Indicator PI.2.b Proportion of children attending neighborhood public schools
N/A = Students who live outside of San Francisco, but attend public school in San Francisco. This table only includes public elementary and middle schools. San Francisco's public high schools have a much broader attendance area.
Data Source
Lapkoff & Gobalet Demographic Research, Inc. (LGDRI). Demographic analysis of school age children in San Francisco. Conducted on behalf of the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD). Accessed on September 22, 2009: http://portal.sfusd.edu/data/epc/Comparison%20of%20student%20residences%20with%20location%20of%20school%20attended.pdf
Map and table prepared by City and County of San Francisco, Department of Public Health, Environmental Health Section using ArcGIS software.
Map and table data are presented by planning neighborhood. Detailed information regarding geographic units of analysis, their definitions, and their boundaries can be found in the HDMT at the following links:
http://www.thehdmt.org/etc/Geographic_Units_of_Analysis.pdf
http://www.thehdmt.org/data_map_methods.php
Explanation and Limitations
The proportion of students attending schools in their planning neighborhood or local attendance area serves as a proxy for the number of students that are able to walk or bike to their neighborhood school. Neighborhood schools can serve to increase physical activity among children and adults, increase “eyes on the street” and perceived safety of sidewalks and areas to the school, as well as serve as centers for community, helping build social cohesion among parents, children and neighboring residents. Although neighborhood schools have these and other potential health benefits, neighborhood schools can also serve to reinforce existing racial/ethnic and economic segregation and disparities in academic achievement.
Similar to many other urban areas, San Francisco public schools face the challenge of trying to create a high quality, integrated academic environment that compensates for existing racial, ethnic and economic segregation by neighborhood. The education-related indicators in Objective PI.2 seek to illustrate these tensions/tradeoffs by providing multiple different indicators affecting the accessibility and quality of educational facilities in San Francisco. One measure alone cannot capture the complexity of student achievement nor the various push and pull factors causing children and families to leave or move to San Francisco or go to school outside their neighborhood. Therefore educational achievement and performance must be considered both within the broader context of neighborhood, social and economic conditions which are addressed in other parts of the HDMT.
Valuing the historic and social importance of integration, San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) has experimented with a number of different school assignment policies to promote diverse, high performing schools. Currently, SFUSD allows any student to apply to any school in the city. However, there are often situations where there are more requests for spaces at a particular school than seats available. Whenever requests are greater than the number of seats available, the SFUSD uses a Student Assignment System to guide student selection. More information about the Student Assignment System and current efforts to revise the system are available at: http://portal.sfusd.edu/template/default.cfm?page=policy.placement.process
Many SFUSD students do not request to be placed in their attendance area school (broadly described as the school that is most closely located to their home). In 2008-2009, 18% of kindergarten applicants, 25% of 6th grade applicants, and 26% of 9th grade applicants listed their own attendance area school as their first choice school. This suggests that the vast majority of students and their parents would prefer to go to a school outside of their neighborhood area. As illustrated in Indicators PI.2.c and PI.2.d, the western neighborhoods have generally higher academic performance and higher demand/number of requests than their eastern neighbors.
In Fall 2008, only 38% of elementary students and 21% of middle school students attended a school in their planning neighborhood. SFUSD estimates that 50-60% of elementary students in western SF attend a school in their planning neighborhood compared to 30% of elementary students in southeastern SF. The majority of southeastern residents attend schools in nearby areas but not in their own neighborhood. Although some neighborhoods with more capacity than students (such as Castro/Upper Market) are able to accommodate adjacent areas (such as the Mission) with more students than capacity, the lack of school facilities in Bayview and its surrounding areas creates challenges in drawing neighborhood or zone attendance boundaries.
According to SFUSD, “This situation evolved at least partly because of the choice system. Under the choice system, the demand to attend schools in Bayview has been very low. For the most part, neither neighborhood students nor students from outside are enrolled in these schools…. While there are many more neighborhood students than seats in schools, under the current system Bayview and surrounding areas actually have surplus space. Their schools are under-enrolled because students choose to attend schools in other areas of the city.” (Accessed on September 22, 2009: http://portal.sfusd.edu/template/default.cfm?page=policy.placement.assignment.so_far_maps_data)
Recognizing that a) the current student assignment plan (started in 2002) has not met SFUSD’s longtime desegregation goals of reducing racial isolation and improving educational opportunities and outcomes for all students; b) despite school closing, mergers, redesigns and opening, boundaries have not been revised since the early 1980s; c) some schools are under-enrolled while others are over-enrolled; and d) the current assignment process has different rates of participation by racial/ethnic group and has been found difficult to navigate by many families, SFUSD recognized “the need to study the student assignment system and make modifications as needed to ensure alignment with the District’s mission, goals, and vision of student success.” More information about the Student Assignment redesign process is available at: http://portal.sfusd.edu/template/default.cfm?page=policy.placement.assignment (Accessed on September 22, 2009)
Attendance at a neighborhood school is just one factor describing the school environment. Additional measures of quality environments could include: academic performance; availability of books, supplies and other resources; physical and social structures of the school; actual and perceived safety at the schools; proximity to green space; training and experience of teachers and staff; involvement of parents in children’s education; opportunities for extracurricular activities; whether the school is used as a multi-use facility in the afternoons, evenings and weekends; existence of afterschool programs; etc.
Why is this a Community Health Indicator?
Attending school in one’s neighborhood/attendance area increases the likelihood that the student will walk or bike to school and decreases the likelihood of a long commute. Shorter commuting times provide students with more free time, which can be spent on homework, participation in extracurricular activities, employment, sleep, etc. Research on travel mode choice shows that when schools are located closer to home, more children walk and/or bicycle to school and vehicle pollution emissions fall. Increased physical activity helps prevent chronic diseases such as obesity and diabetes. Decreased vehicle utilization can help reduce rates of asthma and other respiratory diseases as well as decrease rates of pedestrian/traffic injury.