Enhancing SFUSD Student Assignment: Strategic Plan

1. Ad Hoc Committee on Student Assignment September 14, 2009

2. Tonight’s Objectives • Narrow number of student assignment boundary options for deeper exploration. • Focus on attendance areas or zones? • Provide feedback on elements to include in a student assignment system. • One or multiple diversity characteristics? • Maximize diversity, proximity, choice? • Guidance on next steps and the timeline for approving a new student assignment system.

3. Overview of Tonight’s Presentation • Quick review of last year’s work. • Approach to developing potential options: • Creating boundary options; • Exploring student assignment systems. • Potential Options. • Confirm next steps and timeline. • Discuss a community engagement plan.

4. Overview of Tonight’s Presentation • Quick review of last year’s work. • Approach to developing potential options: • Creating boundary options; • Exploring student assignment systems. • Potential Options. • Confirm next steps and timeline. • Discuss a community engagement plan.

5. All presentations are available on the SFUSD web site www.sfusd.edu http://portal.sfusd.edu/template/default.cfm?page=policy.placement.assignment

6. Foundation • The Board sees the achievement gap as the greatest civil rights issue facing the District today. • Student assignment should support the implementation of the Board’s equity-centered strategic plan - Beyond the Talk: Taking Action to Educate Every Child Now.

7. Our Current Assignment System • The current process, in place since 2001, is designed to: • Give parents choice; • Ensure equitable access; and • Promote diversity without using race/ethnicity. • Any child can apply to any school in the District. • When there are more applicants than seats available, a diversity lottery assigns students to one of their choices. • Students who do not get one of their choices get offered the school closest to where they live with space. • Other features: waiting pools, open enrollment, appeals.

8. Why Redesign Student Assignment? • The current student assignment plan has not met SFUSD’s longtime desegregation goals of reducing racial isolation and improving educational opportunities and outcomes for all students. • A quarter of our schools have more than 60% of a single racial/ethnic group. • The achievement gap (the discrepancy between the academic proficiency of students) has persisted for African American, Latino, and Samoan students.

9. Why Redesign Student Assignment? • Boundaries have not been revised since the early 1980s; since then SFUSD has closed, opened, merged, and redesigned schools. • Some schools are under-enrolled while others are over-enrolled. • The current assignment process has different rates of participation by racial/ethnic group, and many families report finding the current system time consuming, unpredictable, and difficult to understand.

10. Steps in Developing a New System • Analyze current conditions. • Develop priorities. • Design and analyze different options. • Approve a new student assignment system. • Build the infrastructure to support the new system. • Rollout the new student assignment system.

11. Board’s Priorities for Student Assignment • Provide equitable access to the range of opportunities offered to students. • Reverse the trend of racial isolation and the concentration of underserved students in the same school. • Provide transparency at every stage of the assignment process.

12. Complex: No Simple Solution • Diversity patterns vary throughout the City (academic; linguistic; race/ethnicity; socio-economic). • Applicant pools are not diverse, and all families do not participate in the current system. • There is a non-uniform distribution of programs throughout the city. • Priorities require a multidimensional approach; student assignment is one part.

13. Complex: No Simple Solution • Student assignment has to be supported by: • Strategic placement of programs and services that attract and support diverse learning environments and provide PreK-12 instructional coherence. • Targeted outreach and recruitment designed to create diverse learning environments. • Strategic transportation policy and infrastructure.

14. Complex: No Simple Solution • The focus tonight is on • the student assignment system!

15. Overview of Tonight’s Presentation • Quick review of last year’s work. • Approach to developing potential options: • Creating boundary options; • Exploring student assignment systems. • Potential Options. • Confirm next steps and timeline. • Discuss a community engagement plan.

16. Our Approach • Lapkoff & Gobalet Demographic Research, Inc. • Completed a demographic study of school age children in San Francisco (Census data and SFUSD student data). • Detailed maps and data available on the web. • http://portal.sfusd.edu/template/default.cfm?page=policy.placement.assignment. • Explored different boundary scenarios.

17. Our Approach • Working with a group of researchers who helped Boston public schools and NYC public schools develop student assignment systems, we used historical data about parents’ choices to start exploring student assignment systems. • Tonight’s feedback will enable the exploration to continue.

18. Overview of Tonight’s Presentation • Quick review of last year’s work. • Approach to developing potential options: • Creating boundary options; • Exploring student assignment systems. • Potential Options. • Confirm next steps and timeline. • Discuss a community engagement plan.

19. Jeanne Gobalet, Ph.D., Lapkoff & Gobalet Demographic Research, Inc.

20. Explored • Boundaries surrounding individual schools: • Attendance Areas. • Boundaries surrounding multiple schools: • Small Zones. • LargeZones.

21. Guidelines for Drawing Attendance Areas • School capacities and locations. • Fall 2008 student residence patterns. • Students from new housing. • Geographic barriers (highways, busy thoroughfares, mountains). • Academic/linguistic/racial/socioeconomic diversity. • Contiguity (avoid satellites/islands).

22. K-12 SFUSD Students, Fall 2008

23. K-5 Enrolled Outside SF City Planning Neighborhood

24. Elementary Resident Counts & Capacity Based on home addresses, not enrollment. Currently there are surplus seats in the southeast, but there would not be enough space if all students who live there attended a school in the southeast.

