Schools Receive 2024-25 Capacities

A process for SFUSD to determine how many spaces for students will be available at each of our schools next year. We use this information to assign students through the assignment process. 

In Kindergarten through 5th grade, we are reducing approximately 60 classrooms, which will make it easier to staff the classroom positions needed to serve all students.  The classrooms being reduced are all fewer than half full. In middle schools and high schools, the overall number of seats will remain basically unchanged, but there will be some decreases of empty classrooms and increases in various schools and grades.

Classrooms being more full means we are using our resources more efficiently. SFUSD, like many school districts in California, is experiencing a teacher shortage and declining enrollment. While schools may feel the impacts differently, we want to be sure that all of our schools have the resources they need to operate, including a quality teacher in each classroom. This shift will improve student experience or strengthen our ability to support students in meeting their academic goals.

Overall, SFUSD is working to make sure that the total number of seats available in each grade matches the total number of students who will attend. This helps us ensure that all classrooms are staffed by a highly qualified educator. When determining how many spaces are available at each school, we try to match the number of classrooms to actual enrollment. Our goal is to limit the negative impacts of declining enrollment on the district as a whole, particularly for under-resourced schools in our most historically underserved communities.

In the past, when schools set their own capacities, the number of classrooms at each school and enrollment didn’t match - meaning that many teachers were teaching partly-empty classrooms - something we want to avoid with the challenging teacher shortage that we’re facing. This is the third year SFUSD has used a central, district-wide process to make these decisions, and the centralized capacity setting process has been successful at making capacities and actual enrollment more aligned. In SY 2022-23, the first year SFUSD set capacities centrally rather than school-by-school, elementary classrooms increased to 89% full, after being only 82% full the previous year.

This year, we have a few elementary schools with 44 Kindergarten spaces, but only 26 to 30 students enrolled in Kindergarten. This means that the second classroom only has between 4 and 8 students. Next year, those schools will still have enough 1st grade classes for all students, but we will reduce to just one Kindergarten classroom with 22 students. Additional students applying to these schools will be assigned to other schools with open Kindergarten spaces.

Once your school’s administrators receive their SY 2024-25 budget projections in February, they will plan discussions with the School Site Council and the rest of the school community, to discuss the school’s priorities and resources. You can also plan to attend the district wide School Planning Summit on March 3 to help develop your school’s priorities and plans for next year.