Six months into San Francisco's biggest zoning overhaul in a generation — and we've got the first projects moving, algebra back in eighth grade, and somebody at City Hall floating a plan to double the city's historic landmarks list. This is San Francisco Politics and Urbanism Daily — I'm Cassidy, Mark's here. Today we're checking the first real scoreboard on the reform wave: housing, schools, policing, and one preservation move that housing advocates are calling the emergency brake nobody asked for. Yeah, I've got my guesses on which one is which. Let's see if you're right. Bisnow, with Rob Sabo:
San Francisco’s first housing project proposals under the city’s new Family Zoning Plan are beginning to advance, but six months after the policy opened large swaths of the west side to taller, denser construction, multifamily development remains largely stalled as high financing and construction costs continue to sideline most projects.
On May 28th we were asking whether shovels would actually hit the ground under the new upzoning rules — and Bisnow has the first real answer. Six months in, two projects are moving: nine units at 2 Crestline Drive, eight units at 230 Anza. That's the whole approved pipeline so far. Seventeen units. Seventeen. Lurie's Family Zoning Plan was supposed to unlock thirty-six thousand homes by 2031, and the development community's big initial response is two small west side projects. So, yeah — the zoning reform worked. The financing math did not. To be fair, a broker at Kidder Mathews is quoted saying the pipeline will start filling up — and there is real optimism in the development community. But optimism and approved permits live in different columns. Right — the city cleared the legal and regulatory hurdle, which was supposed to be the hard part. If construction costs and financing are the ceiling now, that's a different problem than NIMBYs and discretionary review. And City Hall doesn't have some magic lever for that. This one's from San Francisco 365:
San Francisco school officials have decided to reinstate 8th-grade algebra in the city’s public schools following widespread criticism and concerns over the effects of a recent equity-driven curriculum change. The controversial move to eliminate traditional algebra instruction aimed to address educational disparities but instead sparked backlash from parents, educators, and experts, prompting a reevaluation of the approach.
San Francisco 365 is reporting that SFUSD has reversed its equity-driven decision to pull algebra from 8th grade — a policy that, by the district's own admission, dragged down math proficiency and left kids less prepared for high school math. The district ran an experiment on the kids least able to absorb the fallout — the ones who can't just hire a private math tutor when the school decides algebra is inequitable. And now they're calling the reversal a "commitment to rigorous academic standards." That's a very dignified way to say it failed, measurably, on the exact kids it was supposed to help. Worth noting, this lands the same week the SF Standard published the Vidrale Franklin story out of Bayview — a principal who actually moved numbers at one of the city's most under-resourced schools, and got pushed out anyway. You can hold both stories in the same hand and get a pretty clear read on where SFUSD's priorities have been. Reinstate algebra, push out the principal who got results — if there's a through-line in how this district operates, that's it. Sarah Hopkins, writing in Mission Local:
The hearing comes as District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey, who chairs the Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee, has faced calls from constituents to address his district’s slow police response times. Southern Station’s response times for lower priority calls were as much as 55 percent slower than the rest of the city over a recent six-month period, according to Mission Local’s analysis, despite having the highest crime rates in the city.
Mission Local's Sarah Hopkins was at Thursday's Public Safety Committee hearing — chaired by District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey — where SFPD had to explain why Southern Station's response times for lower-priority calls ran 55 percent slower than the rest of the city over a six-month stretch, even though SoMa has the highest crime rates in the city. And SFPD's answer was: we added 20 officers since December, brought Southern Station from 91 to 111 patrol officers, so staffing is actually above target now. That's a real number. But "above target" and "responding on time" are two very different things, and SoMa residents clearly know the difference. The staffing thread has a concrete update — Southern Station is above its patrol target — but response times are still the real test. And worth noting, District 6 is also the district that absorbed some of the sharpest nonprofit service cuts this budget cycle, so the gap between promised public safety and what people actually feel in SoMa isn't just a police story. Dorsey's in a rough spot here — he chairs the committee overseeing this, his district has the data problem, and he can't blame staffing numbers anymore. The next hearing either produces a turnaround on response times, or it becomes a political liability. SF Standard, with Alexa Treviño:
Teachers and parents say the store has played a large role in the school’s sharply improving test scores and increasing enrollment. It was the brainchild of principal Vidrale Franklin — known to the community as “Dr. Franklin” — who came to the school in 2018. But the store has also played a role in a district investigation into the school leader that led to Franklin’s resignation May 22, after she was notified she would be terminated in the coming days.
This one comes from the SF Standard, published May 29th. Vidrale Franklin — "Dr. Franklin" to her community — built a reward system at Drew Elementary in Bayview called the Drew Store. Students earned currency for good behavior and traded it for footballs and board games. Test scores went up. Enrollment went up. Then the district investigated her, and she resigned May 22nd after being told termination was coming. The district's explanation is "financial transparency." Her explanation is that she was finding creative workarounds for kids who had nothing. And those two explanations don't actually clash — SFUSD somehow managed to make both of them true at once. What makes this hit differently this week is that the algebra reinstatement story is also in today's rundown — the district just admitted its equity-driven 8th grade curriculum experiment failed. So you've got SFUSD reversing a district-wide policy failure with basically no accountability, while also pushing out a principal in Bayview over a store full of Stanley cups. The families who could afford tutors when SFUSD pulled algebra didn't need the Drew Store either. The kids at Drew Elementary? They needed both, and the district is 0-for-2 on actually having their backs. The Dissent, with Bex Connolly:
The city currently maintains roughly 2,800 designated landmarks. The proposal, which emerged alongside a wave of pro-housing state laws that grant developers broader approval rights with reduced public review, would push that number toward 5,600 across a seven-square-mile city. Housing advocates and urban policy observers have been openly skeptical, arguing the timing signals an effort to use preservation law as a shield against new development.
The Dissent is flagging a proposal to take San Francisco's landmark inventory from roughly 2,800 designations to around 5,600 — in a city that's only seven square miles. And the timing is pretty hard to miss: this shows up just as state pro-housing laws are stripping away local review tools that have historically slowed or killed projects. We talked last week about the HCD audit naming SF's discretionary review and CEQA use as a systemic pattern — well, here's the next instrument in the same orchestra. You double the landmark count, you double the places where a developer can get hit with a 137-page historical study of a laundromat. That actually happened. Twenty-three thousand dollars, historians said not historic, Board of Supervisors voted eleven-to-zero to kill it anyway. And the cost structure matters here — The Dissent points out that the $700,000 budget line for expanded landmark review looks small, but the real cost lands on developers first and then on renters downstream. That's the mechanism that keeps production expensive even after the zoning rules technically change. This lands the same week the Family Zoning Plan is reporting its first projects moving through the upzoning pipeline — slowly, and still choked by costs. If you're looking for a reason the pipeline stays thin, a freshly doubled landmark inventory sitting on top of a seven-square-mile city is a pretty strong candidate. Got a correction, a story idea, or something you want us to dig into around City Hall, housing, or the streetscape? Send it our way at sfdailyfix at lantern podcasts dot com.
You'll find links to every story we mentioned today in the show notes, so if one caught your ear, you can read further there. That's San Francisco Politics and Urbanism Daily for Monday, June 1st. This is a Lantern Podcast.