Will Philanthropists Support San Francisco’s Bold New Plan to Improve its Schools?

San Francisco leaders recently unveiled a big, bold education plan that will both address COVID learning loss and significantly boost funding for city schools.

The initiative would raise as much as $2 billion to increase per-pupil spending in San Francisco public schools. To raise such a daunting sum, the authors of the plan, Supervisors Hillary Ronen and Myrna Melgar, say they’ll need federal, state and local funding—and a lot of philanthropic support, too.

“We expect that in the beginning years, we will have to rely heavily on philanthropic funding,” Ronen said. “But the goal, once the plan is underway, is for 100% of the funding to come from public sources.”

In the wake of COVID-19, we’ve seen many public-private collaborations emerge to serve struggling communities, but the San Francisco plan is a unique case of elected officials making a big ask of private donors to get an ailing public-sector institution back on its feet—and make it even better than before.

Learning loss and fleeing families

San Francisco’s ambitious education plan was born out of crisis. Like other school districts around the country, the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) closed schools and shifted to remote learning in response to the pandemic. School and city officials know the long-term fallout will be a massive learning loss for many children, and that students of color are likely to be hardest hit.

“We are still waiting for data and we know students are impacted across the board,” Ronen said. “But from what I’m hearing, we’re expecting learning loss to be greatest among our African American, Latinx and Pacific Islander students.”

Learning loss isn’t the only issue, of course. “There is going to be so much catching up to do,” Ronen said. “COVID has had an incredible social and emotional impact. We have so many families in crisis with all the job losses, evictions and the stress of facing so many challenges.”

Once schools open their doors again, the district will have fewer resources to work with because many families abandoned city schools after the pandemic hit. Some left the city altogether; others put their kids in private schools. Fewer pupils means less funding, as well as a less diverse student body. (Early estimates are that SFUSD lost about 1,000 students, but the numbers are expected to be higher when the latest enrollment data come in.)

As Ronen put it in a press release announcing the plan, “Many families have fled SFUSD during distance learning and many students have fallen significantly behind in their academic achievement. We cannot let either situation go unaddressed. By infusing the system with adequate funding for the first time, with proper evaluation and oversight, I am confident that we can create the best public school system in the country that leaves no student behind.”

On the same page

Consensus can be hard to reach in San Francisco’s noisy, sometimes brawling, political ecosystem, particularly when the subject is education. But Ronen and Melgar’s plan has amazing support. It’s backed by Mayor London Breed, Superintendent Vincent Matthews, the S.F. School Board, the teachers’ union (United Educators of San Francisco) and Assemblyman Phil Ting. All these leaders attended the press conference announcing the plan, where Mayor Breed warned, “Our city will not recover if we don’t improve our support for our schools, our families and our young people. This has to be a top priority for us.”

Ronen herself was surprised by the consensus. “We’re all on the same page; that doesn’t happen very often here. I think it’s because we’re all looking ahead and recognizing that we have a lot of work to do. All of us want to do everything in our power to strengthen our public schools.”

The plan centers on the concept of community schools, which address health, mental health and social needs like food and housing for students and their families. Community schools also provide student support like tutoring and after school and summer activities. San Francisco now has two community schools, and the new plan would increase that number to provide additional support for more students and families.

How it will work

To get the plan off the ground, Ronen and Melgar introduced legislation that would create the Students & Families RISE (Recovery with Inclusive and Successful Enrichment) Workgroup. The RISE workgroup, which will comprise education experts, including a representative from the philanthropic community, will formulate a plan to remediate learning loss and improve schools.

According to Ronen and Melgar’s ambitious timeline, the workgroup will submit its final plan and recommendations by August of this year, so it can be implemented during the 2021–2022 school year.

It will take philanthropic dollars to kickstart the plan, but Ronen and Melgar are hoping it will be so successful that it will convince the public to do a better job funding the public school system. This is a wish that has animated California education advocates for years—virtually since the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978. After that initiative slashed local property taxes, California per-pupil spending fell from among the highest in the country to 41st, where it languishes today.

Ronen puts it bluntly: “Our schools are pathetically underfunded.” She points out that California private and parochial schools spend twice as much per student as the public schools do. “Those schools have reduced class sizes, literacy supports, enrichment activities, tutoring, summer academic supports. If we can do all those things in our public schools, that’s how we’ll move from philanthropic to public funding, when voters and political representatives see the long-term benefits: less homelessness, less crime, a better educated employment pool.”

In the meantime, will philanthropy step in to help? Ronen isn’t naming names, but she said “there’s been a ton of interest” since the plan was announced two weeks ago. SFUSD already gets donations from foundations, businesses and individuals through the nonprofit Spark SF Public Schools. Some of its funders include Evan and Sara Williams, the Hellman Foundation, the Salesforce Foundation and many others.

The reliance on philanthropic support to fulfill needs normally met by the public sector is one of the most dangerous dynamics in our current era of big philanthropy. But what Ronen describes, if it has its intended long-term effect, sounds more like a privately funded pilot project that government and the public would then embrace—or abandon.

At the recent press conference, Ronen reiterated that, in the end, improving public schools will require sustained public commitment. “We must end with 100% adequate government funding for our public schools in perpetuity. If that is not the case, then whatever success we have in the short term will not last. We know we cannot depend on philanthropy alone to keep our schools excellent. It is a moral and practical imperative.”

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