SFUSD’s Weak Fiscal Case for School Closures
SFUSD staff have posted a slide show they plan to present at the upcoming 8/29 School Board meeting (screenshots below). The slide show tries to make the case that SFUSD has to close some school sites and needs start the process now, with a goal of identifying which sites to close by the end of this school year.
One of the main arguments for closing school sites is that SFUSD is facing a “fiscal cliff” (about to run out of money) as mentioned in last week’s Chronicle article featuring Superintendent Dr. Matt Wayne. The story the article wants to tell is that SFUSD has too many school sites for too few students, and this is the cause of the fiscal crisis.
But as the district’s own slide below shows, the financial impact of lower enrollment is minimal ($5M which is only 0.4% of SFUSD’s yearly $1.2B budget).
There is not a lot of evidence of a “fiscal cliff. As shown in a previous post, SFUSD staff has a lot of flexibility in how it presents the budget. In June, one of the slides showed the 2023-24 overall budget overspending $36M (3% of SFUSD’s $1.2B yearly budget) more than revenues, but with $369M left over at the end of the year and set aside as reserves for future years.
The presentation hints at, suggests and implies that closing schools will result in savings and additional revenue that will solve SFUSD’s most pressing problems. But there isn’t even a ballpark estimate of how much this windfall would be, when it would become available or any guarantee that it would be allocated exclusively towards adequate teacher pay and safe school facilities.
There is almost no discussion of cutting spending in other areas of the budget that do not require school closures, such as SFUSD central office administration, which a Board of Supervisors’ Budget and Legislative Analyst office report found to be spending a much higher % of overall budget than comparable districts.
The 4,000 student drop off happened between 2020 and 2021 because of the COVID pandemic.
This decline is already included in 2022-23 and 2023-24 budgets.
The additional 4,600 student drop off is just a guess at what will happen 10 years from now.
The projection doesn’t seem to account for the fact SF has committed to the State of CA to build 82,000 additional housing units in the city by 2031.
SFUSD has a teacher and staffing shortage because it offers salaries that aren’t high enough to attract qualified employees.
Having fewer buildings while offering the same low salaries will not solve the staffing shortage.
The impact of declining enrollment to the District’s finances is very very small: $5M in revenue loss by 2025-26.
$5 Million is only 0.4% of SFUSD’s $1.2 Billion yearly budget.
The scenario with a $50 million increase is not related at all to declining enrollment (only $5M impact). It’s a scenario where the district spends the $50M “Unsettled Labor Commitments” reserve (see below).
This slide is from SFUSD’s presentation at the June 6, 2023 BOE meeting.
It shows a $36M total overspend (Row D) and a $369M total ending balance (Row E).