San Francisco Public Press (https://www.sfpublicpress.org/category/education/page/5/)
Starting this fall, the Public Press is reporting on new and creative solutions to homelessness. And because we know we don’t have all the answers, we’re engaging the community to gather fresh ideas and inspire action.
The weeklong S.F. Homeless Project, a coordinated reporting effort by nearly two dozen outlets, offered up some ideas that could contribute to the overall aim of ending homelessness — or at least proposals that could help homeless individuals cope better with life on the streets.
There’s good news in the San Francisco Unified School District. It is succeeding in educating students in multiple languages, producing citizens and workers who are better equipped to navigate a cosmopolitan global economy compared with the rest of the country.
For almost two decades, the San Francisco school district mostly ignored Proposition 227, which emphasized English-only instruction. Today, with the passage of Proposition 58, the city stands as a leader in bilingual education while much of the rest of the state catches up.
Education or deportation? That’s one startling question we are grappling with as San Francisco becomes more of a political outlier in the aftermath of the 2016 elections. The imminent need for documenting this divergence makes our jobs as independent local journalists more important than ever.
This letter is also available in Spanish, Chinese and Arabic.
The election of Donald Trump has cast a pall of fear and uncertainty after passage of Proposition N, as local stakeholders scramble to figure out how to enable the city’s undocumented immigrant residents to vote for members of the Board of Education without increasing their risk of deportation, which the president-elect has threatened.
Since 2003, the San Francisco Unified School District has raised more than $1 billion for school construction and improvements. But because of aging buildings, technology upgrades and projected enrollment growth, even more money will be needed before long.
If California goes the way of San Francisco — creating more dual-language immersion programs and reviving bilingual education for immigrants — it would not just signal a dramatic change in education policy. It would also symbolize a massive cultural shift in the state.
State Proposition 58 aims to undo almost two decades of voter-approved state policy that has actively discouraged bilingual language education. But just as demand for bilingualism is growing, California lacks teachers, standards, curricula and reading materials.
This Charter amendment would allow non-citizen parents, legal guardians and caregivers of children 18 years old or younger who reside in San Francisco to vote for school board candidates. These new voters, who would register with the city’s Department of Elections, would need to be at least 18 years old and not be otherwise disqualified from voting under the California Constitution or state statute.
