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Welcome to the 2018-19 school year! I truly love the start of a new school year. I relish the opportunity to start fresh, make new school-year resolutions, and reconnect with people who are returning from (hopefully) restful summers. I’m excited for a year of fun and collaborative learning. Happy new school year!
—Dr. Vincent Matthews, Superintendent
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Download the SchoolMessenger app and get messages from your children's schools in one place! If your children's teachers use the app, you can also send and receive messages from teachers as well.
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Get ready for the year ahead with some helpful links and tips from SFUSD! Find school menus, subscribe to the academic calendar, download the Student Family Handbook, and learn how to sign up for notifications.
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Did you know SFUSD offers fresh, healthy meals at all our school campuses? Each meal is prepared on a daily basis and uses quality ingredients. Even if you decide not to choose school meals, please fill out a Multipurpose Family Income Form—the information helps your school. Learn more about our school meal program.
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Is your school taking part in the Earth Day Every Day Challenge? Schools can earn points by contributing to SFUSD's sustainability goals. At the end of the year, schools with the most points are recognized as eco-leaders and win a cash prize!
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Youth interested in environmental issues and climate change can sign up for the Global Climate Youth Summit, featuring speakers, interactive workshops, and the chance to meet other students who care about our environment. RSVP for the Sept. 15 event!
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Life moves fast, and so do social media posts. We've rounded up our top back-to-school tweets to give you a look into how we've been prepping for a great school year!
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Enrollment fair
Learn about our schools and attend workshops on the enrollment process at the Enrollment Fair on Oct. 13.
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Back to School Week
Get to know your child's school better and plan for the year ahead. Ask your school about when their Back to School event is.
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Labor Day
All SFUSD schools and offices will be closed on Monday, Sept. 3 in observance of Labor Day.
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SFUSD in the News
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High school students install mixed-media artwork on Ocean Avenue utility boxes
Ocean Avenue's utility boxes are getting a makeover this month, with artwork from San Francisco public high school students. The project, called "Ocean Bloom," comes from Youth Art Exchange (YAX), a nonprofit organization that pairs students with professional Bay Area artists to provide free arts programming throughout the city.
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PrepFocus: San Francisco prep football preview continues with a look at reigning champion Galileo
The defending CIF San Francisco Champions, Northern California Division 6-A Champions and CIF Division 6-A Champions, Galileo football may have been one of the most unexpected surprises in the entire state during last year’s run, but opponents will certainly be circling the Lions on their calendars this year. Much like last year’s team, head coach Mark Huynh’s squad comes in all shapes and sizes. With the SFUSD’s open enrollment policy, players come from all over the City, and they come from just about every background imaginable.
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How to make students care about writing
“I want to say something important about writing,” Pirette McKamey told 25 seniors in her English class at San Francisco’s Mission High School one fall afternoon in 2012. It’s incredibly hard, and always incomplete, she explained. “I’ve reread some of my essays 20 times and I still go, ‘I can’t believe I made this mistake or that mistake.’”
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San Francisco schools to provide free meals for students
Students at San Francisco’s public schools will again have access to free and reduced price meals provided by a reinstated program from the San Francisco Unified School District. The Community Eligibility Provision of the National School Lunch and Breakfast Program will offer free breakfast and lunch everyday to students enrolled in one of 54 San Francisco schools. The program follows studies that indicate eating habits affect students’ academic performance and health. A disparity in home nutrition, the research found, leads to a division in classroom performance between well-fed and hungry students.
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Lincoln wins dragon boat title
The Abraham Lincoln High School Dragon Boat team turned in medal-winning performances at the 11th International Dragon Boat Federation (IDBF) Club Crew world championship races in Szeged, Hungary, in July. There were more than 6,000 participants from 140 clubs, representing 30 countries, that competed during five days of racing at the IDBF.
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KALW summer internship experience: learning, pushing hard to be successful, creating audio stories and those cool feral cats
We’re rolling through the summer at KALW, working with more trainees than we’ve ever hosted before. Twelve adults and six high school students, all building their skills in our working newsroom. Today I’ll share a bit about our summer high school internship, which just wrapped up last Thursday.
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High school students teach mathematics to kindergarteners, a wonderful way to spark interest in younger students (Chinese)
In order to cultivate students' enthusiasm for mathematics and to explore the love of engineering and science for children of different ages, San Francisco Unified School District held a "Polynmial Carnival" during the summer school session. The older students used small roller coasters and pictures as a way to illustrate to the kindergarteners how math can be used in real life outside of textbooks.
