Tim Tung

• Office: Board of Education
• Election Date: November 3, 2026
• Candidate: Tim Tung
• Due Date: July 8, 2026
• Printable Version

Thank you for seeking GrowSF's endorsement for the November 3, 2026 election! GrowSF believes in a growing, beautiful, vibrant, healthy, safe, and prosperous city delivered via common sense solutions and effective government. Our work includes running public opinion polls to understand what voters want, advocating for those changes, and ensuring that the SF government represents the people.

The GrowSF endorsement committee will review all completed questionnaires and seek consensus on which candidates best align with our vision for San Francisco.

This questionnaire will be published on growsf.org, and so we hope that you use this opportunity to communicate with voters.

Please complete this questionnaire by July 8, 2026 so we have enough time to adequately review and discuss your answers.

Note: This questionnaire will use the initialism “SFUSD” when referring to the San Francisco Unified School District.

• Your Goals
• Executive Leadership
• The Issues
• Personal
• Thank you

Your Goals

We’d like to get some details about your high-level goals and how you intend to use your elected office to achieve them.

What do you believe is your most relevant experience, perspective(s), or idea(s) that makes you uniquely qualified to be an effective Board Member? How do you intend to use that experience to build a stronger district?

I am uniquely qualified for the Board of Education because I bridge the gap between deeply invested SFUSD parent leadership and 20 years of rigorous public finance expertise.

I have two young children enrolled in the Chinese Immersion School at De Avila. As chair of our school site council and our cohort representative to the District’s LCAP Advisory Committee, I drill down into student demographics and assessment data to advocate for our students and classrooms. My belief in public education is lifelong, rooted in my own public schooling as well as my graduate degrees in public administration (SJSU) and information and data science (UC Berkeley).

Professionally, I have spent two decades managing and analyzing large local government systems. I started my career in public service working for the City of San Jose’s Finance Department where I spent about five years learning the complex details of public finance and how to operate within a large local government. Subsequently, I worked for about 12 years at S&P Global Ratings in the Public Finance department where I regularly engaged with and challenged senior leadership and elected officials at hundreds of local governments across the U.S., and the last three years at Allspring Global Investments including on the municipal team. I also volunteer my time as the chairman of San Francisco’s Citizens’ General Obligation Bond Oversight Committee, vice chair of the California Society of Municipal Analysts, and board member of Asian Americans in Public Finance.

There is an incredibly steep learning curve to serving on the Board, and I believe this combination of experiences will enable me to be effective on day one as a Board Member. I intend to use the experience to build a stronger district through collaborative policy formation, and clear accountability and execution of policy through SFUSD’s administration. Specifically, I believe that I will bring strong financial management and data analysis skills to the Board of Education that are essential for the key strategic decisions that will be required over the coming years.

Will the power of the office of the Board of Education be enough to achieve these goals?

Yes, but only if the Board possesses the fiscal and analytical skills to enforce real accountability. It's the power and responsibility of the Board to set clear and actionable policy for SFUSD and then hold the Superintendent accountable for faithfully and effectively operationalizing the adopted policies. However, policy without rigorous oversight is simply a wish list. I will use my 20 years of public finance and oversight experience to look past high-level administrative reports, dive deep into performance metrics, and ensure the Superintendent is held accountable for executing the policies that the Board adopts.

What is an existing Board of Education policy you would like to reform?

I want to reform the SFUSD Student Assignment Policy (Board Policy 5101.2). The current anxiety-inducing system too often assigns students to a bottom-ranked or seemingly random school that is miles away from their home, and drives families out of SFUSD schools or San Francisco entirely. While the Board voted years ago to move toward a more predictable zone-based model, the District delayed implementation to 2028-29. As a data scientist and parent leader, I will use my background to ensure that this process does not stall any further by reviewing the District’s enrollment simulations and fixing technical bottlenecks so we can move quickly to a better student assignment system that provides families with more predictability and supports community cohesion.

What is an "out there" change that you would make to state/local government policy, if you could? For the purpose of this question, you are not constrained to the office of the Board of Education.

An “out there” change that I would make would be to create “Education Enterprise Zones” for neighborhoods with underperforming or under-enrolled schools. The concept would be for the state to waive CEQA requirements and local zoning caps for mixed-use, high-density developments within a half-mile radius of target school sites. In exchange for these lucrative zoning fast-tracks, private developers would be legally required to dedicate the bottom floors of these developments to affordable, long-term housing explicitly reserved for public school teachers and District staff.

This proposal uses private capital to help solve SFUSD’s crippling teacher retention and hiring crisis. By embedding affordable teacher housing directly into the communities surrounding struggling schools, we would organically revitalize neighborhood economies and draw families back into the public school system.

