Fund SFUSD

The City of San Francisco

San Francisco is facing a public school crisis—but the money to stabilize our schools is already here.

Every year, hundreds of millions of dollars in San Francisco property taxes that were originally intended to support public school education are diverted away from SFUSD and instead flow to the City as Excess ERAF.

Sign this petition to call on San Francisco leaders to establish a local funding stream that redirects a fair share of Excess ERAF back to SFUSD to fully fund our schools, including salaries and benefits that help our amazing educators afford to live here.

Why City-Level Funding?

SFUSD and parent organizations across San Francisco have been calling on the State of California to increase funding for urban school districts like SFUSD. We fully support this state-level advocacy, but what many people do not realize is:

  • Changes to the State’s Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) do not materially increase how much money SFUSD gets from the State. The formula primarily affects the amount of funding SFUSD gets from San Francisco’s own property taxes.

  • San Francisco can choose to fund schools adequately now without waiting for state-level changes, by using existing ERAF property tax dollars.

  • This approach requires no new taxes, only new priorities.

You can learn more about LCFF, Excess ERAF, and the over $2 billion in San Francisco property taxes that were originally set aside to support public education that have instead flowed to the City here.

San Francisco does not need to wait for action from the state to do right by its public schools. The money is already here. What is needed is the will to ensure that education dollars serve the students they were meant to support.

Petition by
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Lori Ronayne
San Francisco, California
Sponsored by
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The Boardline
San Francisco, CA

To: The City of San Francisco
From: [Your Name]

SFUSD and parent organizations across San Francisco have been calling on the State of California to increase funding for urban school districts like SFUSD. We fully support this state-level advocacy and recognize that long-term, statewide solutions are essential.

What many people do not realize, however, is that San Francisco is an Excess ERAF city. Because of this status, increases in state education funding through the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) are ultimately backed by San Francisco’s own local property taxes. In other words, the dollars that would fund improved state support for SFUSD are already being generated locally.

Yet hundreds of millions of dollars in San Francisco property taxes that were originally intended to support public education are diverted away from SFUSD and instead flow to the City through Excess Educational Revenue Augmentation Fund (Excess ERAF). Over the past several years, Excess ERAF has produced a windfall of more than $2 billion for the City of San Francisco.

During this same period, SFUSD families and educators have been repeatedly warned of deep budget cuts, school closures, layoffs, insolvency, and even potential state takeover—based on deficits that could have been mitigated with just a portion of these locally generated education dollars.

This creates a troubling and unnecessary contradiction: San Francisco benefits from extraordinary property tax growth, while students are asked to absorb instability, reduced services, and chronic uncertainty. If increased funding for SFUSD is the right policy goal at the state level, it is also the right policy goal at the local level—especially when the resources already exist here.

We therefore call on San Francisco leaders to:
• Recognize the role Excess ERAF plays in SFUSD’s financial instability
• Establish a local funding stream that redirects a fair share of Excess ERAF back to SFUSD to fully fund our schools, including salaries and benefits that help educators afford to live here
• Act now—without waiting for the state—to stabilize public school funding and protect students, educators, and families

San Francisco does not need to wait for action from the state to do right by its public schools. The money is already here. What is needed is the will to ensure that education dollars serve the students they were meant to support.