Enrolling in San Francisco Public Schools

Parents for Public Schools-SF is made up of parents who want to help you find the information you need for a fulfilling and effective experience at your public school. Our active and growing parent network helps parents through the enrollment process and helps connect parents already in San Francisco public schools.

IMPORTANT DATES

April 27	Round II assignment letters mailed
April 30 - May 9	Register at school to accept Round II school assignment
May 7	JCC Kindergarten Night
May 26	Open Enrollment Begins. Schools with openings and no waitpool list are open for enrollment. See the EPC at 555 Franklin, M-F, 8am-5pm.
June-August 2008	Waitpools are run regularly; assignments from waitpools are made as space is available at the school.
September 2008	A final waitpool is run after the 10-day count. Waitpools are dissolved at the end of September.

Enrollment News

See the latest Waitpool data as of April 28, 2008 (63kb,pdf) from the Educational Placement Center, sorted by school and grade level. Note that this list changes often, as assignments are made and waitpool choices are changed - this is just a "snapshot" of the waitpools as of this date. Refer to the Round I Demand Comparison spreadsheet (734kb,pdf) to see the capacities at the various schools.

For Round II participants:

• If you received an assignment to a school, please register before May 9 to save your space.
• Your Amended Choice list was run during Round II and will not be run again. Only Waitpool requests will be run continuously.
• For Waitpool participants - your name will stay in the Waitpool until:
  • You are assigned to the Waitpool school;
  • You remove your name;
  • The lists are cleared at the end of September.

You can change your Waitpool choice at any time. Waitpools will be run regularly by the Educational Placement Office through September, and assignments will be made as space is available.

Highlights of Round I: 2008-09 School Year

For the second year in a row, Kindergarten enrollment has increased! See the press release from the district, Demand for Public Schools Continue to Increase.

• Overall, 82% of applicants received one of their choices.
• 63% received their first choice.
• Nine schools received triple digit increases in total demand this year.
• Fifty-two schools received double digit increases in total demand this year, compared to 42 schools last year!

Learn more

• details of 2008-09 Enrollment Highlights (260kb,pdf)
  
  
• Presentation (474kb,pdf) made by Darlene Lim, Director of the EPC, from the press conference Friday, March 7, 2008. Presents more detail about enrollment requests.
  
  
• Tips for Round II - Learn what your options are after receiving your Round I assignment letter. Available in English (133kb,pdf), Spanish (192kb,pdf) and Chinese (292kb,pdf).

Use this data to help you prioritize your choices and decide on waitpool choices:

• Round I Demand Comparison spreadsheet (734kb,pdf) shows the data for the past five years for 1) capacity of each school for grades K, 6 and 9; 2) total number of requests; and 3) number of first choice requests.
  
  
• Waitpool data as of April 28, 2008 (63kb,pdf). Note that this list changes often, as placements are made and people change their waitpool requests. Sorted by school and grade level.

More on this page:
Getting Started

Enrolling Siblings

Get Informed on the Process

Touring Schools

PPS Enrollment Tip: Balance your choices

Learn from other Parents' Experiences

Getting Started

See Enrollment Tips from PPS in our flyers to get you started on your school search.

Enrolling Siblings

Get Informed on the Process

We find that educating parents about the enrollment process helps to answer many of their questions and concerns.

• Attend PPS Enrollment Events - PPS-SF Parent Ambassadors and Enrollment Coaches are at our events so you can talk with parents from various schools and have your enrollment process questions answered.
• Contact PPS - call our office at 415-861-7077 or email us at info@ppssf.org with your questions or concerns.
• Attend the SFUSD Fall Enrollment Fair in October. All SFUSD schools including charter schools, are at this large event. SFUSD also sponsors workshops on the enrollment process and other specific topics for parents interested in enrolling in a San Francisco public school. Meet principals, teachers, parents and staff from schools all over San Francisco.

