Education is expensive and underfunded.
San Francisco's school district has an annual operating budget that equates to $28k per student.
I've heard people in San Francisco say that schools here are underfunded. When I ask them how much we spend per student per year, their guess is usually less than half of the actual amount.
I've got multiple kids, so I'll admit I think about schools here a lot. The absolute cheapest private schools I've seen in San Francisco are subsidized by religious institutions. The tuition for those schools per child is roughly $28k. Non religious private schools usually start in the $40k range and can easily get into the $50s and well beyond.
My point is that it's hard to point at some issue of inefficient public bureaucracy, because clearly private institutions aren't able to do it any cheaper. I would also argue they wouldn't try, because their goal is a good education, or at least better than the public alternative (that only spends $28k per kid).
"I think your reasoning is flawed, but fine...if the goal is to try and have the cheapest possible one room school house."
"I've got multiple kids, so I'll admit I think about schools here a lot."
"The absolute cheapest private schools I've seen in San Francisco are subsidized by religious institutions. The tuition for those schools per child is roughly $28k."
# Median sticker price
Pre-K 7 $16,610
K 29 $11,530
1 29 $11,530
2 29 $11,175
3 29 $11,175
4 29 $11,175
5 29 $11,175
6 30 $11,519
7 30 $11,519
8 30 $11,519
9 4 $31,725
10 4 $31,725
11 4 $31,725
12 4 $31,725
"Non religious private schools usually start in the $40k range and can easily get into the $50s and well beyond."
"because clearly private institutions aren't able to do it any cheaper"
Moreover, not all students pay sticker price. So looking at the sticker prices (which I've listed above) may give an inflated view of total income.
"because their goal is a good education"
I was generous in my estimate for each of the line items. I chose a one room school house as an example because it's easy to grok, and anything larger would be cheaper due to economies of scale.
This $28k number is false. Most parochial schools charge about $12k.
- Sacred Heart ($31k)
- Archbishop Riordan ($32k)
- Saint Ignatius ($34.6)
- Sacred Heart ($60k)
- Jewish Community School ($65k)
You started this thread with average cost per student across all SF public school students, which includes special needs, high school, etc, but move to median prices for debate, and structure most of your argument around the cheapest schools (K-8). Mea culpa on my end, though: you are correct that when I was saying "cheapest I've seen," there was an unfair modifier of "cheapest schools on my personal spreadsheet" which is limited to schools within a reasonable commute and that we'd be willing to send our kids to. You're absolutely correct that there are cheaper parochial schools available as long as you only need K-8.
Using averages for private schools, which feels more applicable to your starting premise, private schools in SF average $27k, $28k, and $52k, for elementary, middle, and high school (again, referencing SF Chronicle's data). I still feel comfortable with my original premise that averaging $28k per student across all of SFUSD students is not an absurd number.
So looking at the sticker prices (which I've listed above) may give an inflated view of total income.
[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2025/sf-bay-area-privat...
You started this thread with average cost per student across all SF public school students, which includes special needs, high school, etc, but move to median prices for debate
- I don't have access to data that would allow me to apportion total SFUSD costs to individual school types
- When considering schools with vastly different prices (and different scales), the median is a much more informative measure than the mean (which could be skewed by an unusually expensive or inexpensive school with a tiny student population).
Another reason for using median is that I was responding to your comments which talked about general price levels ('tuition for those schools is roughly', 'usually start in the $40k range'). You were not talking about averages, but typical prices or minimum (starting) prices. The mean prices have no bearing on the truth or falsity of those claims.
Using averages for private schools, which feels more applicable to your starting premise, private high schools in SF average $27k, $28k, and $52k, for elementary, middle, and high school
those schools specifically in your list are subsidized by a larger religious organization, so the sticker price doesn't truly reflect that cost anyway
I still feel comfortable with my original premise that averaging $28k per student across all of SFUSD students is not an absurd number.
which is limited to schools within a reasonable commute and that we'd be willing to send our kids to
BTW In case you want to see the SF Chronicle data in a form that's more personalized (showing the schools nearest to you first, filterable by grade levels and price and type), I made a tool to do that: https://tools.encona.com/schoolfinder
My original point in this subthread was that SFUSD is NOT underfunded. Do you believe it IS underfunded?
I'm saying it's a lot.
then that would rule out almost all SFUSD schools, which kind of defeats the point of the discussion!
I made a tool to do that
Your original point was not that it's "not underfunded," it was that it's overfunded
(But I do think it's overfunded.)
My only argument here is that I don't think $28k is unreasonable, particularly when viewed against the cost of private alternatives.
We go to our attendance area SFUSD school and love it.
