District lost 1,700 students this year — and fall could be worse
San Francisco’s public schools are facing an exodus of families during a crisisfilled and difficult pandemic year, which could mean longlasting fallout for city schools, potentially pitching the district into deeper financial distress in years to come.
More than 1,700 San Francisco students left the city’s public schools over the past year, a decline in enrollment that could get worse in the fall, resulting in an estimated $20 million loss in state funding.
As the school year rolled to a close in recent weeks, the district counted 50,955 students in its schools, the lowest enrollment in decades and a 3% drop compared with the end of the 2020 school year, according to a report prepared for a school board budget committee meeting Wednesday.
The decline was seen across racial and income lines, although white enrollment saw the largest
loss, a decline of 4%, or 299 students, during the school year.
The numbers are the latest blow to a district reeling from a tumultuous school year riddled with lawsuits, a delayed reopening of classrooms, a school board recall effort and the rescinded retirement of the superintendent — all amid a devastating pandemic.
The district needs to rebuild trust and interest in the schools, said Orla O’Keeffe, chief of policy and operations, including learning recovery and other support systems.
“We also think it’s important to have an understanding of what the needs and desires are of families when applying to SFUSD,” she said.
The snapshot of the endof year enrollment numbers offers a potentially bleak picture for the fall.
So far, the number of students registered for kindergarten is down to 3,504, a loss of 374 children — a nearly 10% decline from a year earlier. The district saw a 55% decline in kindergarten applications from white families.
The district is likely to feel the loss of students for more than a decade to come as this smaller kindergarten class moves up through the system, officials said.
Why those students left and where they went is not entirely clear.
“This year has been filled with uncertainty and challenges for families,” said district spokeswoman Gentle Blythe. “The pandemic has changed the circumstances of many, not just families in San Francisco. Enrollment decline can be seen in many public school districts.”
She noted that SFUSD does not have formal data regarding families’ circumstances or motivations related to the loss of students, such as employment and housing data for current or prospective families.
Yet it’s clear many families vowed to leave after losing faith in the district because of the slow reopening of classrooms and ongoing drama among district leadership. That includes an $87 million lawsuit filed by board member Alison Collins against five colleagues after they removed her from the vice presidency and committee positions following the discovery of racist tweets against Asian Americans, which have remained online since 2016.
Claire Raj’s family is among those who have opted out. The mother of three, with a former firstgrader and thirdgrader at McCoppin Elementary, said she felt the district let students and schools down this year.
Despite being a parent leader at the school, she pulled her kids out in January, enrolling them at St. Anne School, which had resumed inperson learning in October. Her youngest son’s teacher at St. Anne informed her that her son didn’t have enough muscle control in his hand to write after months on a computer tablet and that he was well behind peers in reading and writing.
The district just didn’t do enough to help families, she said.
“It’s something we had never considered, going to private school. We aren’t Catholic,” Raj said. “Once we started considering it, it seemed we just didn’t have any choice.”
At the same time, the pandemic has turned a lot of lives upside down, resulting in job losses or remote work leading to relocation, with 53,000 San Francisco residents moving away from the city, according to U.S. Postal Service change-of-address data.
It’s unclear how many of them are families with children or whether those who’ve left during the pandemic will come back.
District officials said enrollment was down 1,000 students at the start of the school year and then lost another 700 during the year, with a notable drop in incoming students, especially English learners and newcomer students.
Board member Jenny Lam said it will be critical for the district to understand immigration data and patterns as well as why families are leaving.
“It's important to have a really detailed sense of where we’re at today,” she said, “and where we’re going to be in the coming years.”
Yet district officials acknowledged the 1,700student decline is only a partial picture.
While they know fewer families participated in the application process for the fall, that typically includes only those entering kindergarten, middle school or high school.
That leaves out the vast majority of students across all the other grades currently enrolled in the district, who have yet to inform the district what their plans are for August.
District officials said they won’t know for sure how many students they’ve lost until they count official enrollment 10 days into the new school year.
The financial hit could be huge. The district already faces a significant deficit, up to $100 million out of a $1 billion budget, in the coming years.
Districts get state funding based on daily attendance.
While state officials have vowed to not reduce funding because of declines in enrollment and attendance this year, they will starting in 2022 — with an estimated $12,000 cut for each student lost.
“We are taking this seriously and taking steps to be responsive to the types of school experiences our students and families want,” Blythe said. “We are focused on and committed to increasing enrollment.”
Raj’s children will be among those not in public school seats.
“We’re not going to go back to SFUSD,” she said. “This is going to lead to such inequitable results because a lot of people are not going to be able to make the decision we made.”