Superintendent's Message on the Start of the 2023-24 School Year 8-9-23

Dear SSFUSD Community,

 

Welcome to the 2023-2024 school year! I hope you all had a restful and wonderful summer! SSFUSD had the privilege of hosting welcome back events for our school and District leadership team, our new teachers, and most recently, all district staff. There is such a spirit of joy and appreciation for being able to come together to celebrate the marking of a new school year and more specifically, for welcoming back all of your children!  

In this letter, I wanted to take the opportunity to share with you some exciting and important updates. They include the District’s strategic planning efforts, an invitation for strong community engagement, and our 2023-2024 district priorities.

 

 

 

For new members of our district community, I wanted to share a brief update of one of the major priorities and accomplishments from the prior year that remain relevant this year. As part of our district’s strategic planning process last year, we developed, with your assistance and feedback, a list of the knowledge and skills that SSFUSD students need to know to be successful after high school.

 

This document is our Portrait of a Graduate, an aspirational vision for our students, that prioritizes academic excellence, intellectual curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking, so that our students can be lifelong learners.

Moreover, based on feedback we received from families, students, employees, and members of the community, our students should also leave high school with life skills such as time management and self-discipline, so they can take care of themselves and live physically, mentally, and emotionally healthy lives. In addition to being financially and technologically literate and ready for college and career with the ability to problem solve, our Portrait of a Graduate envisions a future where our students graduate with the ability to collaborate and engage with their community, so they can make a positive impact in our community and the world. To support these aims, we have designed new, high school level courses in financial literacy, public speaking, and building construction.

 

Our community came together to identify what our students need to thrive after high school. Now, we are tasked with figuring out the best and most inclusive and equitable ways to make that happen, which is the implementation plan. We are stronger and better together; therefore, we invite you to fully engage and help us finalize a plan to achieve the outcomes outlined in our Portrait of a Graduate. Please look for future invitations from us and thank you again for your wonderful engagement and support! Meanwhile, we’ve put together this short video to provide an update on where we are with the strategic planning process as a whole.

 

 

As many of you know, our former Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources and Student Services, retired on June 30, 2023. We are thrilled to welcome Mr. Jason Marwan Hannon, as our new Assistant Superintendent. In his former role, Mr. Hannon oversaw 13 elementary schools as an Assistant Superintendent in San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD). Mr. Hannon will be in charge of implementing one of our district’s priorities this year: building SSFUSD’s capacity by reevaluating our

recruitment, retention, and hiring practices through a diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) lens (Talent Management).

 

These efforts will go hand in hand with our quest to promote equitable access in the classroom through high expectations, quality teaching and learning experiences that foster student discourse and agency. We will also seek to align our curricular and instructional practices with professional learning, while allocating resources to the schools with the highest student needs (Academic Excellence).

 

This is also the year where we will begin facilities repairs and improvements, thanks to the tremendous community support which helped to pass a facilities bond measure (Measure T) in November, 2023 for $ 436 million. In April, 2023, our District successfully completed its financing and sale of the 1st series of bonds and received $150 million. Currently, we are now working on the prioritization of facility projects for the bond program. We appreciate your trust in us and your desire to help us improve our schools and community in order to provide a better and safer learning environment for our students (Operational & Fiscal Stewardship).

 

Again, welcome back to what we believe will be an incredible year, filled with a lot of love, laughter, and learning! We look forward to working with and alongside you, in partnership! I want to thank you, in advance, for loving your children, for holding them to high expectations, for believing in them, and for doing your very best to ensure their success academically and social-emotionally.

 

I’m excited about the year ahead, and I am so happy that you are with us, on this journey!

 

In gratitude, 
Dr. Shawnterra Moore
Superintendent
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Estimada comunidad de SSFUSD,