August 21st, 2009 | 
Author: After six months of interviewing applicants nationwide, San Francisco Schools district has filled its top position. Carlos Garcia, Vice President of Urban Markets for McGraw-Hill (educational publishers), has been selected as the next Superintendent of San Francisco Schools. Board members have been seeking a replacement since January after interim Superintendent Gwen Chan announced that she would not return to the post in the fall.
Garcia was voted in due to his experience in San Francisco Schools, strong results as Superintendent of other districts, and good reputation as a fiscal manager. Garcia served both Fresno, California and Clark County, Nevada as Superintendent. From 1988-91 Garcia was principal of San Francisco Schools Horace Mann Middle School. During his tenure the school improved its achievement scores and received recognition for its accomplishments.
According to Board President of San Francisco Schools, Mark Sanchez, “ We chose Mr. Garcia because of his past experience with San Francisco, his strong track record as a superintendent and his understanding of the challenges that our district faces.” The San Francisco Schools have dealt with issues like declining enrollment over the past few years, as families leave for better districts and private schools. Initiatives like the small schools program are one of many that the San Francisco Schools are implementing to reverse this trend. This change in leadership may bring some of these programs into question, although the school board seems confident that Garcia is in line with their priorities.
Thirty applicants were interviewed since January in an attempt to find a new leader for the San Francisco Schools. Garcia’s credentials includes a B.A. from Claremont Men’s College in political science, a M.A. in education from Claremont Graduate school, and an administrative degree from California State University at Fullerton. Parents in San Francisco Schools provided input to the hiring process in the form of both community meetings, and over a thousand surveys, to determine the criteria for their next leader.
Leadership of the San Francisco Schools will have a strong impact on financial spending and program funding. Given pressure to meet national No Child Left Behind standards, administrators in San Francisco Schools are constantly making decisions about how best to allocate funds. California’s poor reputation on educational priorities and spending was recently highlighted by a think tank study that claimed that the state’s educational priorities are in such disarray that the whole system needs an overhaul. While San Francisco Schools leaders may agree with the study, they still need state funding to run their districts.
The fact that Garcia led one of the nation’s largest districts, Clark County, gives the San Francisco Schools reasons to hope that he will use the same financial wisdom in this district. Six of the seven board members voted for Mr. Garcia’s appointment, with the seventh asking for more time to decide. Garcia will begin serving San Francisco Schools on July 16th, 2007.
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What Weighted Student Formulas Do
One of the primary features of the WSF is that it allows San Francisco Schools more flexibility than the previous system, called the “staffing ratios” model. Through staffing ratios, the central office basically directed school sites to spend the bulk of their resources in a particular way, through allocations of staff and a small supplies budget. This system gave schools little control over their financial resources. Under the WSF, each school site receives a budget denominated in dollars instead of positions and decides what staff and non-staff items to purchase with those dollars. Under this approach, each school has more room to design and use innovative instructional programs that match the specific characteristics and needs of its students, parents, and community. Central administration helps and monitors schools in a number of important ways, but it shares more decisions with principals and local school governance teams called School Site Councils—the people who are most familiar with what their schools need.
Resources are also distributed based on the specific needs of each SFUSD student. We all know that different students have different educational needs, which often mean educational services with different price tags. A student with special education needs or a student who does not speak English requires more than a native speaker of English with no special education needs. Some schools enroll students from family backgrounds with lower incomes who on average start school at a disadvantage compared to students from middle class or affluent families. The new formula reflects these needs by channeling funds to specific student characteristics such as grade level, special education needs, needs of English Language Learners (ELL’s), and socioeconomic status.
Finally, the WSF distributes basic education resources more consistently on a per-pupil basis across schools, and all stakeholders are better able to see and understand how resources are allocated and spent in each school. Did you know how much each student at each school received under the old budget system? Did you know whether or not one school received a higher share of public resources than others? The WSF makes the largest part of the District’s budget more transparent. The public can now see exactly why each school gets the resources it does and that the school is being treated like every other school in the District following a common set of principles.
What Do Schools Do
Schools’ added responsibilities primarily involve developing their budgets and school academic plans. Each school’s principal and School Site Council discuss their school’s needs, challenges, and priorities and build its budget accordingly for the upcoming school year. They determine the number of each type of staff they need as well as their non-staff requirements. During the year, schools can revisit their original decisions by requesting budget transfers. This requires ongoing evaluation of how the original plan is working out. In short, giving schools more flexibility means more responsibility. But these are responsibilities that will build dialogue and awareness among more members of each school community – especially responsibilities to think creatively and in many cases to make different choices than the central administration may have made for them previously.
To make this initiative work, principals and site teams have needed training and technical assistance. School Site Council members have of course needed information on a number of questions — about developing an academic achievement plan, financial management, how to include local teams in decision-making, or simply how to use the software to build their budgets. The District sees building the capacity of principals and School Site Councils as crucial to the successful implementation of a WSF and has offered training and vehicles for technical assistance through each step of the WSF process. Additional training and outreach to School Site Councils will continue to be provided and refined in the future.
Purpose of the Learning Garden
The John Muir Learning Garden is designed to give San Francisco Schools students a change to take learning further outside of the classroom. The Garden builds on the fundamental curriculum concerns of the elementary school and provides an opportunity for students to gain real life experience that complements their academic studies. San Francisco school students are able to integrate classroom literacy, mathematics, science, history, and language arts instruction through their participation in activities in the Learning Garden.
The Learning Garden reaches out to the community in providing outreach services for parents, neighbors, and interested volunteers. Mentor gardeners work with teachers and students to design educational opportunities. One of the interesting projects going on now is the sustainable composting program that takes organic waste from San Francisco school lunches and uses it for fertilizing garden projects instead of filling landfills. This is just one of many projects that combine garden training with practical real world environmental concerns. The events organized in the park help students and the community learn about how to protect the local environment while studying nature in an urban setting.
Partners of the Learning Garden
The Learning Garden would not be possible without the support in terms of time and money from a variety of neighborhood partners. San Francisco area businesses, organizations, and volunteer groups have all played a role in establishing the Learning Garden. Located in Daniel E. Koshland Park, the Learning Garden has benefited from the dedication of two part-time garden mentors provided by the Hayes Valley Neighborhoods Parks Group. These two women, Rebecca and Aubrey, have become part of the local community as they organize activities that raise local awareness about the environment.
Further assistance has come from the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners, the Center for Ecoliteracy, the Recreation and Park Department, the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, and the San Francisco Zen Center. All of these organizations have devoted time and money to helping the John Muir Learning Garden become an environmental center for the San Francisco community, especially the children that attend John Muir Elementary School. In particular, the John Muir Learning Garden is indebted to the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, which donated the initial funds to start the Learning Garden and remains an active community partner with John Muir Elementary School.
A Look at John Muir Elementary School
John Muir Elementary School has a unique place within the San Francisco Public School System. Located in the Western Addition of San Francisco, it operates as a professional development school where education students from the San Francisco State University’s Muir Alternative Teaching Program are able to hone their skills in a real world environment, learning how to specially adapt course for the urban classroom.
John Muir students come from a rich cultural background and are supported within the school community with language and literacy programs beginning in infancy. The programs also extend to the parents and families of John Muir Elementary School students. Within the San Francisco school district, John Muir Elementary School acts as a BASRC (Bay Area School Reform Collaborative) leadership school with a clear focus on literacy for the whole community