Third-Grade Reading Inches Up but Stubborn Gaps Persist as Parents Sound Alarm on Lead, Screens

The SFUSD Board of Education convened Aug. 25 for a marathon session that laid bare the distance between the district's ambitions and its reality: only 49% of third graders read at grade level, parents at one school are fighting lead contamination on playgrounds, and special education classrooms still lack teachers weeks into the year. Across nearly four hours of workshops and public comment, a clear theme emerged — aggregate progress numbers are masking deep inequities at the school level.

• Only 49% of third graders read at grade level, a 2-point gain that still trails pre-pandemic performance and the district's 70% target by 2028

• Staff names systemic racism as a driver of African American students' declining literacy scores; board demands concrete action beyond coaching

• Parents from Chinese Immersion School at DeAvila demand district halt lead-paint construction, citing contaminated play yards and a 200-parent petition

• Tech and Check parents present 500-signature petition urging SFUSD to adopt LA-style screen-time limits and device restrictions

• District hits 96.7% general education staffing — best since COVID — but special education sits near 90% with roughly 300 paraeducator openings unfilled

• Parents at Guadalupe and Flint Elementary report classrooms still without teachers, challenging the district's top-line staffing figures

Halfway to Nowhere: Literacy Gains Can't Hide the Gap

The board's centerpiece workshop on Goal 1 — getting 70% of third graders to grade-level reading by 2028 — opened with a number that is both a milestone and an indictment: 49%.

The basics: The SBAC English Language Arts assessment measures third-grade reading proficiency statewide. SFUSD's 49% is a 2-percentage-point increase over the prior year, which staff called statistically significant but which still falls below the 52% pre-pandemic baseline.

Why it matters: At the current rate, the district would need to nearly triple its annual gains over the next two years to hit its own target. For African American students and English learners, the trajectory is moving in the wrong direction.

Superintendent Lamia Hsu framed the improvement cautiously:

"We saw a 2 percentage point increase compared to last year. This is an encouraging sign that we are beginning to turn the corner on third-grade literacy." She also announced a new public data dashboard at sfusd.edu designed to give families disaggregated outcomes data.

Staff presented an "instructional ecosystem" framework connecting curriculum standards to classroom practice through coaching, professional development, learning walks, and grade-level collaboration. Assistant Superintendent Devin Krugman walked through specific kindergarten phonics and first-grade examples showing how standards link to observable classroom indicators. Six "lab schools" with high populations of focal students will receive intensified support from TNTP, the national teacher-training organization, to test and codify best practices.

The Equity Reckoning

The sharpest exchanges came when the board turned to racial disparities. Board Member Lisa Weissman-Ward quoted from the district's own written response, which attributed African American students' falling scores to "both systemic and personal racism that leads to low expectations held for students and uneven access to rigorous and culturally responsive instruction."

She pressed for specifics:

"I feel like there's been decades to be examining this. And what else?"

Deputy Superintendent John Davis called for accountability at the school level:

"Part of the fearlessness is to call it out when you're in the schools and when you either see it in the classroom or when you even think it might be the case that one of the standards is not being taught up to the rigor."

Dr. Jen Steiner, assistant superintendent for PK-8 schools, offered a real-time example: a school leadership team — itself mostly Black and Brown staff — had sought help in the first week of school to address low expectations at their site.

Hsu committed to confronting the data head-on:

"This is part of us being fearless this year. It's about us looking at the data, being honest with ourselves and fully recognizing how we are a school district that serves all of our students, not some."

K-1 Splits and the Resource Question

Board Member Alida Fisher delivered the session's most forceful intervention, arguing that K-1 split classrooms — where kindergartners and first graders share a teacher — are concentrated in schools serving predominantly Black and Brown students as a result of historic under-resourcing.

"I am saying right here, right now, if we've got classrooms that are K-1 splits, I don't think that we're setting them up for success this year," she said, demanding the superintendent act immediately to break up the splits.

Hsu responded:

"I agree that we need to do better, particularly for K-1s. We can commit to looking at it, particularly after our 10-day count to see where the numbers land."

Board President Phil Kim pushed staff on whether coaching investments are being tracked at the school level, asking how many teachers have a one-on-one coach and whether gaps at specific sites correlate with outcomes. Board Member Matt Alexander reframed the board's role:

"Of these enabling conditions, based on your data analysis, which of them are most important?"

Vice President Jaime Huling flagged another troubling trend: English learner proficiency dropped by roughly half over two years.

"I was really concerned to see that essentially over the last two years, our grade three English learner proficiency has dropped by half, which does indicate that there is a pattern at some level," she said.

Staff acknowledged the complexity of EL data — students move in and out of the classification — but agreed deeper analysis is needed.

What's next: No formal action was taken. The superintendent committed to examining K-1 splits after the 10-day enrollment count and to bringing a data-driven resource allocation proposal to the board. The lab school strategy with TNTP will be a key test of whether the district's theory of action can translate into classroom-level results.

Lead on the Playground: Parents Demand District Halt Construction

More than a dozen parents of students at the Chinese Immersion School at DeAvila flooded public comment with a single demand: stop generating lead dust while children are in school.

Why it matters: A lead paint removal and waterproofing project was supposed to be completed over the summer but extended into the school year. Parents say lead has been detected on play yards where children eat and play, and the district failed to notify families before the first day of school.

CIS parent Nancy Chang cited specific test results: "72 micrograms per square foot" of lead in one yard area. She called the district's reliance on a 1994 safety threshold outdated and not designed for children, noting that the CDC, EPA, and American Academy of Pediatrics all hold that there is no safe level of lead exposure for children.

