S.F. needs a better school budget plan
Right at the deadline to pass a balanced budget to avoid state takeover, the Board of Education is considering a plan developed outside proper channels, based on an analysis of Long Beach Unified. They chose the right district to study but learned the wrong lessons. Long Beach has a reputation for keeping meetings short, focusing on what matters, and collaborating with staff. Long Beach’s positive culture shows in its stable leadership: over 35 years, they have had only four superintendents, while San Francisco has had nine.
The proposal’s analysis is riddled with errors. It compares services that are “direct” and “indirect,” notes that San Francisco spends proportionately more on “indirect,” then asserts only “direct” services actually help students. This is wrong for many reasons: it doesn’t consider what each service does; it overlooks that different districts categorize similar services differently; and it fails to recognize that because we are a county as well as a city, San Francisco must provide for itself services provided for Long Beach by its county office.
One element of their proposal has merit; The district should take a hard look at how much upper management staff has grown in the past 10 years. But this is just a small part of the total picture. If all 62 of the positions added over the past decade were eliminated, the annual savings would pale in comparison with the $125 million that must be cut.
Meredith W. Dodson and Patrick Wolff, San Francisco
The writers are executive directors of SF Parent Coalition and Families for San Francisco, respectively.