25. Enrollment Projections: New Housing Looked at currently-planned new housing to be built over the next several decades. • Bayview Hunters Point • 3,700 units • 1,188 K-12 students expected • Expected completion 2024 • Mission Bay • 1,100 more housing units • 66 more K-12 students expected • Under construction • Treasure/Yerba Buena Island • 7,700 housing units • 1,400 K-12 students expected • Expected completion 2034 • Visitacion Valley • 1,600 housing units • 880 K-12 students expected • Expected completion by 2030 Transbay • 2,600 housing units • 640 K-12 students • Expected completion 2025 Market Octavia • 2,200 new units by 2035 • 297 K-12 students in 2035 • Expected completion after 2035 Hunters Point Shipyard • 11,500 units • 5,200 K-12 students in 2035 • Expected completion after 2035

26. Enrollment Projections: New Housing K-12 student projections based on SFUSD student yields from comparable housing, by type of unit and market rate/BMR.

27. Key Findings • District-wide, school capacity exceeds enrollment at the elementary and middle school levels. • 2,300 more seats than elementary students. • 1,800 more seats than middle school students. • There is a geographic mismatch between where students live and where schools are located. • Southeast is the most densely populated part of City (more students than seats). • The north and west is not as densely populated (fewer students than seats).

28. Key Findings • The majority of students go to a school outside their San Francisco City Planning neighborhood. • 36% attend a school in their SF City Planning Neighborhood. • 68% attend a school in their SF City Planning Neighborhood or an adjacent area. Little enrollment growth forecasted in next 3-4 years from new housing.

29. Diversity: Socioeconomic

30. Diversity: Linguistic

31. Diversity: Academic Based on SFUSD students’ home addresses, not school enrollment.

32. Diversity: Race/Ethnicity Based on SFUSD students’ home addresses, not school enrollment.

33. Key Findings: Attendance Areas • Diversity patterns vary throughout the city (academic; linguistic; racial/ethnic; socioeconomic). Attendance areas may reverse the trend of racial isolation and the concentration of underserved students in the same school in some areas, but not city-wide.

34. Guidelines for Drawing Zones • Assume the current configuration of programs could change to ensure equitable access and instructional coherence. • Make sure there is enough capacity to accommodate all K-12 students living in the zone (sufficient # of elementary, middle, and high school seats). • Avoid geographic barriers (highways, mountains). • Maximize academic/linguistic/racial/socioeconomic diversity. • Contiguity (avoid satellites/islands).

35. Challenges Drawing Zones • Diversity patterns vary across the City. • Highways 101 and 280 are barriers in the southeast. • Mountains form a geographic barrier in the center of the city. • There are few direct routes between the east and the west. • The distribution of K-12 schools constrains the number and shape of feasible zones.

40. Key Findings: Large Zones • Large zones present significant access problems given the terrain and lack of direct routes in the City. • The larger the zone, the greater the opportunity to create diverse zones. However, student choices within zones may not reverse racial isolation and the concentration of underserved students. • Assigning students without a choice system may reverse racial isolation and the concentration of underserved students, but: • would create uncertainty regarding which school a student would get assigned; • some students in the zone would have to travel further to school than others; and • would require significant investment in infrastructure (e.g., transportation, moving programs, etc.)

43. Key Findings: Smaller Zones Small zones may reverse the trend of racial isolation and the concentration of underserved students in the same school in some areas but not city-wide. • The more zones there are the more difficult it is: • to ensure sufficient seats for all elementary, middle, and high school students in the zone; and • to replicate program offerings and PreK-12 instructional coherence in each zone. • The smaller the zones, the closer they become to attendance areas.

44. Feedback During Discussion • Tonight’s Objectives • Narrow number of student assignment boundary options for deeper exploration. • Focus on attendance areas or zones? • Provide feedback on elements to include in a student assignment system. • One or multiple diversity characteristics? • Maximize diversity, proximity, choice? • Guidance on next steps and the timeline for approving a new student assignment system.

45. Overview of Tonight’s Presentation • Quick review of last year’s work. • Approach to developing potential options: • Creating boundary options; • Exploring student assignment systems. • Potential Options. • Confirm next steps and timeline. • Discuss a community engagement plan.

46. Exploring Assignment Systems • Explored draft attendance area boundaries. Boundaries not finalized: draft provides preliminary insights into potential implications. • Required program needs for Special Education and English Learner students. • Younger siblings. • Biliteracy and immersion programs. • Attendance area assignments.

47. Exploring Assignment Systems • Redrawing the attendance areas and assigning students to their attendance area school could decrease racial isolation and the concentration of underserved students in the same school.

48. Exploring Assignment Systems • Redrawing the attendance areas and assigning students to their attendance area school could decrease racial isolation and the concentration of underserved students in the same school.

49. Exploring Assignment Systems • Redrawing the attendance areas and assigning students to their attendance area school could decrease racial isolation and the concentration of underserved students in the same school.

50. Exploring Assignment Systems • Using historical data about choices people have made, and information from the boundary simulations, researchers have begun exploring different choice systems designed to control for different things, such as: • Achievement diversity • Proximity • Achievement diversity and proximity • Limitations of using historical choice data: • Choice patterns are a product of our current system and would change with a new system. • Current participation patterns vary by racial/ethnic group.