The Facts

SFUSD is pushing back its enrollment overhaul: Superintendent Maria Su says a new student assignment proposal will not reach the Board of Education until April 2027 and would not take effect until 2028-29.

For the 2026-27 school year, families will stay in the current citywide-choice system rather than the zone-based elementary model the board approved at the end of 2020. Under that revised schedule, school closures or mergers now move to 2029-30 at the earliest, and commissioners told Ezra Wallach at The Standard they still lacked clarity on the next steps.

The Context

SFUSD has been trying to replace its current assignment system for years. In Board Policy 5101.2, the district said the existing districtwide-choice model had not reversed racial isolation and was too hard for families to navigate, and it set three goals for a new system: diversity, predictability, and proximity.

The stakes are bigger than enrollment paperwork. SFUSD's forecasting consultant projected a 4,600-student decline over the decade ending in 2032-33, on top of losses the district had already absorbed after the pandemic. That is why assignment reform and school consolidation became linked. We argued in February that SFUSD could not postpone both decisions forever.

The GrowSF Take

Families need a school assignment system that is simpler, more predictable, and easier to plan around than today's citywide-choice process. And it shouldn't take ten years for the district to implement what should be a simple change.