Principal positions they had planned for.
As we continue to prepare for the 2024-25 school year, we are working directly with all schools that have vacant positions that may be subject to our hiring freeze. We want to avoid hiring for positions that may be cut in the 2025-26 school year due to SFUSD's budget stabilization efforts. Our top priority is to fill all vacant classroom positions.
We know that difficult decisions directly affecting our schools are on the horizon - and are now becoming a reality that schools are feeling. We are very sensitive to the impact this has on our school communities. We are committed to doing all we can to support schools in providing students with a joyful and enriching educational experience."
We hope that our communities can appreciate that although these decisions may be challenging in the short term, they are essential steps toward establishing a school district where board members elected by San Francisco residents have complete authority over its financial matters."
Amchislavsky's oldest child will be going to high school in just two years. Lowell High School is within walking distance from their home.
He's hoping that school, and all the rest of the schools, will be able to stay open and become fully staffed in the future.
"I think the district has a lot of great educators in the system that we see everyday in our classrooms, and so that gives me a lot of hope," said Amchislavsky.
Both parents are active members of their kids' schools, and they say they'll do what they can to help the district succeed.