Touring Schools

Tour schedule for Middle and High Schools (30kb,pdf)
Also see the Calfee School Guide's list of High School Open Houses for 2007: http://www.calfeeschoolguide.org/calendar/2007_08_Open_House_Calendar.pdf

PPS Enrollment Tip: Balance your choices

Round I Demand Comparison spreadsheet
Round I Demand Comparison spreadsheet (734kb,pdf) shows the data for the past five years for
1) capacity of each school for grades K, 6 and 9;
2) total number of requests; and
3) number of first choice requests.
Use this data to help you prioritize and balance your choices. For more help on this, please see Adams' Spreadsheet.

Learn from other Parents' Experiences

• See our Marketing your School in Round II flyer (138kb,pdf) for ways to welcome newly assigned families to your school.
  
  
• PPS Parent Ambassador Network
  Find out about a school through another parent's perspective! Parents for Public Schools has a Parent Ambassador Network, with over 270 Ambassadors at most schools in San Francisco.
• TO BE AN AMBASSADOR: Email Vicki Symonds at vicki@ppssf.org to be added to our Ambassador list.
  
  
• TO SPEAK TO AN AMBASSADOR: Contact PPS at 415-861-7077 or email Vicki Symonds at vicki@ppssf.org to be connected to parents at a particular school.
• Parent Testimonials
  Read Parent Testimonials: What parents are saying about their schools.
  
  
• PPS-SF Enrollment Coach Program
  If you are a parent in a public school and would like to help other parents through the enrollment process, become certified to be a PPS-SF Enrollment Coach! Training is up to two hours, at either the PPS office or at the Educational Placement Center. Our next Enrollment Coach training will be in the Fall.
  
  

  PRESCHOOLS: We have Enrollment Coaches for you!
  If you are a preschool parent or Director, please contact Vicki Symonds at 415.861.7077 or vicki@ppssf.org and we'll help you find an Enrollment Coach for your preschool.

Why is our Student Assignment Method so complicated?

Press

See the video that aired on January 7, 2008 from ABC7 on "Finding the Best Schools", focusing on the variety of school choices available in San Francisco and turning in your application by Friday, January 11, 2008.

SFUSD School Times focuses on enrollment
The Fall 2007 edition of the School Times focuses on enrollment and includes columns by BOE President Mark Sanchez, Superintendent Carlos Garcia, Examiner President and Publisher John Wilcox, as well as interviews with parents from various schools (most of whom are PPS members!). If you didn't get your copy in the Examiner on Thursday, Oct 18, 2007 you can download a pdf here in English (365Kb,pdf), Spanish (361Kb,pdf) or Chinese (597Kb,pdf). Copies will also be distributed to all elementary and middle school students and copies will be available for high school students at the schools.

More SF Public Schools in Demand;SFUSD Press Release, Mar 16, 2007
... Round One of the SFUSD student assignment process is now complete and the results are encouraging. Eighty-seven percent (87%) of the families who applied for a spot in a public school will receive one of their choices. This is up from last year when eighty-four (84%) received one of their choices. Sixty-seven percent (67%) of families received one of their first choices this year compared to sixty-two (62%) last year. Read the full press release here.

Help spread the word to prospective parents:
Click here for a pdf flyer created from this press release.

School Beat: Student Assignment Time; Lisa Schiff, Beyond Chron, March 15, 2007

Most S.F. Kids Get Their First Choice for Public School; Jill Tucker, SF Chronicle, March 16, 2007

School Assignment Letters Are in the Mail; Jill Tucker, SF Chronicle, March 17, 2007

Students School Assignments are in the Mail; Bonnie Eslinger, SF Examiner, March 16, 2007

Letter to Editor of SF Chronicle: SFUSD Public School Facts; Lorraine Woodruff-Long; November 26, 2006

School Beat: Finding Your Child's School; Lisa Schiff; Beyond Chron; Oct 26, 2006

Research questions belief that private schools are better than public; Craig Chamberlain, Education Editor; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign News

Opting Out of Private School; Nancy Keates; Wall Street Journal Online; September 15, 2006

Class helps kids pick high school; Jill Tucker; SF Chronicle; November 7, 2006

School Beat: Finding Your Child's School; Lisa Schiff; Beyond Chron; Oct 26, 2006

Study shows Public Schools Better than Private
A new study recently released by the Federal Education Department comparing performance of public and private school students. This article by New York Times writer Diana Jean Schemo was published in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Public-School Students Score Well in Math in Large-Scale Government Study; Diana Jean Schemo; NY Times; January 28, 2006
Article comparing public and private school math scores. Note that you must join NYTimes.com to access the full article.

