Dear President Mar,

With the exception of seven years in the 80’s, I have been a resident of Potrero Hill since 1966. During the past 6 or 7 years, I have observed a remarkable reappearance of young families with small children throughout our neighborhood as they sought to find affordable housing in San Francisco.

For the past six months, I have been talking with a large number of parents of school age and pre-school age children who have moved to Potrero Hill and whose children do not attend public school in their neighborhood. Yet all of them tell me they are interested in the diversity of our neighborhood school and would love to place their children in Daniel Webster Elementary School, but have always been reluctant to take a chance with their child because of historical poor performance as evidenced in state tests.

Recent positive changes at the school, which include improving test scores, have persuaded many young mothers and fathers to take another look at their neighborhood school. They would much prefer a neighborhood school for their child rather than an expensive, elite private school or moving out of the City altogether. Even though their children do not attend Daniel Webster, these parents are organizing to help the school become as successful and attractive as it can be.

As a former mayor and longtime neighbor, my strong interest is to retain these wonderful, progressive, middle class young people who love San Francisco in our neighborhood because they and their children must be part of San Francisco’s future.

And as your honorable Board knows better than me, SFUSD is losing millions of dollars in ADA funding because too many parents and their children avoid certain schools.

With all this in mind, on July 22, I met informally with Superintendent Ackerman to discuss the enormous demographic changes on Potrero Hill in recent years and to seek her thoughts on how to best build on this new trend.
The Superintendent was most responsive and enthusiastic when she offered to meet with parents in the neighborhood to hear their needs and interests for their children’s current and future educational needs.

Our parents group was most impressed with this encouraging response and began their planning in earnest with a goal of meeting with school officials in early January, 2006.

Thus, the news of this week of a pending Board of Education proposal to close Daniel Webster and merge it with Starr King Elementary School so that the current facility could become a Continuation High School struck this entire unsuspecting neighborhood as a stunning shock! A fast survey of neighborhood groups and leaders revealed a complete lack of knowledge or public notice anywhere in our tight knit community.

Nothing could be more detrimental to our efforts to keep young families in our City and their children in our schools than this short sighted proposal.
Current population figures will show the number of children growing exponentially on Potrero Hill. Indeed, SFUSD has the opportunity to reverse the flight of families with children from the City and enhance the rebuilding of Daniel Webster Elementary by the addition of an entire new cadre of parents whose children are not even in the school yet or attending private pre-school and early grades.

With that in mind, I am respectfully asking that the proposal to close Daniel Webster be revised and that staff be directed to begin immediate discussions with school parents and their neighborhood supporters to determine how to best contribute to the progress the school has begun to make in the past several years.

Please give this dynamic and motivated neighborhood a chance to break new ground in San Francisco within the public school system.

Sincerely,
Art Agnos