Society · Education · San Francisco · June 11, 2026

$400,000 for Consultants. A Reading Score That Went Backward. This Is San Francisco Schools.

San Francisco Unified School District ran roughly $400,000through consultants and a new ethnic-studies curriculum over the past year — an “independent” evaluation firm, an outside auditor, and an off-the-shelf textbook to replace the homegrown one parents had revolted against. The district was doing all of this, the New York Post reported in June, while its core academic numbers moved in the wrong direction.

The numbers are not subtle. Third-grade reading proficiency fell from 52% in 2022 to 47% in 2025 — against a district goal of 70%. Eighth-grade math slid from 42% to 41.2% over the same stretch, against a 65% target. Faced with goals it had no path to hit, the school board’s response in April was not a turnaround plan. It was to push the deadline back a year.

And it was happening inside a district drowning in red ink — more than $100 million in budget cuts, schools threatened with closure, declining enrollment — that nonetheless found local dollars for a curriculum fight. Superintendent Maria Su and a 6-1 Board of Education made ethnic studies a two-semester graduation requirement. They have not made reading at grade level one.

~$400,000 — spent on ethnic-studies consultants, an outside audit, and a replacement curriculum over the past year, per the New York Post · Source: New York Post
47% — of SFUSD third-graders read at grade level in 2025 — down from 52% in 2022, against a district goal of 70% · Source: SF Standard
41.2% — eighth-grade math proficiency in 2025 — down from 42% in 2022, against a 65% target · Source: SF Standard
$147,000 — paid to Education Leaders of Color, the LA nonprofit hired to run the curriculum's 'independent' evaluation · Source: SF Standard, The Frisc
+1 year — the board's actual response to missing its goals — extending the achievement deadline rather than the path to it · Source: SF Standard

§ 01 / Where the $400,000 Went

The headline figure is an aggregate, and the line items are documented. SFUSD paid $147,000 to Education Leaders of Color (EdLoC), a Los Angeles–based nonprofit, to run what the district billed as an “independent” evaluation of its ethnic-studies curriculum — a process that, in practice, amounted to overseeing community-input sessions across two Saturdays in March and assembling an evaluation committee. The district separately commissioned an audit from the nonprofit WestEd. And in July 2025, Superintendent Maria Su spent nearly $100,000to rush-adopt a replacement textbook — Gibbs Smith’s “Voices: An Ethnic Studies Survey” — weeks before the school year began.

Stack the evaluation, the audit, and the pilot textbook together and the consultant-and-curriculum tab clears roughly $400,000 — the figure the New York Post put on its front-facing tally in June. None of it is state-funded; SFUSD draws ethnic-studies money from local dollars. And the spending sits on top of a far larger commitment: on April 28, 2026, the board voted to make “Voices” the district’s permanent high-school ethnic-studies curriculum under a roughly $7 million, five-year deal.

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§ 02 / The Scores That Cratered

While the consultants worked, the foundation cracked. Third-grade reading proficiency — the single most predictive number in elementary education, because a child who can’t read by the end of third grade struggles in every subject after it — fell from 52% in 2022 to 47% in 2025. The district’s own goal was 70%. Eighth-grade math proficiency dropped from 42% to 41.2% against a 65% target. District-wide, only about 53% of SFUSD students test proficient in English and roughly 46% in math, per CAASPP results — figures that sit above the dismal California average but well below what a district spending nearly $24,000 per student should produce.

These are not the numbers of a system that had spare attention and money to burn on a curriculum war. Board commissioner Matt Alexandersaid the quiet part out loud about the reading goal at an April meeting: “I don’t even see a path to 60, let alone 70.” District staff acknowledged that large urban California districts typically improve one to two percentage points a year — nowhere near enough to close SFUSD’s gap on any reasonable timeline.

A San Francisco school district official hands consultants a stack of cash while a chart of reading and math scores slides downward in the background — The line items are documented: $147,000 to Education Leaders of Color, a separate WestEd audit, and a nearly $100,000 pilot textbook — while third-grade reading fell from 52% to 47%.

“I don't even see a path to 60, let alone 70.”
Commissioner Matt Alexander, on SFUSD's third-grade reading goal · April 2026

§ 03 / The Board's Answer: Move the Deadline

Confronted with goals it had no realistic path to meet, the Board of Education did not announce an intervention, a reading initiative, or a math-recovery plan. It voted unanimously to extend the achievement deadline from 2027 to 2028 — buying a year on benchmarks first set in 2022. Some board members attributed the unreachable targets to predecessors who set them before their own tenures. Commissioner Alida Fisherwarned that pushing the date without committing resources behind it was hollow: “Otherwise, this is just performative.”