Executive Leadership

Please describe your experience running or governing large organizations, managing teams (including hiring, firing, and performance management), driving cultural change and clear communication throughout all levels, effective financial management (budgets, reporting, audit, etc.), and any other relevant experience.

I spent five years in the City of San Jose’s Finance Department during the 2008 financial crisis. Navigating a complex city government of over one million people, I partnered directly with department heads and executive leadership to build bespoke scenario analyses to solve severe structural deficits. Through my credit analysis work at S&P Global, I have reviewed and evaluated the financial health, budgets, and long-term forecasts of hundreds of large municipal organizations across the nation.

Throughout my career and civic leadership roles, I have managed diverse, high-performing teams. As the Chairman of San Francisco’s Citizens’ General Obligation Bond Oversight Committee, I lead an oversight body, direct committee workflows, and actively evaluate organizational performance. My management experience includes setting clear performance metrics, managing talent, and steering hiring committees to align talent with strategic organizational goals.

True accountability requires breaking down bureaucratic silos and communicating complex data simply. I have a proven track record of driving cultural change by shifting organizations away from reactionary budgeting and toward transparent, data-driven decision making. Whether challenging senior elected officials at S&P Global or presenting student performance data to a school community, I specialize in translating complex financial and operational linkages into accessible, clear communication that builds public trust.

One of the most critical roles for the Board of Education is to hire/fire, evaluate, and hold accountable the Superintendent of Schools. Please describe your experience working with an executive leader to hold them accountable.

Note: Please remember that this questionnaire will be public, so do not include any personally identifiable information.

During my 12 years at S&P Global Ratings, part of my responsibility was to interview and evaluate senior executives and elected officials at hundreds of local governments nationwide. My job was to look past polished presentations, stress-test the credibility of management’s forward-looking forecasts, and measure their promises against actual operational and financial data. When leadership failed to execute their stated strategies, I could formally recommend and publish credit rating downgrades thereby holding executive leaders publicly and financially accountable for their performance. As a Board Member, I will treat the Superintendent’s evaluation not as a passive, once-a-year rubber stamp, but as an ongoing, data-driven process. I will use my experience to establish clear, measurable metrics and I will possess the objective independence to enforce those standards.

In general, how do you approach making difficult decisions that you deem necessary even if unpopular? Please share a relevant example, if applicable.

I approach making difficult decisions through a collaborative process that is grounded in a mutual understanding of the facts. I would start by clearly defining the exact problem that I need to solve, identifying the key stakeholders that will be impacted or have key insights to the problem, and gather early feedback to identify any blind spots. Second, I would marshal resources to establish the baseline data for the decision-making process and share it openly with stakeholders so that we can work collaboratively to filter out biases and address any other data issues.

Next, I would work with stakeholders to jointly build alternative solutions and use early feedback to design support plans for parties that are adversely affected by the proposed solutions. I would then work with my fellow decision makers to make a final choice while providing an explicit rationale for the selected option and directly acknowledging the hardship that it may create for certain parties. Finally, in the project execution phase I would work with the operating group to implement the decision quickly while working with stakeholders to monitor implementation metrics and make course adjustments, as necessary.

The Issues

Next, we will cover the issues that voters tell us they care about. We hope to gain a better understanding of your policy positions, and we hope that you use this opportunity to communicate with voters.

SFUSD remains under fiscal oversight by the California Department of Education (CDE), and continues to experience an ongoing structural deficit. What do you believe is most critical in stabilizing the district’s financial and operational challenges in the short and long term?

In the short term, I believe it is most critical to maintain structural budgetary balance to protect and maintain the positive certification achieved in June 2026 and avoid returning to the constrained environment of state oversight. Having a solid financial foundation provides stability and predictability to the families that depend on the District’s services and to the employees that work hard to provide those services every day. It is necessary to understand how the financial decisions that the District makes today affects its future, particularly in light of the District’s Prop G (Living Wage for Educators) parcel tax that is scheduled to sunset in a few years. Operationally, it is most critical to revise the student assignment system to provide families with predictable options within a reasonable distance of their homes and stop driving families out of the public school system.

In the long term, it is critical to stabilize or grow enrollment by being the education provider of choice through improving student outcomes and increasing capacity in programs that are in high demand such as language immersion programs. Financially, it is critical to build a reserve in line with best practices with clear guidelines on when and how the reserve can be accessed. In parallel, the District should continue to lobby for changes to the school funding formula that unfairly disadvantage the district (e.g. funding based on ADA rather than enrollment, generic increases that ignore regional cost-of-living differences, etc.).

