San Francisco can have the country's best public schools. Here's how to do it.

Note: This is a reprint of an opinion piece published in SFGate by our founding members, Jay Donde and Bill Jackson.

San Francisco is America’s creative city. We think different, push the envelope and are always wondering, “How can we make this better?” Home-grown businesses like Levi Strauss and Salesforce have been redefining industries for more than a century, while nonprofits like the Sierra Club and Kiva have catalyzed social movements and changed our national discourse.

However, one vitally important sector — public education — has never tapped into and benefited from this rich heritage. Now is the time to change that.

San Francisco public schools are in crisis. They have lost thousands of students in the past several years and are facing a looming budget deficit of $125 million. Among the 15 most populous American cities, San Francisco was the only one that failed to return middle or high school students to some level of in-person instruction during the 2020-21 school year.

We could improve our schools with some modest changes. The three school board members facing recall could be replaced by more responsible and effective members appointed by the mayor. A charter amendment to make the school board appointed rather than elected would also likely lead to members focusing more on the nuts and bolts of running good schools rather than political posturing.

But now, when so many are dissatisfied, is the time to think bigger. Now is the time to ask, “How can we make our schools better not just by a little, but by a lot?” We propose a new path forward for our school system based on what some education scholars call the “portfolio model.” 

Today, the San Francisco Unified School District Board of Education serves two functions: It both determines which schools are made available to families, and it operates those schools. This results in a fundamental conflict of interest. Because the board “owns” the system through its control of hiring and budgets, it has an incentive to defend or hide poor performance. 

Creating and running great schools is hard. Success requires effective and consistent leadership, excellent teaching, coherent curriculum and trust among teachers, parents and administrators. SFUSD, as currently designed, is not built for success in this sense. Rather, school board members focus on pleasing the interest groups that got them elected, including teachers unions and political activists. Children and families suffer as educators fail to get the support they need and large inequities persist.

In the portfolio model, the function of determining which schools can operate in the community is separated from the function of operating schools. A new, elected entity called the Civic Education Council (CEC) is responsible for the first function, while the second function is devolved to the schools themselves, or nonprofit organizations seeking to operate schools.

In this model, every school operates like a charter school, with full control over its programming, curriculum, personnel and budget. The CEC is responsible for determining which nonprofits can operate which schools, based on a continuous study of community needs and school performance. The CEC can consider parent and student satisfaction as well as data such as test scores and graduation rates. In addition, the CEC would operate an open school choice system and provide other services desired by schools. 

In New Orleans, where the portfolio model reigns supreme, nonprofits operate 76 schools. Some operators are affiliated with national organizations, such as the Knowledge is Power Program, but most are homegrown. Two thirds of schools are part of a network. All are governed by boards of directors that must be composed mostly of local residents and be representative of the population of the city.

Here in San Francisco, initially, nearly all schools under the CEC would be part of SFUSD, but over time new operators would enter the fray. Teachers and administrators at SFUSD schools could band together with local civic and business leaders to form nonprofits and bid for schools. Well-regarded charter schools, such as the New School of San Francisco, might propose to take on new schools and thereby become a local network. Innovative private schools such as Alta Vista School might put in a bid to run a public school.

The transition would be undertaken over perhaps a decade as district schools gradually spun out into independent nonprofits or into school networks. San Francisco, filled with innovators, would likely see dozens of compelling proposals from different operators. 

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to the needs of diverse students, families and communities. The portfolio model allows a menu of successful school designs to develop organically, responding to what works in practice, not to the dictates of a single district office.

Of course, not all of these new schools would be effective. When schools perform poorly, the CEC would step in to find a new, better operator for that school. The CEC could also champion causes that matter to all school operators, such as increased funding.
 
San Francisco’s public schools can be engines of opportunity and the envy of cities the world over. We already have everything needed to make this happen: the creative, entrepreneurial spirit of San Franciscans. We’ve tapped into this before to create art, found businesses and innovate technologies. Now, let’s bring it to bear to benefit our children.