The math is not math-ing

The San Francisco Unified School District teachers are on a historical strike. Tomorrow will mark the third consecutive day that schools will be closed. As a member of a union myself, bully to those fighting for wages. We understand that in this economy, any increase will immediately get wiped out by inflation. Everybody knows this, except for the reigning President of the United States.

However, from a pure mathematical standpoint, it’s difficult to square away the conflict of a school district that is facing a 100 million deficit for the current fiscal year, and its employees asking for a raise. The math cannot possibly be math-ing here. If labor is already the biggest pie of the expenditure, and it’s set to increase in size, not decrease, that’s not a good start to balancing the budget.

Of course, the school district can increase revenue, but demographics is against that. There are fewer school age children in San Francisco than ever. Furthermore, those with the means to - hello, tech bros - send their offsprings to private school, rather than be at the mercy of SFUSD’s notorious lottery school assignment system. Short of the State of California adding more funding per pupil, you just hope the revenue pie doesn’t continue to shrink!

As a person who works at a public university, I am very familiar with the downstream pains of decreasing enrollment.

Nevertheless: if this were the private sector, asking for a raise when the company is fiscally performing poorly who never fly. You’d know better than to even ask. It doesn’t make sense to further jeopardize an already precarious situation. Salary increase is rather meaningless if the company itself doesn’t survive long enough for you to reap the benefits.

Public sector education is Lindy enough to last forever, right? That’s probably true. But again, it’s just simple math: it doesn’t make logical sense for a district that’s already in the hole - that they must climb out of, to make the hole bigger. Alas, if it’s like anything San Francisco has done previously, I’m sure it’ll be yet another tax measure on the ballot. Should we save BART, or should we save public schools?

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Follow me.

It's housing, stupid

It seems my place of employment is not the only education system in dire financial straits. The San Francisco United School District (SFSUD) is facing a budget cliff as well. There’s been talks of school closures this year, but election season sort of put a kibosh on that. Now that the election is over, and the math remains terrible, I don’t see how they can avoid contracting the number of campuses.

SFUSD has the same problem as SFSU: a massive decline in enrollment. Funding from California is tied to pupil count, so less students, less operating budget. Hard decisions will have to be made. San Francisco State will be laying off lecturers and cutting courses come the Spring semester. I can tell you the atmosphere on campus is rather bleak these days.

I think this issue ties back to housing, or the lack thereof. How can you expect a thriving K-12 student population when the working-class cannot afford to live in San Francisco? It’s financially difficult to start a family here if you’re not of the upper crust working in tech or finance. People of those means are more likely to send their children to private school, exacerbating the enrollment problem. Public education needs a robust working-class to support it. San Francisco must build way more housing, driving down home and rental prices, to sustain said working-class.

Until that happens, SFSU must build way more student housing so students can actually afford to attend. The university isn’t renowned for anything in particular, so San Francisco becomes the de-facto draw. Tuition is expensive enough as is; it’s a tough ask to then add on one of the highest cost of living in the country. Never mind the retail crime, homelessness, and fentanyl crisis that gets shown on television.

I believe solving the cost of putting a roof over your head is the main lever to pull here.

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The art of.

Lowell as we know it

Last evening, the San Francisco school board voted to end merit-based admission to Lowell High School. The nationally-recognized public school offers a rigorous, college-preparatory education for free. I am immensely proud of my own four years at there. As a poor, first-generation immigrant living in San Francisco, Lowell was the only chance to study at private school-like learning institution.

I'm just sad that it will no longer be the case for future kids like myself. Sure, students from rich families can go to an actual private school. But the smart kids from non-affluent backgrounds lost a golden opportunity at something otherwise reserved for the wealthy.

And I thought we were trying to narrow the wealth gap.

The school board eliminated the Lowell meritocracy in the name of “equality” and “racial justice”. The ethnic composition of the Lowell student body has been a sore-spot for the district for as long as I can remember. Confusing equality of outcome with equality of opportunity, the powers at be saw the low Latino and Black enrollment at Lowell as something inherently prejudicial. Because us Asians don’t count as a true minority in the educational arena.

Instead of solving the problem at the cause - by providing way more resources to schools in underserved, low-income neighborhoods - the school board went about rejiggering the numbers by sheer manipulation. I don’t like the outcome, so let’s get rid of it! They leveled the playing field by lowering the standards, rather than working to bring those behind up to the same standards. All to feel better about themselves for a symbolic job well done.

Turning Lowell into any other high school in the city will do nothing for the education gap. It only does to take away an opportunity for kids from impoverished families to get a top-notch education, one that doesn’t require money to buy. A very sad day indeed.

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Evening walks.

The kids are back in school

San Francisco Unified School District is back in session for Fall so just when you thought traffic couldn't get any worse around here, out comes thousands of parents driving their young ones to school joining in on all the fun. 

Must. Be. Nice. Right from the start of elementary school onwards I either walked or took the bus to school. Granted the grade school I went to was a 10 minute walk up the hill, I bet you parents of today would drive their kids to school given the same distance. Wasn't crime much worse back in my day? My immigrant parents were to busy at work earning money to stay afloat in this new country of ours to care. 

I don't begrudge them an ounce. 

If I had kids I'd drive them to school too, no matter how short the distance. I probably won't let them roam freely until after puberty. You should all thank me then for not having kids and therefore not contributing to the traffic calamity. It isn't just highways that gets jammed up: on my usual commute bus there are tons of parents, who otherwise can't afford to drive, taking their kids to school. Good on them indeed but the buses are packed enough as is. 

You'd think the transit agency would add more buses when school is in session, but that sounds way too logical for SFMTA. They can't even get enough drivers to fulfill the usual quota! On my route there definitely is not a bus every 8 minutes as prescribed in the official schedule. Far too often I encounter 20 minute(!) gaps between buses during rush-hour, and those days are the worse. 

I'm looking forward to returning back to night-shift next week so I can take the bus at 1 in the afternoon and it'll be empty as can be. Until then, this week is one of the very few times I really miss having a car. 

Perhaps I should try biking to work...