How to save schools

By Rhys Hedges | SF Chronicle | February 16th, 2025

Regarding “How do we save SFUSD? Close decrepit schools and develop them into luxury housing” (Open Forum, SFChronicle.com, Feb. 27): Turning underfunded schools sites into luxury housing to “save” the San Francisco school district is one of the most out-of-touch things I’ve read in the Chronicle. 

In a city that is always lamenting its homelessness problem, more luxury housing is the last thing we need. There are 52,600 vacant housing units in the city, according to census data, and the people who need housing the most cannot afford them, including the estimated 8,323 who are unhoused. 

The real solution to the district’s budget deficit is simple: Reforming Proposition 13 by making corporations pay modern-day property taxes would restore an estimated $12 billion every year to California’s schools and communities. 

That is enough to cover San Francisco’s deficit and bail out our struggling school district.