San Francisco Community School
125 Excelsior Street, San Francisco, California 94112 415.469.4739 www.my-sfcs.org
Strong Minds, Strong Hearts, Strong Individuals, and Strong Community
Facts
In 1972 parents and teachers founded San Francisco Community School. Their mission was to start a family-involved, child-centered school, which represented the ethnic and socioeconomic diversity of San Francisco. SFC is a San Francisco Unified School District public school located in the Excelsior neighborhood. We are a Small School by Design within the Small Schools By Design Pilot Project initiated by the Board of Education.
We are a kindergarten through 8th grade school serving 290 students. 38% are Latino, 14% are African-American, 13% are Chinese, 15% are White, 9% are Filipino, and 7% are Bi-racial, Southeast Asian, Native American, Middle Eastern, or Japanese. 65% qualify under the federal free and reduced price lunch program and 35% are English learners. 50% of our students live in the Excelsior District, 20% live in Bernal Heights or the Mission District, 15% live in Visitacion Valley, 10% live in the Bayview, and 10% live elsewhere in the city.
The middle school day is from 8:55-3:35 and the elementary school day is from 9:15-3:30. We dismiss at 2:15 on Tuesdays for staff development. We have a free after-school academic and enrichment program, Third Base, until 6:30 each day.
Our staff includes 14 classroom teachers, a PE teacher, 2 paraprofessionals, a counselor and intern, two resource specialists, a librarian, a school secretary, a custodian, two part-time parent liaisons, a part-time environmental educator, a part-time music teacher, two part-time art teachers, a part time psychologist, and a head teacher.
What’s Different About S.F. Community School?
Combined grades and small school community
Children learn in single and combined grade classrooms. For example the K/1 team consists of a kindergarten class, a first grade class, and a K/1 combination class. The 2/3 team is a second grade class, a 2/3 combination class and a third grade class. The 4/5/6 team has a 4th grade single grade class and two 5/6 classes. 5th and 6th grade students have a block schedule with humanities, math/science, and PE daily. Students generally retain the same teacher for two years K-8 through looping and combination classes. 7th/8th grade students are in an advisory group of 11 students that meets daily and retain the same advisor for the two years of middle school.
Project-Based Learning
Students learn best and are most engaged when skills and concepts are contextualized in real-world, meaningful challenges or projects that are truly interesting to them. SFC students participate in science-based, challenge driven projects each year. Projects incorporate four themes in a two-year rotation: Human Body, Environment/Earth Science, Physical World/ Design, and Community. For example, within the Environment theme, 2nd / 3rd grade students designed and created habitats for classroom fish and geckos. In a 4th / 5th grade Human Body project, students hiked the eight peaks of San Francisco and created a guidebook, as they studied the circulatory, respiratory, and muscular-skeletal systems. Middle school teachers implement projects within their subject area, e.g., a trial of Ulysses in the Language Arts/ Social Studies class; building rockets in Science.
Portfolios
Students show that they have achieved the standards at their grade level by preparing and presenting portfolios of mastery-level work in order to graduate and advance to the next level of school. Students present their portfolios in May to panels of teachers, family members, community members, and peers.
Restorative Practices
SF Community was selected as one of three schools to be a restorative practices demonstration school. Staff at SFC create space for class meetings, individual conferences with students, circles and groups to provide students opportunities to share their feelings, build relationships, and problem solve. When there is wrong-doing, staff work with students to help students see their impact on others and support students to play an active role in taking responsibility, addressing the wrong and repairing the harm. For more information see www.safersanerschools.org.
Alternative leadership structure
SFC is a teacher-run school. We choose a teacher to take the role of “Head Teacher” for three years. Staff are involved in all school-wide decisions and we make major decisions by consensus. This collective structure provides a model of egalitarian and shared leadership for our students, and has allowed the school to maintain a continuous program for the last 40 years, changed only by site-based decision-making.
Outdoor education
Our program includes annual camping trips and various other outdoor education experiences. We have transformed our schoolyard into an Outdoor Learning Environment with a sand and water play area, greenhouse, and large organic garden where all students receive hands on environmental and nutrition education.
Our Vision
Our vision is that ALL students, regardless of ethnicity, home language, socio-economic status or other forms of difference, acquire the skills and knowledge required to be successful in high school, higher education, and beyond. We embody this vision in our programs, in our teaching methods, and in our relationships with students and families. We are determined to educate all students well, and evidence shows that what we are doing is working. We have been selected by San Francisco Unified School District as one of eight exemplary schools that are succeeding in closing the achievement gap – the persistent disparity in learning outcomes based on ethnicity, socio-economic status, and home language.
Our Teaching Approach
We identify what we want students to know at the end of each year, semester, quarter, month, and unit. We create assessments to give us information about how students are progressing toward these standards. We map our instruction backwards to ensure that all instructional activities support students to meet the standards. Students and families are engaged in this process through the portfolios students present to demonstrate their readiness to be promoted to the next level of school.
We make learning relevant and interesting through challenge driven projects.
Teachers take responsibility for students’ achievement.
We provide interventions for students who are struggling to meet standards, in the form of tutoring, small group instruction, counseling, and/or grade level retention.
We provide differentiated instruction in small groups within the classroom.
We teach students how to think powerfully throughout the curriculum. We teach them how to use evidence, focus, create, plan, analyze, question, communicate, synthesize, empathize, and reflect.
We set students up to learn by showing them love on a daily basis in the form of personalized, supportive, loving relationships with teachers and other staff members.
We build an adult culture focused on excellence and equity so that educators can find support from each other to do the hard work of taking responsibility for students’ learning.
The staff and community work together to create an anti-racist, culturally competent, and inclusive school culture that supports all students to meet our goals of excellence.
Parent Involvement
As a small school by design, our partnerships with families are essential. Families participate in myriad ways: as chaperones on field trips and camping trips, as volunteers in the classrooms and on the yard, and in planning and participating in community building events. In addition to a productive School Site Council and English Learner Advisory Council, we have a Parent Action Committee, which meets monthly to support teachers and plan fundraising and community building events, including our annual auction and school picnic. All families come to two family/student/teacher conferences each year and two Project Open Houses where students showcase their project work. Families come to their child's portfolio presentation at the end of the school year.
Project OLE (Outstanding Learning Environment)
Project OLE is a registered 501(c)3 non-profit corporation made up of SFC family, community, and student volunteers. The organization fundraises to support SFC’s alternative school programs. Contributions to Project OLE are tax deductible.