SFUSD is off track in meeting student outcome goals. Our reading and math proficiency rates are among the lowest in California. What should our outcome goals be in the short and long term? What do you believe is required to ensure SFUSD improves student outcomes, and what would you do as Board Member to champion closing the achievement gap?

It is disheartening to see that the District has not made any progress on its five-year goals for 3rd-grade literacy and 8th-grade math since establishing the targets in October 2022, nor making any progress on closing its achievement gap. While the large improvements needed to meet the District’s targets are unlikely to materialize even with the extended timeline, I believe it is reasonable to aim for steady improvements through methodical changes that are grounded in research and doubling down on pilot programs that prove to be successful.

Part of the challenge is socializing the successes that various school sites achieve and then providing the support for the adoption of those programs at other school sites where it would be viable. For example, What I Need (WIN) time is a dedicated scheduling block where students are dynamically grouped to receive targeted academic intervention, skills practice, or extension activities that are tailored to their specific, individualized learning needs, yet this scheduling block is not used across all school sites despite providing additional support to students without additional instructional cost. I would strongly advocate for these types of programs, particularly in schools where there is an achievement gap.

I would also take a data driven approach to assessing other programs, such as peer tutoring programs that target the achievement gap, to better understand current program utilization and the possibility of expansion to provide more resources in those areas. Finally, I would advocate for further expansions of the high-impact literacy tutoring program that the SF Ed Fund, SFUSD, and DCYF launched that focuses on 2nd-4th grade students in high needs schools. Over the long term, by pursuing these and other strategies we can meaningfully narrow the achievement gap while also steadily improving our overall student outcomes.

Safety and violence prevention remains a top priority for families. As a Board Member, what do you believe is necessary to improve school safety so students are ready to learn?

Physical safety of our students is critically important, and this can be safeguarded through facilities that can be locked down by staff, when necessary, periodic training exercises so that students and staff know what to do in the event of an incident, and safety monitors to prevent intruders from coming onto school campuses and stopping physical altercations.

Beyond physical safety, mental wellness is also an important part of nurturing a supportive learning environment. Staffing social worker positions to help students with trauma, depression, bullying, and cyberbullying best positions students to succeed in their studies.

SFUSD continues to face a teacher shortage, especially in special education, STEM, and bilingual programs. What concrete steps do you recommend the Superintendent, with support from the Board, take to recruit and retain great educators?

To recruit and retain great educators, SFUSD needs to demonstrate that it has a timely and efficient hiring process, budgetary stability to ensure that positions can be maintained over budget cycles, and fair compensation that recognizes the hard work that staff performs every day. Although the District has an improved position control system, that is simply table stakes and it is necessary for the Superintendent to work with Human Resources to have a clear and welcoming recruiting experience for prospective teachers to mark a break from past missteps.

I would also recommend that the Superintendent develop a plan to fully fund the District’s reserves, such as through one-time revenues generated from long-term leases of surplus property, and bringing forward an update to the Fiscal Reserve Policy to more clearly articulate triggers for accessing the reserve. Finally, I would recommend that the Superintendent investigate expanding affordable teacher housing opportunities, such as long-term leases to developers in exchange for guaranteed teacher housing on the first few floors of the development, and reducing the administrative burden on teachers so that they can focus on teaching.

One reason for the budget deficit is declining enrollment. Approximately 30% of children attend private schools, and that percentage is growing. Each student not in SFUSD takes away nearly $15,000 in State funding. What are the top 3 things you believe SFSUD leadership must do to make SFUSD more attractive to prospective students and parents? In your role as Board Member, how will you advocate for these things?

To be more attractive to prospective students and parents, SFUSD needs to transition from an era of crisis management to competitive excellence. The top 3 things that SFUSD needs to do to accomplish this are 1) fix the student assignment/enrollment system to improve predictability for families and ensure that students have access to a high quality school within a reasonable distance from their homes, 2) fully staff classrooms across the District with qualified teachers and programs that will improve student outcomes, and 3) increase capacity in high demand programs, such as language immersion programs and advanced coursework for students that are prepared to take those courses.

As a Board Member, I would work with my fellow Board Members to set policy that emphasizes these objectives and then work through the Superintendent to operationalize these policies. I would also partner with parent advocacy groups and host town halls with families to solicit community input and incorporate it into the District’s planning and strategies. In particular, I would solicit feedback from parents that are choosing to send their children to private schools and charter schools to better understand how SFUSD can become an educator of choice and attract those families and students back into the public school system. I would then monitor progress using key performance indicators on enrollment and retention and then hold the Superintendent accountable for making progress on these goals by making it an element of the Superintendent’s performance evaluations.

