Funding and Partnerships and Supporting our Educators

By Matt Haney

Matt Haney is committed to pursuing new ideas for revenue, working with the City and County of San Francisco to identify partnerships and possible funding sources, and advocating for additional funding at the statewide level.

As a Commissioner on the Board of Education, Matt will:

• Lead the fight to secure local revenue solutions to close SFUSD's budget gap, including re-authorization of the Public Education Enrichment Fund (Prop H), additional funding from the City, and a new parcel and/or sales tax dedicated to SFUSD.

• Build coalitions in SF and statewide to secure revenue streams from the state to fund public education, including reform of Proposition 13, and join with students to lobby and testify regularly in Sacramento.

• Outreach directly to San Francisco businesses, corporations and private citizens, especially in the Tech industry, to increase their partnerships with SFUSD and support of our students.

• Work with PTAs and other organizations to create systems where private funding and donations are more equitably shared between our schools rather than going primarily to those schools that already possess significant resources.

Our educators and staff are the backbone of SFUSD. In order to be successful as a district, we must provide our educators with the support and resources that they need. It is reckless to put educators in impossible circumstances and expect them to be successful in providing a high quality education to all of our students. We need to support them with ongoing professional development and support, smaller class sizes, salaries and benefits that allow them to live in San Francisco, and opportunities for career growth and leadership.

As a Commissioner on the Board of Education, Matt will:

• Support for high quality professional development opportunities, including close partnerships with local higher education institutions and organizations, especially in literacy.

• Advocate for raising the salaries of SFUSD teachers and staff, and supporting employee housing to help ensure teachers can afford to live in San Francisco.

• Innovative approaches to teacher leadership and pathways for teacher professional growth, including Master Teachers, to support and mentor new teachers.

• Oppose expansion of high stakes standardized testing, and support flexibility and creativity for teachers in the classroom.

• Prioritize professional development in English language development, as well as primary language instruction, and specifically designed academic instruction in English. We should also prioritize hiring teachers that have specialized training in educating EL students, particularly a CLAD or BCLAD authorization.