#BoardWatch Recap: SFUSD Student Assignment Committee Meeting 9/16

Here are a few key takeaways:

The timeline for making a change is shorter than originally proposed. The goal is to adopt a new policy by June, adapt infrastructure during 2020-2021 school year, and implement the new policy in the fall of 2021 for students applying for school in the 2022-23 school year.
There are multiple planned opportunities to engage the community in this decision: workshops to be spread geographically across the city in January and February, an online survey and 5 town halls in May.
The main goal for the discussion at the meeting was to try to identify what the main policy goals are for changing the student assignment system and how commissioners would rank them - because sometimes they are necessarily at odds with one another. The three primary policy goals identified were: predictability, proximity, and diversity.
Family choice was highlighted as explicitly NOT a policy goal of any new system.
There was a rich discussion and commissioners seemed to agree that the 3 priorities were the correct ones, but really grappled with how they should be prioritized.
In the end, some commissioners conveyed a preference for proximity and predictability over diversity if tradeoffs need to be made.
The next meeting will focus on defining key terms in the resolution (it was a resolution passed by the board almost a year ago that started this process of reimagining student assignment). The next meeting, on October 21, 2019 will focus on defining “diversity” and “quality schools”