SFUSD New School Assignment Plan Decided

After years of debate, lawsuits and numerous community meetings, the San Francisco Unified School District voted unanimously on a new school assignment system Tuesday night. This so-called hybrid plan is a compromise between the wishes of parents who want to attend neighborhood schools and legal demands to maintain diversity. Board president Jane Kim touts it as "incorporating choice, diversity, simplicity, [and] proximity all in one process."

San Francisco REALTORS(R) have kept a close eye on this issue, as school choice in other cities has traditionally been a major influence on home values. Under the new system, if there is greater demand for a school than there are available seats, where a child lives will be taken under greater consideration than in the past.

Now, here's where things get a bit complicated, so we'll let the SFUSD press release explain:

"At all grade levels, the assignment system will be taking into consideration which census tract area a student lives within. Standardized test score data will be computed for each combined census tract, and those combined census tracts will be divided into quintiles based on average scores. In the policy this preference is called Census Tract Integration Preference ³CTIP1² and ³CTIP2². CTIP1 tracts will be the quintile with the lowest average CST scores, and CTIP2 tracts will be the four remaining quintiles."

Since the new system won't go into effect until Fall 2011 (and at that point will only impact students entering kindergarten, sixth and ninth grades) the new attendance area boundaries have yet to be established. That should certainly be interesting to watch. It should also be noted that some schools have already been designated as "citywide" and therefore don't have an attendance area that has priority ranking. Check out this PDF for a list of citywide schools and more info.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, students will be assigned to high-demand schools using the following order of preferences:

Elementary schools

-- Students with siblings in the school
-- Students who attended preschool in the school's attendance area
-- Those in low-scoring census tracts
-- Those in the preferred school's attendance area
-- All others

Middle schools
(For those participating in choice process)

-- Students with siblings in the school
-- Those in low-scoring census tracts
-- Those in the school's attendance area
-- Those in densely populated attendance areas
-- All others

High schools

-- Students with siblings in the school
-- Those in low-scoring census tracts
-- All others

Don't think this issue has been laid to rest. Parents committed to a neighborhood schools plan have formed a group, Students First, with the aim of bringing the issue to city voters.

Check out Jill Tucker's article on SFGate for more information.