December 23, 2005

Ms. Margaret Brodkin, Director
Mayor’s Office of Youth, Children and Families
Fox Plaza Suite 900
1390 Market Street
San Francisco, CA 94102

Dear Ms Brodkin:

We have hand carried this letter to your office on the day before Christmas to emphasize the great concern of our Potrero Hill neighborhood over the proposed closing of Daniel Webster Elementary School.

We believe that this proposed closure is contrary to the Mayor’s announced policy and that of your office to keep families with young children in San Francisco. Yet the San Francisco Unified School district is making what appears to be a hasty decision without all of the current data and information available.

Your department’s report “Getting Behind the Headlines: Families Leaving San Francisco” is us. And we are working hard to avoid that. We need the assistance of your office to inform the mayor and solicit his advocacy and gather more pertinent data on the population growth of families and children in the Potrero area for our own advocacy efforts. In particular, we need any information and projections about elementary and pre-school age children.

The only announced policy available from the Unified School district (SFUSD website) indicates that they are considering schools with less than 250 students and 70% full. Daniel Webster (DW) has 279 students this year and is 76% full easily above the cut line.

All of the real estate and San Francisco Planning documents strongly suggest that the highest rate of growth for families and children is occurring here in the southeast part of San Francisco in general and the Potrero in particular.

The Potrero Hill Parents Association (PHPA) comprised of over 200 families and First Five Grant recipients, is a group of mothers and fathers of primarily preschool age children looking to invest in Dan Webster with time and money so as to strengthen and improve its scholastic performance. Obviously, we want it to be the best when our children are ready to enter and we want to help those who are there now.

Historically, Daniel Webster has been at the very bottom of the scholastic ratings in the city and the state. Its current population is virtually entirely minority children even though it is located in the predominately Caucasian area of Potrero Hill. Young parents have traditionally avoided this elementary school by moving out of the city when their children were old enough to enter kindergarten or paying large amounts for private schools like Live Oak on Mariposa Street.

As parents who care about our City and share a commitment to public schools because of our educations, we want to reverse that trend. But we need a school in the neighborhood to work with. Combining Daniel Webster with another elementary school on the south side of Potrero Hill (Starr King) is like trying to combine the North Pole with the South Pole.

We hope you can help us with an immediate meeting wherein we can benefit from any information available in your office as well as the wisdom of your many years of experience with the Coleman Foundation for Children and Youth. We will call your office next week.

Thank you for your consideration of our issue.

Sincerely,

Jennifer Betti
Dena Fischer
Potrero Hill Parents Association Members and
Mothers of Preschool Aged Children

Cc: Mayor Gavin Newsom
Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi
State Senator Carole Migden
Asssemblyman Mark Leno
Supervisor Sophie Maxwell