School doors opened for San Francisco’s youth this past Monday, commencing an academic year that promises to be full of significant challenges and equally significant opportunities to make changes for our city’s public school families and public education activists.

For starters, California still has no budget and the wrangling up in Sacramento about where cuts will be made to get that budget passed can only leave the public education community worrying. The Governor just recently indicated he may tolerate the idea of the Democrats’ temporary 1% sales tax increase proposal. But, his true agenda remains unchanged, as evidenced by his manipulative threat to call another expensive, wasteful Special Election as a means to force his budgetary designs on us.

We’ve been through this before and know what a siphon of resources and political energies it is. More to the point, as has been discussed previously in this column and elsewhere, there are known solutions to the budget deficit, specifically closing tax loopholes and modernizing our tax system. Yes, we need to raise taxes. Our basic operating costs as a state have increased, son it’s time to ask ourselves for a raise and to make sure that everyone in this very large household is contributing their fair share. In other words, no more free lunches for yacht owners.

The budget is serious for all Californians, but especially for those concerned with public education. Almost nothing has a greater impact on our schools than the funding—or lack thereof—that we receive from the state. According to the latest full report from the National Education Association, for 2005-2006 California was ranked 33rd in per pupil spending, allocating just $8,823 for each student and putting us at just over 90% of the national average. Pretty shabby for such an economic powerhouse.

Having little money is bad enough, but being uncertain about the security of that funding is even worse. So this year must start as last year ended, with more letters, phone calls and email messages to the Governor telling him our kids and our schools can’t wait any longer—he must increase revenues and get a budget passed. Or, we can be more creative like the principal, teacher and parent from Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy, an SFSUD elementary school, who walked from San Francisco to Sacramento to protest the budget situation.

Within the boundaries of our own district, we also have much that needs attending to. This summer exposed some major cracks in the school district’s complex and brittle student assignment system, which was strained by the otherwise good news of increases in applicants by several hundred and an overall growing enrollment rate. Among the many troubled spots, many placement errors were made, particularly in the assignment of students to some language immersion programs. That created a snowball effect and ultimately disclosed patterns of exclusion of Spanish-speaking families from programs over the years.

The numerous discussions about the above issues surfaced other significant problems, including inequitable treatment of some families; inconsistent application of the current set of rules and procedures; lack of openness and transparency about the process, particularly when errors were uncovered and “solutions” were devised; and finally, lack of communication with and basic respect for parents and school communities. Coincidently perhaps, the Grand Jury issued a report earlier this year critiquing the assignment system. And while there may be room to debate the accuracy of the report and the depth of understanding on the part of the Grand Jury members, the overriding message cannot be doubted—the system as it stands is currently unacceptable.

There is no other choice here but to call and observe a complete reworking of the assignment system. While at the same time work continues on devising a new assignment policy, a new plan for which school a student is eligible to attend can only work as well as the implementation of that plan. Both of these pieces need to be addressed simultaneously. Not only that, but the public, particularly parents, need to be briefed along the way about the development of both the policy and how it will be implemented. Parents are part of the solution and need to be part of the discussion. To facilitate that level of communication, throughout the school year, different perspectives and aspects of the assignment issue will be presented in the School Beat column.

Assignment policies are linked to the strategic plans and educational goals of the district. Over the last year, district staff and the Board of Education have been developing a new strategic plan around a particular accountability tool, the Balanced Scorecard. Many decisions are, or at least should, hinge on this plan, but while the initial framework has been out for awhile, much remains to be filled in. If new proposals are put forward, around assignment policies for instance, we will have to ask how those policies relate to the district’s plan. How does it meet the goals and objectives? Who does the policy serve? How will it be implemented? How will success or failure be measured?

In addition to the entire community of public school activists asking those questions should be the Board of Education (BOE) members. This November we will be electing individuals to fill four open slots on the board. Over a dozen people are in the race now, including some incumbent board members and a nice showing of parents. Stay tuned for a special School Beat issue on the candidates and their thoughts about priorities and plans for our schools.

So the year ahead is not without the typical list of challenges to take on, but this is work that we want to do. While that list is sometimes daunting, it can also keep us going, because we know that our efforts to make changes in these important areas is how we build the world we want to live in.

Lisa Schiff is the parent of two children who attend McKinley Elementary School in the San Francisco Unified School District and is a member of Parents for Public Schools of San Francisco and the PTA and is a board member at the national level of Parents for Public Schools.