Jill Tucker

San Francisco school leaders acknowledge the district faces massive challenges such as a severe fiscal crisis and imminent school closures, but they warn educational conditions will get even worse if voters don’t approve an upcoming $790 million bond to fix aging classrooms and campuses. The school board is expected to approve a resolution Tuesday to place the bond on the November ballot. The bond would upgrade and modernize dilapidated facilities that are already beyond their expected lifespan…

San Francisco no longer has full control over its schools, with state officials giving fiscal appointees veto power over spending last week after new deficit projections showed the district could run out of cash to pay the bills in just over a year. State education leaders have been keeping tabs on San Francisco Unified School District for a few years, hoping district officials would pull out of the fiscal tailspin, but their watchful concern has turned to active angst. Late last week, two fisca…

For many high school students, the pressure to get into top colleges is intense, with students striving to get straight A’s, excel in extracurriculars, demonstrate leadership and share their unique qualities in a perfect essay. Acceptances are celebrated while the rejections are shouldered in silence, the letters starting with “sorry to inform you” stuck on repeat in their internal soundtracks. More on college admissions: These California colleges offer the best return on investment Tool: The UC…

If all 14 of the Black students admitted to San Francisco’s Lowell High School attend the academically elite public school, they will make up just over 1% of the freshmen class disproportionately composed of white and Asian American students. That’s an increase over last year, when just 11 Black students gained admission to the nationally renowned school through the school’s merit-based process, which sorts students largely by test scores and grades. “At Lowell we recognize there are students w…

Many of San Francisco’s dozens of private schools pay their heads of schools hefty sums — well into six figures — typically to oversee one school. San Francisco University High School’s head of school made $750,000 in total compensation in 2022, for example, to oversee about 450 students. By comparison, the city’s public school superintendent Matt Wayne, who oversees more than 100 schools and nearly 50,000 students, has a base salary of $345,000. Data: Here’s how expensive private school tuition…

A former dog park and part-time pumpkin patch could be the next site developed for affordable teacher housing in San Francisco, along with a second lot currently used for nonessential office space, officials announced Thursday. District leaders said the two sites will be presented to the school board on April 16, which is expected to declare them as surplus property. That would be the first step in a lengthy process to develop the land, including at least a few years to go through legal hoops an…

Students at San Mateo’s Abbott Middle School were struggling last year. There were frequent fights, a lot of disengaged kids, too many behavioral problems and kids pulled the fire alarm six times, disrupting classes, school officials said. Parents were concerned. So was Superintendent Diego Ochoa, who runs the San Mateo-Foster City School District. “Some of those teenager behaviors we saw were really intense at the school and much more so than the other schools,” he said. “So we were open to ide…

Two of the biggest players in the e-cigarette industry will cover the salaries and benefits of 76 nurses, counselors and health educators in San Francisco schools next year in just the first of three expected rounds of funding from a legal settlement with the vaping giants. District officials plan to spend the initial chunk of the $24.65 million deal with Juul Labs Inc. and Altria Group Inc. next school year and the rest over the following two years. Altria, a major tobacco company and cigarette…

For years, San Francisco resident Autumn Looijen has pushed for change through loud, uncompromising community activism — including a big win in the school board recall — but she’s ready to stop yelling and start working within the system. Looijen, a moderate, announced Monday that she will be running for the District 5 seat on the Board of Supervisors, currently held by Dean Preston, the board’s only Democratic Socialist, who’s running for reelection. Looijen and her partner Siva Raj were the le…

A homeless man entered the girls locker room at San Francisco’s Lowell High School and made a bed in a crawl space before his snoring alerted members of the girls softball team Saturday, according to students who encountered the scene. The incident startled the students and staff and prompted parents to question campus security after a series of recent incidents involving intruders at district schools, including one where a man scaled a wall earlier this month to enter an occupied kindergarten c…