Annoying, unsolicited feature request would be to allow addresses or zip codes rather than requiring geolocation :)
OK, so we agree SFUSD is not underfunded?
two thirds of students are behind grade level in math, and there's no opportunity to be grouped with kids in other grades.
For example, a low key popular school with “bad scores,” Flynn[1]. ~30% of the student population met or exceeded the standard for math. That number jumps to 65.4% for kids with college-educated parents, and 81.3% for grad school. Race is an unfortunate proxy here, but it’s 70.8% for white students.
Not trying to convince you to send your kid to public school, of course, just calling out that there’s nuance required when comparing outcomes and what can work for families.
[1] https://caaspp-elpac.ets.org/caaspp/DashViewReportSB?ps=true...
personally I would make big cuts at the central office and redistribute to the schools
That number jumps to 65.4% for kids with college-educated parents, and 81.3% for grad school.
What does tend to correlate with money and also correlates with outcomes is parental involvement. Solving that problem requires societal and economic change in a district though not giving the school more money.
Ultimately it’s a culture problem. America’s attitude toward problems is nothing if not “throw more money at the problem and hope it gets better.” See also, healthcare, military spending, college sports, etc.
"Tuition for most (non-religious) competitive private schools in San Francisco is easily twice that amount."
For each of the grades K-12, here is the % of non-religious private schools in San Francisco that charge $56k or more:
K: 0%
1: 0%
2: 0%
3: 0%
4: 0%
5: 0%
6: 3%
7: 3%
8: 3%
9: 71%
10: 71%
11: 71%
12: 71%Cost of living is the primary driver for cost of education everywhere.
Now, granted, some of that goes on building upkeep, cleaning, supplies, heating, pensions, managers etc - but if $588k per classroom doesn’t let you pay enough to attract teachers there’s something very suspicious going on.
there’s something very suspicious going on
I think it's a reasonable expectation that even in HCOL places like SF or NYC, people in careers important to society should be able to live in the communities they serve.
I always want to laugh when I hear people complain about finding near-minimum-wage workers in a HCOL area. They can't seem to grasp that commuting is not free, it may feel free to them at their income level but transportation costs money (gas, car maintenance, insurance or bus, etc) and time. I'm not saying teaching is a minimum wage job but it's not a high earning one either, paying them as low as we do _and_ also asking them to have a longer commute is just absurd.
Jackson Hole residents complaining about "poor service" in stores and restaurants in town, because shocker, servers can't afford to live in Jackson Hole. And unlike even SF or NY (which may not be perfect but have at least functional transport), there's no easy way to travel from the next town, an hour away or more.
Residents have started banding together to rent coaches to bus people in, which seems the most reasonable solution, after all, no poors in town, still, and it doesn't hurt the residents that service industry employees in their town have a three hour commute. /s
It got so bad in Atherton, CA, that the school had to build accommodation for teachers in the school itself. Next step, they can do janitorial work for extra money!
It feels like there is more to the story that "$28k doesn't go as far in San Francisco".
Real world costs completely spiral out of control when you look at the actual system—for example, the buildings are all built during the rapid expansion of the country so are now old enough to need expensive maintenance, and there isn’t money or interest from the community to tear them down and build new ones.
Also something else that isn’t being covered is that involved parents are pulling their kids out for home schooling, and well behaved kids are increasingly being pulled out and put in charter sschools. This is leading to a rapid collapse of the school system. Public school is being left as a place for students who’s parents don’t care enough to do anything with them, or with enough behavioral or special needs that charter schools won’t handle them.
there isn’t money or interest from the community to tear them down and build new ones
The most recent $790,000,000 in 2024.
What kind of maintenance do you think is expensive compared to a budget of $560k per room, per year?
Teacher (all-in cost): $150k
Teaching assistant: $100k
Rent for commercial space in SF (~1,200 sq ft): $60k
Curriculum, books, supplies: $23k
Technology (22 Chromebooks, projector, software): $18k
Field trips and enrichment: $10k
Utilities, internet, insurance: $27k
Furniture and equipment: $20k
Admin/legal/accounting: $8k
Total: $416k
AND ... these numbers are deliberately conservative. Teachers work ~40 weeks per year, not 52, so the $150k all-in is really $3,750/week - very competitive for SF. The $18k technology budget assumes replacing every Chromebook annually, but they last 3-5 years, so amortized cost is more like $5k/year. The rent estimate of $5k/month assumes market-rate commercial space, but you could find cheaper options in underutilized buildings or negotiate with a church/community center. Furniture lasts decades, not one year. The $1k per student for curriculum and supplies is also high - you're not buying new textbooks every year, and open-source curricula exist.
