Press Release Details
Press Release Message
San Francisco (Friday, September 27, 2024) - San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) Superintendent Dr. Matt Wayne and Board of Education President Matt Alexander today called for an immediate, independent assessment of serious concerns regarding recent budget and hiring practices for Special Education positions in San Francisco’s public schools.
Through Mayor London Breed’s School Stabilization Team, the request has been submitted to and accepted by the City and County of San Francisco Controller, who will perform an assessment of the issue and provide recommendations for operational, process and system improvements.
Superintendent Wayne and President Alexander have appointed Mary Jane Burke, a former special education teacher, instructional assistant, County Office of Education Superintendent and SELPA (Special Education Local Plan Area) Director, to work with the Controller and the School Stabilization team to independently assess SFUSD’s procedures to ensure they are supporting students, and that the assessment includes recommendations so that this does not happen again.
Special Education services are bound by state and federal mandates to ensure students eligible for special education have meaningful access to general education in the least restrictive environment to meet their unique needs. In May 2024, the state assigned additional oversight of SFUSD’s budget because SFUSD had not taken enough corrective action to address its years of deficit spending. This happened while SFUSD was already recruiting candidates for the coming school year. Based on a preliminary review, the Special Education department requested over 200 new certificated and classified positions to provide required special education services. The majority of these positions (148) are paraeducator support roles and not teachers.
Currently, SFUSD has 62 paraeducator candidates for Special Education positions that are in the process of onboarding. As of Monday, Sept. 23, 2024, all Special Education positions have been added to the budget and are now in the recruitment process. SFUSD leadership is taking immediate steps to fill these positions and has asked the City’s School Stabilization Team to assist.
In the meantime, SFUSD is directing substitute teachers and paraeducators, leveraging existing site-based staff wherever possible, and also assigning staff from non-public agencies to provide the required services.
“What happened at the start of this school year under my watch is unacceptable,” Superintendent Wayne said. “We had qualified educators ready to work and support our students, who were not able to be in the classroom with them because of our bureaucratic roadblocks. Our systems are meant to support our students. We cannot allow bureaucracy to stop our students from getting the resources they need.”
“This situation is one of the reasons I reached out to Mayor London Breed for assistance last week,” said Board President Matt Alexander. “We’ve asked the School Stabilization Team to do an independent assessment of how we got here and to provide transparency so we can restore public confidence in our ability to deliver results for all our students, especially those with disabilities. I appreciate Superintendent Wayne for taking swift action to make sure we get to the bottom of what happened and ensuring our complex systems are truly student-centered.”
In May, the California Department of Education (CDE) notified SFUSD that it revised the certification of SFUSD’s March 2024 budget report from “qualified” to “negative” due to SFUSD’s decades-long fiscal crisis. A “negative” certification means that the CDE is concerned the district will not meet all of its financial obligations over the next two fiscal years. With the updated certification, two fiscal experts appointed to support the district in fiscal stabilization moved to fiscal advisor status and can directly engage in any district operation deemed counter to fiscal stability.
SFUSD then rapidly adjusted its hiring practices months into the budget development and recruitment processes for the 2024-25 school year. Before the district presents any positions to the Board of Education for approval, the district reviews them with the CDE appointed fiscal advisors. However, due to SFUSD’s antiquated systems, it took additional time to make sure each position was budgeted appropriately. Many candidates were left in limbo and schools had unexpected staffing adjustments over the summer, after their spring budget development process.
Prior to the request for this assessment, last spring Superintendent Wayne proactively reached out to the Fiscal Crisis Management Assistance Team (FCMAT) to request a thorough programmatic and fiscal review of the Special Education department. The review begins in October and the results will be publicly available.
San Francisco is both a unified school district and a county office of education; therefore, SFUSD administers both the school district and the San Francisco County Office of Education (COE). This makes SFUSD a “single-district county,” and it currently does not have a structure in place for county oversight of human resources, business services, and special education like other school districts in California. As part of the district’s work with the City Stabilization Team, Superintendent Wayne is committed to implementing additional oversight measures.
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