Aligning School Capacities, School Enrollment, and School Budgets

SFUSD is implementing a budget balancing plan to address the District’s structural budget deficit.   One key recommendation from our State-appointed Fiscal Expert is that we fund schools based on their actual enrollment, which is more financially responsible and aligned to the funding we receive.  State funding for schools is based on student enrollment and attendance.  

Like many school districts around the country, SFUSD has seen a 6.6% decrease in enrollment since before the pandemic (Fall 2019). This is a decrease of more than 3,500 TK-12 students across the District; nearly all our schools experienced some level of enrollment decrease. 

School size capacities for the 2022-23 school year are being adjusted to align the number of classrooms with the number of students currently enrolled and projected to be enrolled in each school.  These changes would not go into effect until Fall 2022. The changes will vary depending on each school’s capacity, and they fall into one of these categories:

• Reduction of one or more classrooms at the school to match current enrollment. 
• Multi-grade classrooms for language pathways.

Changes to enrollment capacities are linked to budget and staffing decisions but are not the same.  In order to make placement offers to SFUSD families for the Fall 2022, determining capacities based on historical enrollment must happen by the end of January. In early February, each school will receive their budget allocations, and school communities will have opportunities to discuss budgets during School Site Council meetings at their schools, and/or the SFUSD School Summit on Saturday March 3rd, 2022.