Dear Superintendent Matthews and San Francisco Board of Education, 

We are writing to express our heartbreak and deep concern with the new enrollment capacity reduction forced upon Lakeshore Alternative Elementary School, and ask you to please reconsider. SFUSD has consistently disregarded the needs of families and children in this pandemic. To gut Lakeshore of its ability to provide a safe, inclusive, environment that welcomes new families, denies us a viable future. The enrollment capacity proposal, doesn’t even hold space for current Lakeshore students, much less allow us to sustain our crucial services that make a difference for our children. 

We understand that the district must make these decisions in the midst of an unprecedented moment and that all schools inevitably must face cuts as enrollment has decreased city-wide. However, the proposed cuts disproportionately hurt our school in ways that will rob Lakeshore of its diverse community and deprive the west side of the city of its only option for students to attend a school that truly reflects San Francisco’s population. 

We also foresee that the reduction in classrooms will transform Lakeshore from the city’s most diverse elementary school in the district to that of the other west side schools, lacking representation of Black and Brown students, who have historically joined Lakeshore in later admission rounds that will not be available if our enrollment is reduced. The loss extends beyond Lakeshore. As our city continues to grow more racially divided, schools like Lakeshore provide an important home for offsetting this divide by bringing families from all over San Francisco together. The enrollment data used to make these decisions was purely quantitative, incomplete without factoring in our diversity index nor the voices of our community.

We are further discouraged to see that these decisions were reached based on first-choice enrollment data, based on a pandemic year, which has been a very skewed year for enrollment. We were prevented from hosting outdoor on-site tours, while many other schools in the district continued to do so. We are confident that our lower application numbers reflect the impact of this inequitable restriction, as tours have always been the way we win over families who immediately fall in love with Lakeshore. What makes our school special can't be found in test score data, but rather its commitment to diversity and inclusion, where our students are brought up to be well-rounded, healthy social-emotional human beings. 

We ask you to please recognize that first-choice enrollment data does not tell the whole story for your ability to assess Lakeshore's contribution to the district. You owe it to proud public-school parents at Lakeshore Elementary to reconsider such a drastic attack. This has targeted our school without considering what our school has historically brought to San Francisco and what will most definitely be lost if this plan proceeds. Please read the additional comments below from our families, teachers, and staff to help you further understand why we are so adamantly opposed to these cuts. We insist on keeping our fourth kindergarten class, and keeping our 4th and 5th grade classrooms well below 33 students, so we can remain a viable diverse school community. 

***Lakeshore families, teachers, and staff: Please include a brief statement about why these classroom cuts can't proceed as proposed by sharing your experiences at Lakeshore!