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San Francisco now allows noncitizens to vote in school board elections
San Francisco will become the first city in California to allow noncitizens to vote for certain positions in an upcoming election. On Monday, the city’s Department of Elections began issuing registration forms for the vote on Nov. 6 that allow noncitizen and undocumented parents, guardians and caregivers of students in the San Francisco Unified School District to vote in school board elections. About one-third of the students in the district come from immigrant households, so the measure will give many parents a rightful voice, Hong Mei Pang, director of advocacy at the San Francisco-based nonprofit Chinese for Affirmative Action, told HuffPost in an email.
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London Breed first mayor in 50 years from SF public school
London will be our first black woman mayor, and her oft-repeated personal story has inspired many. But less discussed is that—in point of fact—Breed will be the first San Francisco mayor to have attended a San Francisco public high school in precisely 50 years.
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San Francisco school finds key to raising math scores: Teacher training
One elementary school in California says it has found the key to turning around persistently stagnant math scores: Heavy investment in teacher preparation, to improve not only classroom instruction but also the overall climate of the school. San Francisco Unified’s John Muir Elementary, where almost all students are low-income, African-American or Latino, used grant money from the district to hire substitutes so every teacher could be freed up to participate in Common Core math training.
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SF to expand street safety program to more than 100 schools
A program intended to encourage children and families to walk and take public transit to school is expanding its reach from 36 San Francisco schools to 103, nearly tripling its reach. The Safe Routes to School program brings its street safety education program to 103 SFUSD schools; the content includes police and fire department classroom presentations, in-school bike classes, Muni safety classes and support to form “walking school buses” for students.
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SFUSD students want to keep their schools cannabis-free
In the six months since California legalized cannabis, the battle of brands to gain our attention has been fierce. As marijuana-related advertising saturates our local landscape, some of San Francisco’s high school students have made it clear that cannabis has no place in their classrooms. On June 13, the San Francisco Board of Education unanimously approved a resolution from the city’s Student Advisory Council that affirms San Francisco’s law requiring a 600-foot buffer between dispensaries and school property. Academy High School senior Chanun Ong was one of the students behind the resolution, co-authored by Board of Education Commissioner Dr. Emily Murase.
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San Francisco acting student heads to bright lights
Young Frankenstein is a comedy classic. And for student actor Cole Sisser, it could also be his ticket to Broadway. "I was like this is really cool because I knew about what happens if you win this award," says Sisser. Sisser recently won Best Actor at the Rita Moreno High School Musical Theatre Awards. He did it playing Igor in the stage version of Young Frankenstein. He knocked the songs out of the park, including "Transylvania Mania."
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Boosting student engagement through project-based learning
Taji Allen-Sanchez, a sixth- and seventh-grade science teacher at San Francisco’s Aptos Middle School, is one of a growing number of teachers who believe that traditional methods of teaching aren’t preparing students for life beyond school. Lectures and direct instruction can be used to convey information to students, but they don’t enhance skills like teamwork, problem solving, and curiosity that employers are increasingly looking for.
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A bold effort to end algebra tracking shows promise
Four years ago, school district leaders did something counterintuitive in this tech-laden metropolis, where STEM isn't just a buzzword but practically a way of life. They got rid of accelerated middle-school math classes. Part of an ambitious project to end the relentless assignment of underserved students into lower-level math, the city now requires all students to take math courses of equal rigor through geometry, in classrooms that are no longer segregated by ability.
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San Francisco high schoolers skip senior trip, visit Afghan boy in ICE detention center instead
A group of students from a small San Francisco school skipped their senior trip to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk this week, and instead took a five-hour road trip to visit an Afghan ICE detainee at the Mesa Verde Detention Center in Bakersfield. And on Tuesday, the graduating seniors at June Jordan School for Equity will save an empty chair for Hamid, a teen seeking political asylum from the Taliban and is currently being held on $35,000 bond – a price he can’t afford to pay.
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SF voters approve parcel tax upping teacher pay
Educators across San Francisco have reason to celebrate with the approval on Tuesday of a parcel tax that is expected to boost their salaries by 7 percent over the next two decades. Proposition G, which needed a majority vote to pass, had won more than 57 percent of the vote by 10 p.m. Tuesday. The measure is expected to generate $50 million annually by levying a $298 parcel tax on property owners, with a few exceptions, starting July 1.
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How San Francisco is transforming science education
Five years ago, the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) made a commitment to invest in the implementation of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) through a multi-year solution strategy that combined developing and adapting new curriculum materials with an integrated professional development plan so that the persistent inequities in student learning would be interrupted. Seeing an opportunity in the disruptive nature of the NGSS to alter science teaching and learning in ways that improved learning for all students, the SFUSD Science Team partnered with the Center to Support Excellence in Teaching (CSET) at Stanford University to ensure that the curriculum and professional development work was guided by best practices and research.
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Image attributions:
American flag photo by Flickred!, CC BY-NC 2.0
Global Climate Youth Summit artwork by Kyle Trefny
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