How can SFUSD improve data transparency and performance reporting, particularly around student achievement, attendance, and spending?

While SFUSD provides some data through public dashboards, there are key weaknesses that the information is spread out over multiple dashboards instead of being consolidated in a single location, student achievement data is limited to annual SBAC ELA and Math data instead of also including data from the three STAR assessments that occur throughout the year, and the Tableau spending dashboard appears to be significantly out of date.

Furthermore, and critically, the data is often presented without context or narrative that identifies explanatory drivers for trends that could provide very useful information to the Board and community members. Also, regarding performance data, the information is presented on a grade-level basis without the ability to easily track cohorts as they progress through grade levels. This can lead to frustrating experiences for community members concerned about student performance at a specific school site when they are trying to understand why third grade literacy changed (e.g. is it because of a change in the effectiveness of the school or is it simply because the current third graders are demographically very different from the prior group of third graders).

What examples of effective leadership from SF, or other California school districts, would you emulate in SFUSD? Please be specific with your examples of their leadership and impact.

I would emulate some of the effective leadership practices that have been demonstrated in Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), which similarly faces the challenge of declining enrollment. For example, LAUSD has strong alignment between its board and administration, which enables it to consistently update its comprehensive strategic plan on a four-year cycle. This was most recently demonstrated by the seamless adoption of LAUSD’s 2026-2030 strategic plan, despite the rapid departure of the superintendent following a high-profile crisis. This is in contrast to SFUSD where the 2027 targets adopted in the 2022 Vision, Values, Goals, and Guardrails were pushed out to 2028 since the administration lacked the capacity to update the targets.

Personal

Tell us a bit about yourself!

Do/Did you have children in SFUSD? If so, what have you learned about SFUSD that other parents would benefit from? If not, why not?

Yes, I have two young children in SFUSD that are enrolled at the Chinese Immersion School at De Avila. As the chairman of the school site council, I have learned an enormous amount about student performance reporting that other parents would benefit from. For example, SFUSD’s performance monitoring emphasizes tracking grade level performance from year to year (e.g. third grade literacy for the current year compared with third grade literacy for the prior year) which is reasonable with a large student population, but this is much less helpful at the school site level where cohorts may differ significantly from one another demographically (e.g. one cohort of students has a high share of socioeconomically disadvantaged students whereas the following cohort does not). At the site level, I have found it more useful to track performance by cohort–how is the same group of students performing this year versus the prior year–than solely tracking performance by grade level.

Did you attend SFUSD or public primary schools in other cities? How do our schools differ from when you were a student?

I attended public schools all my life from primary school through graduate school at UC Berkeley. The public primary schools that I attended differed insofar as it was within a smaller school district with a clear student assignment system, and there was a strong emphasis on academic achievement and providing students with advanced coursework if they were prepared for it.

How long have you lived in San Francisco? What brought you here and what keeps you here?

I came to San Francisco for an employment opportunity 15 years ago and have lived here ever since. I have stayed in San Francisco because I love the diversity here and the City’s amazing energy. I got married while living in San Francisco and both of my children were born in San Francisco. I truly believe that it's a place where my family can grow and thrive.

What do you love most about San Francisco?

I love the diversity that we see all around us in San Francisco. It’s a beautiful and magical place with amazing communities across all of its neighborhoods and it’s a joy to be able to explore each of the neighborhoods with my family.

What do you dislike the most about San Francisco?

I dislike that families feel like they have to leave San Francisco to provide a quality education for their children and live an affordable lifestyle. SFUSD plays a key role in that and I hope that I can make a change for the better as a Board Member.

Tell us about your current involvement in the community (e.g., volunteer groups, neighborhood associations, civic and professional organizations, etc.).

In the SFUSD community, I am the chairman of the school site council at the Chinese Immersion School at De Avila and the cohort representative to the District’s LCAP Advisory Committee. I also volunteer as the chairman of San Francisco’s Citizens’ General Obligation Bond Oversight Committee, vice chair of the California Society of Municipal Analysts, and board member of Asian Americans in Public Finance.

Why do you want to run for public office?

I believe that SFUSD is at a critical juncture as it grapples with producing a consistently structurally balanced budget and key decisions on revising the enrollment process and efficient resource allocation. I believe I am the right person to work collaboratively on the Board to make these tough decisions in a thoughtful manner rather than kicking the can further down the road.

Thank you

Thank you for giving us your time and answering our questionnaire. We look forward to reading your answers and considering your candidacy!