If you were trying to minimize costs rather than be conservative, you could probably run this one room school house for $350k/year ($16k/student/year).
What am I missing? My table has $200k left over so we could add another full time teacher at $150k?
But I remember you previously and you appear to want a school system that spends money on exactly what your child needs and nothing else.
you appear to want a school system that spends money on exactly what your child needs and nothing else.
But if the government is going to operate schools and demand that we all pay for those schools, I'd prefer it if those schools were run for the benefit of students (and specifically to maximize academic achievement) and not for the benefit of government employees.
Your admin costs are also low - you need to account for each teacher being coached and managed, running school operations and front desk, facilities management, finance, IT, etc.
- that budget is how I was able to calculate per-pupil spend
- in another comment you admitted to having 'no idea' where the $28k/year number came from, suggesting to me that you haven't looked at the budget yourself
The granularity in SFUSD's published budget is not sufficient to analyze what is useful and what is waste.
Always makes me think of The West Wing scene:
> Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't need little changes, we need gigantic, monumental changes. Schools should be palaces. The competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be making six-figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national defense. That's my position. I just haven't figured out how to do it yet.
Video (sorry for the burned in subs, should be queued up): https://youtu.be/IzV09gESyh0?t=39
Our nation needs something on the order of millions of teachers. Competition for the best teachers would work great, if you needed exactly 1 extraordinary teacher. Or even if you needed a dozen. But when you need 40 teachers or more per school district... you're going to end up with alot of mediocre teachers, and more than a few godawful ones.
And, I suspect, that the thing not even extraordinary teachers can do is give a shit. Some teachers give a shit about some students, a few give a shit about many/most students, but even those few will falter in a career that lasts long enough.
Any why do they even want this silver bullet anyway, as impossible as it is? Why would you want a trillion dollar boondoggle that can't possibly ever work? The answer for that is downright frightening.
Are we talking about the same country? Most of those professors don't even teach if they can help it. Their job is to bring in grant money to the university. The others are paid hourly wages to be adjuncts, and I'm not certain it's accurate to say that they're "much higher-quality". But if it were, then perhaps that's your problem... the million k12 teachers you need are all teaching secondary education in temp positions for temp pay.
> As a parent/carer you probably are much more motivated
Really, though, the biggest factor is just being their parent. When they're young, the vast majority of the time you can basically read their mind. When you're teaching your child, you almost instinctively know how well they're understanding things. I was never deliberate about it, I didn't look for things, I never had to. I was able to pace my delivery very tightly with their ability to consume and it was the most natural thing imaginable.
That, and having a class size of two, meant Home Schooling was "30-45 minutes Monday-Friday September to mid-April with generous vacations." And that's not "30-45 minutes but we also went to a museum, the library, co-ops (we did, briefly), and all kinds of other learning activities" (I'm sure I lied and said I did those things), that was 30-45 minutes, do some chores (we don't live on a farm, it's the same stuff most kids do), and play video games.
Parenting-wise, the only elements we were more strict with was we limited "watching a TV show or video content" to an hour (two, on occasion, for movies) a day ... and we were quite rigorous with that. But they could play pretty much any video game they wanted (within reason, but probably far less restrictive than most parents outside of Hacker News). And they didn't get mobile devices until 13 and 15. There was no reason. They had/have computers.
My goal was simply "to teach them at home better than they could get at school and to make them self-learners along the way." I wasn't looking for genius spelling bee winners.
They've been in Public School (since the start of HS for my son, 7th grade for my daughter) for four years. Those 30-45 minute sessions that -- not once -- involved taking a test resulted in them being straight-A students. The first test they took, a placement test, resulted in them landing in advanced classes.
They finish their home work at school (my son works way ahead because he's bored). They study for nothing outside of midterms and finals (and they only do that out of paranoia, it's not really needed).
The majority of the time they were Home Schooled, Mom and I were divorced (and it wasn't "amicable" for the majority of that, it was ... ugly). And while that was hard, actually home schooling the children was not. It was awesome. I'd have been a lot less stressed in the earlier years if I'd have known how easy it was.
It was "get good curriculum, follow it, don't move on until they understand it to what a teacher would grade an 'A'". You do the latter because you have to; anything else is debt and the only one who pays that debt is the you. Your kids will just sob through it. Outside of budgeting because you're likely down to one income, the rest was all upside.
As a parent/carer you probably are much more motivated than an underpaid teacher who wanted to do something else anyway, and you don't have to motivate yourself with money.
By extension, IME, motivated and talented teachers in any school (good or bad) can do wonders. There just aren't that many. And as you say, school environment tends to be a race to the bottom - if Johnny can watch Tiktok during maths, I'll do the same.