Schools plan hits black neighborhoods in San Francisco

Heather Knight:

When the San Francisco school board votes Thursday on school closures and mergers, its decisions will almost certainly affect African American students far out of proportion to their representation in the city's public school district.

Many of the affected schools, with names including Malcolm X and Rosa Parks, are located in heavily African American neighborhoods, including the Western Addition and Bayview-Hunters Point, and serve by far more black children than any other racial group.

Of the 3,204 students affected by the changes, 30 percent will be African American, according to school district figures. At those schools that face outright closure, rather than a merger with another school, 39 percent of the 1,055 students are black. African Americans, though, make up just 13.7 percent of the city's 56,578 public school enrollment.

By comparison, Latino students make up 23 percent of students affected by the changes and 21.6 percent of the district. Chinese American students make up 17 percent of students affected by the changes and 32.1 percent of the district. White students make up 6 percent of those affected by the changes and 9.3 percent of the district.

The school board, having shut six schools in the past year, plans to vote Thursday on closing seven more schools in addition to merging 10 other schools into five campuses and relocating another 10 schools to different locations. The changes could save the district up to $5 million a year.

Superintendent Arlene Ackerman, the city's first African American schools chief, said the schools on the list were the ones hemorrhaging students, so they're the ones that should close.

"You make decisions based on data as far as I'm concerned," she said. "You don't make decisions based on the way it may appear to people."

But it appears downright racist to some.

"I'm appalled -- they're targeting African Americans," said Isheal Martin Jr., a Muni bus driver whose daughter attends fourth grade at Rosa Parks in the Western Addition. "It's a slap in the face for these children not to have what our government has promised us. It's appalling to have to fight for our education."

Martin was part of an evening rally earlier this week where families, teachers and activists gathered outside Ida B. Wells High bordering Alamo Square to call for saving schools in the Western Addition and Fillmore neighborhoods. Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, whose office helped organize the rally, shouted, "You are trying to eradicate this community, and we won't let it happen!"

Standing on a patio with prime views of the twinkling city skyline and rows of Victorian homes, many African American families at the rally said they loved San Francisco, but this is one more blow to the city's shrinking black population that they can't accept.

Martin said 30 of his black friends had left the city because of the high cost of housing, adding he could be on his way out too if his daughter's school was closed. Private school is too expensive, and he doesn't want to send her to another public school far from home, he said.

"I'm doing everything I can to not move, but it's getting difficult," he said.

But it's also getting difficult for those who operate the city's schools.

The school district loses 800 to 1,000 students of all races every year as families leave in search of cheaper housing or better schools, among other reasons. Of those children who do stay, 30 percent attend private school -- the highest percentage of any major city in the nation.

This year alone, the district lost $5 million in pupil funding from the state because of declining enrollment, and just about everyone agrees the district can't afford to operate all 119 of its campuses.

When it comes to selecting schools, the Board of Education is looking at schools that have fewer than 250 students and are below 75 percent of capacity. Many of those schools are in the Western Addition and Bayview-Hunters Point and have seen a steep decline in enrollment as African American families move to the East Bay, Contra Costa, the Central Valley and out of state.

In 1983, African Americans represented the largest racial group in the school district, making up 23.1 percent of enrollment. Now, they are behind Chinese Americans and Latinos.

Schools on the west side of the city, meanwhile, tend to be higher-performing and more popular. They are filled, sometimes beyond capacity, with a burgeoning population of Chinese students, who now make up almost a third of the school district, up from 19.5 percent in 1983. Eastern European immigrants and white families also have high representation at west side schools, with families of other ethnicities also sometimes choosing to bus their children there.

Some African American families, facing the closure or merger of their schools, ask why the district doesn't move some students from the west side into their schools so all schools are equally enrolled.

Myong Leigh, the district's chief of policy and planning, said it was not that simple.

The district cannot force west side families to attend lower-performing, faraway schools and risks losing even more families if it tries to vastly limit enrollment at popular schools.

"It means less money for the district, it means an acceleration of the declining enrollment problems, and it's not necessarily going to help the enrollment at the schools that are under-enrolled because families have to decide to go there," he said. "It's a tricky issue to balance."

Board member Jill Wynns said it was an unreasonable expectation on the part of African American families because they will still have reasonably close schooling options for their children.

"They're saying, 'We don't want our kids to have to go to the next school down the road -- make those families come all the way across town to our schools,'" she said.

She added that less per-pupil funding for the district would especially hurt low-income schools, which get extra money and staffing under several district initiatives. If there's no money left after paying salaries and maintaining buildings, it's the low-income schools that stand to lose money for those discretionary programs, Wynns said.

But board President Eric Mar countered that it was the low-income black neighborhoods that could least afford to lose their schools.

"Closing a school in a low-income community is devastating beyond the impact to families, but also to small businesses and the character of the community," he said. "My commitment as a school board member isn't to move children around like that, but to do what we can to make schools in low-income neighborhoods successful."

Phyllis Thompson, a housekeeper whose daughter, Latricia Smith, attends kindergarten at Rosa Parks in the Western Addition neighborhood, said she'd consider moving her family to Antioch if that school shut down. She thinks other families will look outside San Francisco, too.

"I won't put her on a bus to get to a school across the city because that's not fair," she said. "A lot of African American people have left San Francisco. They close down our schools, and they will lose a lot of kids."

SF Schools To Hold Meetings On Possible Closures