Hidden gems: 11 up-and-coming San Francisco public schools

​Redding​ ​Elementary​ ​School



Highlights: • Strong multicultural and international school community, with 25 different languages spoken. Family communication is regularly translated into Spanish and Arabic. Highly-stable, creative and diverse teaching staff. • Computer lab serves students in grades TK-5, with additional time for 4th- and 5th-graders to learn coding. • Strong visual and performing arts program, offering choral music, art class, instrumental music, dance, and Redding's annual Spring Musical. The school also partners with the San Francisco Ballet, which offers scholarships to students for summer programs. • The school’s historic 100-year-old building will be renovated by fall 2018 with a new modern learning environment.

(Note: Details and highlights on schools provided by SFUSD) less ​Redding​ ​Elementary​ ​School



Highlights: • Strong multicultural and international school community, with 25 different languages spoken. Family communication is regularly translated into Spanish and ... more Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 14 Caption Close Hidden gems: 11 up-and-coming San Francisco public schools 1 / 14 Back to Gallery

The secret to improving your odds of scoring a kindergarten spot for your kid at an S.F. public elementary school? Applying to your neighborhood school, and looking to the less popular schools.

The San Francisco district consists of 64 elementary schools with kindergarten through fifth grades as well as eight schools with kindergarten through eighth grades. A handful of these are exceptionally popular and it's difficult to secure your child a kindergarten spot.

Take Clarendon for example. The elementary school had 1,610 applicants for 44 available seats (when seats taken by siblings who get top priority are excluded). That's less than a 1 percent acceptance rate, making the odds of S.F.'s most desired public school far worse than Stanford University, which has a 5 percent acceptance rate.

Your odds can improve if you focus on up-and-coming schools that are less requested. While Clarendon had 1,600 applicants, lesser-known schools such as Redding had 241, Sanchez 183 and Sheridan 155. Your odds are even better if one of these schools is in your attendance area, as kids living in a school's attendance area get some priority.

The trick is identifying which of the less-popular schools are emerging with growing PTAs, strong leadership, improving test scores and exciting new programs. We reached out to the San Francisco Unified School District to help us identify those off-the-radar schools, and they provided us with the list above. The list includes 11 hidden gems, from elementary to high school, and SFUSD provided us with a list of the qualities and programs that are putting these schools on the map.

Here's the thing: Scoring a spot at these schools might be easy this year, but in two years, getting in could be difficult.

San Francisco's public school process is notoriously unnerving, especially for parents looking for kindergarten, as SFGATE reported in a prior story. The district uses what it calls a "student assignment system" that allows parents to apply to any school in the district regardless of where they live. Parents can list as many schools as they like on their application and students are placed in their highest ranked choice as long as there are openings. When there are more requests than seats, a series of tiebreakers come into play. You're given priority if you have a sibling at the school or live within that school's attendance area.

For the 2017-18 school year, 86 percent of families got one of their kindergarten choices (though keep in mind that some parents are listing 20-plus schools with no intention of sending their child to anything beyond No. 10). Sixty-one percent got their first-choice school.

Those families who don't like their assignments can continue to play the lottery, and I found myself in that situation nine years ago when I was applying to kindergarten for my daughter.

We struck out and didn't receive an assignment at any of our choices in round 1, 2 and 3.

Over the summer, we still had no idea where our daughter would be going to kindergarten. I started touring lesser-known schools and stumbled upon Jose Ortega Elementary School, which was in its second year of offering a Mandarin immersion program.

We were impressed by the principal, who had started at the school as a special ed teacher and knew every student by name. There were plenty of openings and we took a chance on a school with a PTA that had raised only $9,000 in the past school year.

Two years later, the PTA was bringing in well over $50,000 and getting into the Mandarin program was difficult. My up-and-coming school had become a rock star.

Note: An earlier version of this story ran in 2016. This story has been updated with the latest numbers and a new list of up-and-coming schools for those parents applying to schools for the 2018-19 school year.