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by alephnerd·3y ago·view on hn ↗
The issues in SFUSD and OUSD are orthogonal to SF local government tbh. A lot of the failure and persistent rot in the district is due to chronic underfunding - teachers in SFUSD and OUSD tend to earn half of what they could earn in SMUSD, SRVUSD, Fremont USD, etc.

If you don't pay for talent, you ain't getting it.

3 comments
I agree and disagree. I agree that if you don't pay for talent you're not going to get it. But SFUSD is so broken that no one wants to move here. And it's so broken that anyone who cares about education will pull their children and stick them in private school, which brings less money into SFUSD.

This is a negative feedback loop and there's no way out of it.

The entire political scene of SF and California dictate the makeup of SFUSD so I think it goes hand in hand. I think the fact that moderate centrists finally showed up to vote out the SFUSD board members and Boudin are an indication of what comes over the next few years. I hope the progressive extremists get kicked out of the Dems and get replaced by moderate centrists like what we've seen in the last year.

> is due to chronic underfunding

The OP talked about wasting $2 million on renaming schools over perceived injustice (the plan to rename Lincoln was probably the worst idea they've ever perpetuated). You can't point back to underfunding when the school is wasting funding on extremists

SF had so much surplus budget during the tech boom. What did they do with it? Lots of pet projects... Why didn't they use it where it would pay dividends in the future? Massively unproductive homeless programs and other peripheral things. If they graduated students they potentially are preventing future homeless people, but with the present educational system they are almost certainly ensuring more homeless people.
SF has struck me for a long time as the worst run major city in America.

A lot of right wingers like to say “see look what libs do!” but I’ve lived in very blue cities like Boston that seem to be significantly better run. San Francisco just seems peculiarly dysfunctional in its own unique way.