BOOKS
All Else Equal - Richard Rothstein
Comparing private vs. public schools

Parent and PPS Member Caroline Grannan's post on PPS listserve 8/24/06 about the enrollment process:

Welcome to the newcomers on this list and to parents who will be doing the kindergarten search in the coming years. As a longtime SFUSD parent, volunteer and advocate, I wanted to post some general comments.

My kids are going into 7th and 10th grades. Back when we did the K process, for fall '96, there was no PPS, and the notion of marketing schools to encourage parents to look beyond the prestigious top five or six was on another planet to SFUSD. Tbe word was: If you don't get one of the short list of top schools, you have to go private. We believed it, though we didn't consider private schools but assumed we could work the SFUSD process successfully if we tried hard enough.

At the time, there were blanks on the application for four school choices. We put our chosen school, Lakeshore, in all four blanks (and we did get in in the appeals process, which at the time was very subject to being worked by assertive applicants).

After getting involved in the SFPTA and the fledgling PPS, and meeting parents from around the city, I began to learn about the many other good schools in SFUSD. A few years ago, SFUSD revamped the enrollment application to include seven choices. Out of curiosity, I made a list of schools in my part of the city (southwestern quadrant) to see if I could come up with seven elementary choices I'd be willing to send my kids to, based on what I know now that I didn't when we initially applied. I got to 12 before I got distracted and stopped; I think I could have easily added more.

Any school with more applicants than openings is going to have to pick some and reject others. SFUSD schools (except for Lowell and School of the Arts) do that by lottery. In the distant past, they used a first- come, first-served system that had families camping out in school playgrounds for days.

While it's true that IF you live in a neighborhood where you like the schools, you aren't guaranteed automatic entree to those schools under the current system, the existing process still has some advantages. The obvious one is that a system that guarantees access to your neighborhood school must also make it mandatory to attend your neighborhood school. For families who aren't happy with their nearby school (as was the case with us back in '96), SFUSD's all-choice system is a boon. It's true that there's a lottery for schools with more applicants than openings, but I can't think of a more fair system in those cases.

The SFUSD enrollment system offers a family-friendly and comprehensive process for applicants who aren't happy with the initial lottery placement, allowing them to decide whether to get into the waiting pool for a chosen school or pick another school with openings. The process includes counseling by SFUSD staff and peer counseling by trained parent volunteers. As a former head of SFUSD enrollment told me -- the initial placement is not an "assignment," it's an offer, "the start of a conversation." Reports of children "sent across town" against the family's will are simply not accurate; if an applicant doesn't get a requested school in the lottery, he or she is offered the nearest school with openings.

Of course as we went through the K process, we had friends applying to private schools. It was notable that if we didn't get the school we requested in the SFUSD lottery, it was a blind lottery and we had lost the luck of the draw. For our friends who didn't get spots in chosen private schools, it was a personal rejection based on an close assessment of the student and the family. One mom in our preschool with a smart but oppositional-defiant child told me she threw up every day while her child was being rejected by private school after private school.

BTW, for those who don't know us, my kids both did go to Lakeshore and then to our chosen (and neighborhood) middle school, Aptos, where I still have a 7th-grader. My high-schooler attends School of the Arts (which admits by audition), studying trumpet. His second high school choice was up-and-coming Balboa. He did make the Lowell threshold (Lowell admits based on academic criteria, a combination of test scores and GPA), but was very reluctant to consider Lowell.

Sorry to go on and on, but for the nervous newcomers on this list, I hoped this might be helpful. Of course, PPS is your all-purpose source of information and support!

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