The San Francisco Board of Education moments ago announced that Maria Su has agreed to take the role of superintendent for up to two years after outgoing superintendent Matt Wayne’s resignation was accepted today by a 6-1 vote.
The sole dissenting vote, commissioner Kevine Boggess, felt Wayne deserved to be fired rather than resigning. Mission Local is told that Wayne will receive a year’s salary, some $325,000, and health care.
Su has worked in San Francisco government for more than 18 years, with the last 15 of those coming as the head of the city’s Department of Children, Youth and their Families. She had also been serving on the school stabilization team formed by Mayor London Breed on Sept. 22.
Her appointment — and the promotion of Dr. Karling Aguilera-Fort, presently the senior associate superintendent of education services, as her deputy — will be formally voted on at the school board’s regularly scheduled Tuesday, Oct. 22 meeting. Aguilera-Fort will serve as acting superintendent until Tuesday.
“Why am I doing this? I believe in the school district,” Su tells Mission Local. “I’ve been doing this work at DCYF and we’ve seen how when you have strong operations, strong systems, strong partnerships and deep community support you can get a lot of things done.”
Su’s contract with the SFUSD runs until June 2026: “It’s going to take a while to address the operations and systems at the school district,” she says.
The extraordinary move of tapping a veteran city department head to lead San Francisco’s troubled school district is the latest twist in the strange and terrible saga of the San Francisco Unified School District. But, says Board of Education President Matt Alexander, it’s a twist that has pleased state education officials — and renders the specter of a state takeover less likely, not more.
“State officials are excited that we are going to have leadership that is really going to tackle our fiscal and operational challenges,” Alexander said. “The fact we’re bringing in a leader who’s ready to take those challenges on is making them more comfortable and less fearful.”
“To be really, really clear,” Alexander continued, California Department of Education officials “have said we are not near a state takeover — nowhere near it.”
The San Francisco Unified School District also confirmed that “Su will stop the current school closure process and focus on addressing the District’s looming structural deficit to avoid a state takeover. There will be no school closures in the 2025-26 school year. The remaining school meetings about closures will be suspended.”
Closures, however, are not off the table in the years to come — but the SFUSD today announced that any future process must include:
• A California Department of Education-certified fiscal analysis;
• An independently verified equity audit;
• Robust, meaningful community engagement;
• An accessible and thoughtful transition plan;
• A thorough analysis of student (re)assignment policies.
Wayne had come under increasing scrutiny during the lengthy school closure process, which was marked by complaints of poor methodology, opacity and a lack of community outreach. The district blew past its longstanding Sept. 18 deadline to reveal a list of vulnerable schools — a damning indictment of the district’s handling of the process. On Oct. 8, Wayne released a list that was significantly different than what the mayor’s office, her school stabilization team and the Board of Education had been led to believe he would release.
This induced deep consternation and anger; on Oct. 15 Breed called for a halt to the school closure process and stated she had lost confidence in Wayne’s ability to lead the district.
“Maria is a doer. She moves and gets things done.”
Matt Alexander, Board of Education president
Wayne took the reins of the San Francisco Unified School District from the retiring Vincent Matthews in June 2022.
Keeping Board of Education commissioners Alison Collins, Gabriela López and Faauuga Moliga — who had become targets of the school board recall campaign — from having a say in the hiring of the next superintendent was a rallying cry of the pro-recall movement.
All three commissioners were handily recalled. Breed appointed three new commissioners — and that Board of Education hired Matt Wayne.
Wayne stepped into a challenging job from Day One. But his 26-month tenure was marked by a series of own-goals, with each adding to the mounting pressure upon the beleaguered district.
The district failed to hire legally mandated special education staff in an effort to save money, leaving vulnerable students in the lurch — and putting the district in legal jeopardy. In a hiring misstep, the SFUSD offered jobs to scores of educators that it later had to rescind. Wayne did not expediently move to scrap the costly and disastrous EmPowerSF payroll system that underpaid and mispaid educators — more than $40 million has been burned to prop up a boutique system that was dysfunctional out of the box and spurred teachers to retire or seek employment elsewhere.
And then came the long-running fiasco regarding proposed school closures, culminating in the missed Sept. 18 deadline and the Oct. 8 announcement that blindsided the mayor, her school stabilization team and the Board of Education.
Su, 49, has a reputation for savvy and competence and is held in high regard by San Francisco officials of varying political backgrounds.
“Maria Su has been a champion for families and children in our city and she has my full confidence in this new role leading our public schools,” reads a statement from Breed.
Board President Aaron Peskin, the first major mayoral candidate to come out against the school closure plan, said that Su “runs an agency that listens to children and their families and I think she personifies that. She is the antithesis of every boneheaded mistake the school district has made in its ill-conceived, ill-advised, ill-communicated school closure plan.”
Adds Sen. Scott Wiener, “Maria is fantastic, no-nonsense, really smart. She knows how to put together a budget and implement it. She’s a hard-nosed administrator and is also someone who works deeply with the community on a day-to-day basis.”
The Department of Children, Youth and their Families, which Su has led since 2009, has a budget in the realm of $350 million this fiscal year. This is a fraction of the school district’s $1.3 billion budget, but is still a sizable amount.
“Maria is politically sophisticated, and I don’t think you can survive in this town if you don’t know how to navigate politics,” said Supervisor Hillary Ronen. “She knows how to work with parents, community groups, politicians, unions, city leaders, tech billionaires: She understands the levers of power and politics in this town and, obviously, has been successful in navigating them.”
Alexander said he approached Su about taking this position after multiple “people outside of this process” suggested that she would be a good fit. Breed also reached out to Su.
“Let’s get Buster Posey to run the team,” Alexander said with a laugh.
“Maria is a doer. She moves and gets things done,” he said. “She’s a collaborative leader and has shown what she can do in the context of a really large government agency.”
With closures off the table for the time being, Su and the district still face a number of challenges. She must, by December, finalize a budget that shaves some $148 million off the district’s deficit — which will likely lead to the elimination of hundreds of educators.
The district must do what it can to avoid alienating voters, or else a $970 million school bond will evaporate. And it must move to implement a new Enterprise Resource Planning system, an overarching program to supplant the disastrous EmPowerSF.
During Su’s sojourn at the school district, the Department of Children, Youth and their Families will be led by Sherrice Dorsey-Smith.
“I am very committed to partnering with this board, the new board and with the school district leadership and staff,” Su says. “As well as leadership from the state and beyond. It will take all of us to get the school district back to where we used to be, when we were the flagship institution in this city.”
Disclosure: Joe Eskenazi’s children attend a school on the Oct. 8 potential closure list
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