Also, if a man has kids and abandons them, he should be ostracized, no one should give him a job or respect. Now men can have kids, refuse to marry the woman, divorce, not work, not pay child support, and blame the woman. Bill Cosby is right, these men should not be considered as OK people. If you have a kid, you marry the woman and you raise the kid, you speak properly and teach them, daily. That’s being a father. Too many kids of all races are forced to live with only a mother, no father. I’m all for Gay and Lesbian parents, but that’s two parents. One parent can’t be as good as two.

I think the district policies have failed over the years for one reason: those who have promoted those policies lack the vision to think more than one year ahead. 25 years a judge ordered SFUSD to desegregate we are now “on the road” to undo the failed policies of busing. And in another 25 years we will end up where we started. Our energies need to go into building up schools, not, as Don said, moving kids around like chips. Diversity is not the end all to be all. Getting a good education is better than having graduated from a diverse school. You get into college on the basis of individual performance.
All kids in all neighborhoods can do well given the structure from home and at school along with the mental discipline to succeed.

Put down 9 good schools and appeal, and by October all schools have some open spots and you can go in and insist on it, even if they discourage you, for January. If you get one in, all your kids go, so if you have 2 or 3 close, the younger can benefit from siblings.

Thank you for your loyalty and determination to build a great community, not just pass through.

Also, as has been noted in the Chronicle, the schools here are actually very good and getting better. We have as good schools as most of the suburbs and the better half of our public schols are every bit as good as the privates, for I know parents who have been to both.

They should reduce traffic and give priority to going to school close to home. It’s a game. No kids from the projects in the Filmore go to schools in the Richmond or Sunset, none. Asians and whites who know the system from afar go, all the Black kids at Alamo live nearby except maybe 1, out of 500, and there are no more than 5 at Alamo. You could do better by busing in a few square blocks of the Filmore and letting anyone go to their neighborhood school. All neighborhoods in SF are near expensive houses and good areas, so no school will be completely segregated. The richest people in Fresno would struggle to afford the Excelsior or Bayview. Upper middle class kids are in each and every neighborhood. The projects are poor, but the houses down the street from them, even in Visitation Valley, are more than triple the cost of the average U.S. house.

I admire you. You believe in making the world a better place. You are a true liberal. You will make San Francisco better by being an involved parent. I have 5 kids in SFUSD and they’re all doing great. We also have, in Lowell, a high school that is better than any private or public school north of LA, and that can be backed up by average SAT School. It’s public. Look into it, you need good grades to get in.

Truth is, our schools are great because we have an enriching environment and many middle class Asian kids are harder working and show greater character than rich white kids in Marin, and the white kids who are 25% of the schools in the Richmond or Sunset benefit from having dedicated peers.

Not to fault you, but as you said you don’t have kids so you probably don’t spend much time dealing with public schools. Don’t buy into the idea that moving children around results in a better education for them. If all schools must be good schools that is a reason not to forceably command students to leave their neighborhoods and friends and go to schools elsewhere. This is the way we do things now – a lottery style assignment system, the only one in the US. This techniques never works and the achievement statistics clearing indicate that socioeconomic and racial academic data remains relatively unchanged despite such upheavals. Students don’t tend to improve just by changing to another school. Usually there performance suffers as a result.

You can’t make schools better by changing the assignment system. Better schools are about better teachers, better study habits, better programs and better leadership. But most of all it is about the student’s own comittment. The other day I was picking up a friend’s child and I told him that I heard that such and such a school is supposed to be very academic and a big commitment. The ten year old’s answer – ” I’m ready for a challege.” That is the right answer and that is the answer all students must have to succeed.

Redirecting students to different schools won’t help, It never has. Children are not inventory to be redistributed. Most families want to stay close to home and their own communities. For this reason, the efforts to date in attempting to redistribute children according to the Diversity Index have been an unmitigated failure.

Is the answer to that dilemna to move the children out of the lowest performing schools? We tried moving the teachers out with reconstitution and that bombed. Is playing a game of musical chairs the answer? No, it is about keeping a highly commited and qualified staff in place and then doing the hard work. The Board of Education should have learned its lesson over the last 25 years. Despite all the efforts, schools are no more integrated than before. But politics will prevail and the focus on diversity trumps academics in the leadership world of SFUSD. Jacob, take a look at the Strategic Plan and tell me which goal is emphasized more – diversity or achievement?

When the pink slips go out the BVHP schools will get hit hard. In many cases 80 % of staff will be laid off. SFUSD needs to keep good teachers to provide continuity. Schools do not improve when there is a revolving door of teachers coming and going. Contract negotiations must take place with the interests of students first. If SFUSD wants to create dialogue here at YSFPS and elsewhere, they should remember that all the talk and good intentions in the world won’t change a thing. Students have to learn to work hard and stay focused.The rest is a sideshow.