The contrast is the story. The same governance body that could not find a path to grade-level reading found a 6-1 majority, a paid evaluation, an outside audit, a six-figure pilot textbook, and a $7 million multiyear contract to make a two-semester ethnic-studies class a graduation requirement — double the single semester California law actually requires. Resources are not the constraint when leadership wants something. Reading scores were simply not the thing leadership wanted.

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@nypost · June 2026

SFUSD paid ethnic studies consultants $400,000 while reading and math scores cratered.

Parents Defending Education

@DefendingEd · 2026

Parents Defending Education obtained and published SFUSD ethnic-studies lesson materials through public-records requests — including an activity asking students to role-play as Israeli soldiers placing Palestinians into refugee camps — and accused the course of being biased and 'activist-driven.'

§ 04 / A District in the Red

The spending lands against a brutal budget backdrop. SFUSD has faced more than $100 million in cuts amid declining enrollment, has weighed school closures, and operates under a structural deficit that has drawn the attention of state and county overseers. In that environment, every local dollar routed to consultants and a curriculum overhaul is a dollar not routed to the classroom basics the scores say are failing. The district even drew national attention for a separate “Grading for Equity” push that would let students pass courses with scores as low as the low 20s out of 100 — a policy critics read as managing the optics of low achievement rather than fixing it.

The curriculum process itself drew accusations of being rushed and opaque. Board member Supryia Ray — the lone dissenter on both the pilot and the permanent adoption — argued the district skipped its own rules: “We need to go through a real process of curriculum review and adoption as required by our policies and procedures.” Parents described feeling steamrolled. One who attended an EdLoC session told the SF Standard: “There was no room for my voice.” More than 2,100 parents and community members signed letters urging the board to halt the adoption. It went 6-1 anyway, under Board President Phil Kim, after shouting and ejections from the meeting.

A San Francisco school building with a red budget-deficit banner while administrators argue over curriculum and a child holds a book upside down — More than $100 million in cuts, school-closure threats, and a structural deficit — yet local dollars flowed to consultants and a $7 million multiyear curriculum deal.

§ 05 / Who Runs SFUSD

San Francisco is a single-party city, and its school governance reflects it. The seven-member Board of Education is officially nonpartisan, but the city’s elected officialdom — from the mayor’s office down — is overwhelmingly Democratic, and the curriculum agenda runs through that political ecosystem. Superintendent Maria Su, appointed in 2024, owns the rush-adoption decision and the consultant spend. Board President Phil Kim presided over the 6-1 vote. Mayor Daniel Lurie (D), who appoints to and influences the district’s political environment, has been named in the legal challenge to “Voices” brought by the Friends of Lowell Foundation.

The accountability reached Washington. On June 10, 2026, Su testified before the Republican-led House Education and Workforce Committee at a hearing titled “Breaking Trust: Attacks on Parental Rights, Inappropriate Content, and Legal Abuses in America’s Schools,” chaired by Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI). Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA) pressed her on the ethnic-studies program she had moved to remove; Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (D-CA)defended the district. Su told the panel she had “listened to parents, listened to families and our educators and moved quickly to remove the previous ethnic studies curriculum.” The hearing did not touch the reading scores.

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What We Know — and Don't

Documented: SFUSD paid $147,000 to Education Leaders of Color, commissioned a separate WestEd audit, and spent nearly $100,000 to pilot the “Voices” textbook in 2025 — the consultant-and-curriculum tab the New York Post totals at roughly $400,000. Third-grade reading fell 52%→47% and eighth-grade math 42%→41.2% (2022–2025) against goals of 70% and 65%.

On the record: The board voted 6-1 on April 28, 2026 to make “Voices” permanent under a ~$7 million, five-year deal, and voted to extend its achievement-goal deadline from 2027 to 2028.

Contested: The district calls the EdLoC evaluation “independent” and says ethnic studies improves outcomes; critics call the review rushed and the evidence thin. We report the figures, not the pedagogy debate.

Open: Whether the deadline extension comes with any resourced reading or math plan — and how the Friends of Lowell legal challenge resolves.

§ 06 / The Bottom Line

Strip away the politics of ethnic studies — for or against the subject — and a simpler fact remains. A district where fewer than half of third-graders read at grade level, where math proficiency is sliding, and where more than $100 million in cuts loom, spent roughly $400,000 on consultants and a new curriculum, then committed $7 million more over five years, and answered its own missed academic goals by moving the deadline. That is a statement of priorities, made by named people in recorded votes.

The children in those third-grade classrooms do not get a deadline extension on learning to read. The board gave itself one anyway. We will update this page as the budget, the test scores, and the legal challenge develop.