San Francisco Unified parents will have to wait longer to learn which schools are closing
SAN FRANCISCO — Parents within the San Francisco Unified School District are growing anxious and frustrated after learning they have to wait longer to learn which schools will be closed next year.
The closures come after a departure of more than 4,000 students over several years and a multimillion-dollar budget deficit.
"This has just been looming over us for so long and at this point and at this point it is just creating more anxiety," parent Sara Meskin told CBS News Bay Area.
The district was scheduled to announce the closures this week but postponed it to October.
"We just kind of want answers," Meskin added. "We want to know what's going to happen. We want to know if our schools are going to close so that we can kind of go forward. It seems like all the waiting, you know, is not helping."
She was one of about a hundred parents who spent their evening at George Washington High School listening to the top five highest polling candidates for mayor give their pitch for how they would stabilize the district.
Another district parent, George Loew, called the decision of which schools to close "a worst kind of decision for them to have to make."
"I have faith that they're doing — like taking it seriously, that they understand how significant their repercussions are going to be for families whose kids are in those schools," he told CBS News Bay Area.
The school that parent Gerald Kanapathy's kids attend is likely to be on the chopping block, he said.
Their school is a district Montessori school, and Kanapathy said that because of the small class sizes, he believes it is on the list of school closures.
"We really love our school. We really love the community that we've had," he said. "I wish that it wasn't going to come to this. On the other hand, I will say that I understand what is going on, and we've seen this firsthand."
In San Francisco, the mayor has limited control over the district. The power lies primarily with the county's board of education. But the city's top official could help provide needed support for district families by securing bus lines for students, affordable housing and community resources.
"The school district needs a district administrator at a higher level," Mayor London Breed suggested.
"We have to do everything we can to avoid school closures it is going to cause disruption," supervisor Ahsha Safaí explained.
"Thousands of services can be built on SFUSD properties," supervisor Aaron Peskin said, pointing to one of the district's properties on Market Street that formerly housed a Nordstrom.
"We have to start focusing on student achievement student outcome," said nonprofit executive Daniel Lurie.
"If we're going to be real about the future it's going to be part of the equation," former supervisor and interim mayor Mark Farrell said of the closures.
For Meskin, she holds onto hope that with the inevitable closures, come positive changes.
"My hope is that the resources really are being used in a way that benefits all students," she said. "My hope with the school closure is that if it has to happen the schools are going to get resources that are actually going to be helping the students that are going there."