PTA President Catherine Batesh said the independent consultant hired by the district "demonstrated no extra concern for children, only workers," and that parents had to demand information that should have been provided proactively.

School Site Council Chair Tim Tung urged the board to treat the situation as "a crisis of confidence" rather than a technical issue, noting that district communications masked the problem under the subject line "waterproofing project," leaving parents feeling dismissed at an information session.

Randall Lowe, father of a kindergartner, demanded independent daily testing of all indoor and outdoor areas, certified daily lead decontamination cleaning, and complete public visibility of all results. Over 200 parents signed a petition with four core demands: pause all lead-generating construction until summer, daily independent testing, immediate removal of children from affected play yards, and full transparency.

NAACP San Francisco Branch representative Virginia Marshall supported the parents' position, saying the work should have been completed during the summer.

Five-year-old Emory Lowe, a CIS kindergartner, also spoke, saying he wants everyone to be safe from the chemicals from the construction.

What's next: The board took no formal action during public comment. Parents have signaled they will continue pressing for an immediate construction halt and independent monitoring.

Screen Time Showdown: Parents Want SFUSD to Follow LA's Lead

A coordinated group of parents from the advocacy organization Tech and Check used public comment to push SFUSD toward formal screen-time limits in schools, citing a petition with approximately 500 signatures.

Why it matters: SFUSD has no formal technology-use policy governing devices in classrooms, while the Los Angeles Unified School District has already prohibited YouTube for TK-12 students and restricted recreational screen use.

Ashley Ahern, a Tech and Check member, argued that parents are setting limits at home only to have them undermined at school. Other speakers described students copy-pasting test questions into Google, cyberbullying through shared documents, and elementary students scrolling gaming websites on school Chromebooks. One parent from Lafayette Elementary described gamified math apps, AI-based reading instruction, and video-game "brain breaks" for her first and third graders. A second grader named Valentina described having nightmares from a scary game a classmate played on a phone after school.

Brandi Markman of SF Ed Alliance argued that the lack of a technology policy is driving families to private schools. She also called for the reinstatement of monthly oversight committees — covering HR, buildings, and curriculum — that she said were eliminated under the district's Student Outcomes Focused Governance model.

What's next: No board action was taken, but the volume and coordination of testimony suggest the issue will return in a formal policy proposal.

Best Gen-Ed Staffing Since COVID, but Special Ed Tells a Different Story

New Associate Superintendent of Human Resources Dr. James Harrell presented his first progress report on Guardrail 4.1 — the district's commitment that 95% of general education classrooms be staffed on the first day of school. The result: 96.7%, exceeding the target and marking SFUSD's best start since the pandemic.

Where things stand: Emergency credential use has fallen from a high of 203 to 86. CALSAS misassignment findings were cut by 50%. Substitute coverage hit 98–100%. Harrell outlined a theory of action built on earlier hiring timelines, KPIs across all HR functions, improved marketing — including Meta and Instagram ads that generated over 2,000 applicant clicks — and J1 visa international teachers to fill special education roles.

"An SFUSD TK to 12th grade student this year is more likely to start with an appropriately credentialed teacher from the first day of school than any time since COVID," he said.

The other side: The top-line number conceals real pain. Special education staffing sits at approximately 90%, and roughly 300 paraeducator positions remain unfilled. During public comment, Roberto Guzman Rivera, a parent of three at Guadalupe Elementary, challenged the celebration directly: his school still lacks a special education teacher for TK-K and pre-K students with IEPs. Jenny Garcia, also a Guadalupe parent, reported that her daughter was placed in an English-only TK class after a bilingual TK request was denied, and the existing TK-K class has no teacher.

Autumn Brown Garibai, a parent at Flint Elementary — a Title I school in the Mission/Bernal neighborhood — reported that teachers selected by the principal before summer still had not been hired by the start of school, leaving families with inconsistent substitutes and no answers.

Board Member Alida Fisher pressed the distinction:

"When what we're celebrating is our gen-ed staffing levels and we're not talking about sped staffing levels and we're not talking about bilingual staffing levels, we have a lot of families out there who are saying, 'And what about us?'"

She also asked whether special education caseloads — as opposed to simple headcounts — are driving teacher attrition.

Vice President Jaime Huling raised a concern heard repeatedly from principals:

"Common feedback that I get is that our HR onboarding and hiring process takes such a long time that we lose top applicants."

Harrell acknowledged he does not yet know current onboarding processing times but cited reducing the timeline from 18–24 days to five in his previous district. He committed to having department KPIs in place by December.

Board Member Lisa Weissman-Ward highlighted the need for educator pipelines that produce teachers who reflect the student body, and cautioned that J1 visa programs may be fragile under current federal immigration enforcement.

What's next: Harrell committed to establishing HR KPIs by December. The board will monitor whether aggregate staffing gains translate to adequacy at individual schools — particularly Guadalupe Elementary, where students with disabilities remain without required services.

Minor Items

• Consent calendar approved 8-0 (Board President Kim recused due to employment with the City and County of San Francisco).

• Resolution 268-25SP2 — authorizing provisional intern permits and waivers to hire teachers still completing credentials — approved unanimously, 9-0. The permits are critical for placing teachers in hard-to-fill special education and TK classrooms immediately.

• Closed session settlement of $166,851.71 approved in an Office of Administrative Hearings case.

• Former SFUSD employee Jake Stuckey reported losing retiree health coverage due to a retirement status error; benefits have been restored but he is seeking reimbursement for out-of-pocket expenses, with the legal department still reviewing his claim.