The San Francisco Struggle — It’s Real
Surviving the SF public schools
I am the parent of a 9 year old girl and 6 year old boy. My wife and I have been able to work around and benefit from the intricacies of the SF School Assignment System, and yet I’d still like it changed. Let me tell you why.
When we were first considering school for our daughter, we knew what schools we wanted to target and confident that we would get them. At the top of the list were the two Mandarin immersion schools — Starr King and Jose Ortega. Even though Starr King was about as far away as one could be from Outer Sunset where we live, it was at the very top of the list because of the language program and an additional program called “StageWrite”.
We were confident about getting Starr King because our daughter tested in as a proficient native speaker. Half the slots in kindergarten are reserved for these students to promote diversity, and the slots are typically under-subscribed.
StageWrite is a wonderful program that starts teaching kids about the different elements of a story at kindergarten, and then continue to help the kids to develop and write a full blown play by the time they reach the 5th grade. Each year, StageWrite selects 6–8 of the kids’ plays to be performed by a professional troop of actors. Performances are typically at the Bravo Theater, and the penultimate performance takes place at the de Young Museum.
As a parent, I am drawn to this type of learning as opposed to the rote learning that seems to be trending the other way. If you ever get a chance to catch these performances, and I recommend you do, you will understand why kids and their parents love this program. I’ve been going the last three years and I’ve shed tears and cried out loud laughing. Not sure if it’s because I knew the plays were created by kids or just that they were damn good. Pretty sure it’s the latter.
That is why it broke our hearts when my wife and I had to make the hard choice to take our daughter out of Starr King at the beginning of her 4th grade. The driving distance (45 minutes each way, collectively 3 hours/day typically) forced our hand.
Our timing was also triggered by our son, who was about to enter kindergarten. We wanted both kids to attend the same school, and we wanted them to walk to school. The answer was Francis Scott Key, 3 blocks from our front doors.
I can tell you that the mere logistical act of walking our kids to school has been a life saver. A bit dramatic, I admit, but it certainly feels that way compared to our lives before of the daily back and forth in the car.
Is this perfect? Perfect would be if FSK had Mandarin immersion and StageWrite. Perfect would have been if these programs existed in the first place so that FSK was our first choice.
At the end of the day, I feel we are lucky. Unfortunately, I know many families who do not feel this way. It should not be like this. Walking your kids to school should be a right, not a lottery pick.
