(Part II) Can Schools in Gentrifying Neighborhoods Become More Diverse, Too?

Nearby, in a fifth-grade classroom, teacher Laura Walker was showing her students a documentary about their historic neighborhood. It was developed in the 1940s during the Great Migration, when African-American men flocked to the area with their families to work in the now-defunct naval shipyard.

Walker said the film was part of a social studies unit on migration and exploration, which would include lessons on the Vikings, Christopher Columbus, and the American explorers Lewis and Clark.

Families whose children attend the school say they have noticed a difference. Lisa Afalava, a mother with a fifth grader at the school, says Malcolm X offers impressive afterschool programs, including Mandarin classes. The school, she says, has worked to improve attendance by offering students awards for coming to school on time, and has created a warm learning environment.

“The staff is really passionate about the kids,” she said.

Others, like Brenda Rios, whose son graduated from the school and now attends KIPP Bayview Academy, a highly regarded charter nearby, said the staff members excel at helping to place students at good middle schools.

But Diane Gray, the executive director of the Bayview Association for Youth, which offers academic support to students in the area, says the school needs to do a better job of promoting itself.

Gray said San Francisco schools that have been successful at diversifying their populations as their neighborhoods have grown more diverse have targeted preschools, looped in middle class parents, and worked aggressively with developers, getting their names on brochures and fact-sheets, and getting teachers to attend countless community meetings.

“I have no doubt that the same thing can happen here. But there has to be a lot of work done on both sides of the fence,” she said.

Across the country, efforts to integrate public schools and keep them integrated have been fraught. Many school districts are finding themselves rapidly re-segregating once they are released from federal desegregation orders put in place in the ’70s and ’80s, some districts have dipped back to pre-Civil Rights era segregation numbers. San Francisco was released from its race-based federal desegregation order in 2001. It has tried to promote more integration with a race-neutral school choice program, but with mixed results.

In 2005, former San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom added a new post to his staff, a special advisor to address issues related to education and families. Hydra Mendoza, who has held the post for the past 10 years, also sits the on the school board. She works to create collaborations between the city’s housing authority and its school district, keeping key city officials apprised of new developments and telling them about development plans that might present opportunities to improve struggling schools. “We’re building stronger ties between the school district and the city,” she said.

But no one thinks turning Malcolm X into a coveted school will be easy. The school’s poor academic performance makes it a hard sell to middle-income parents. The number of students proficient in reading dipped from 48% to 25% between 2011 and 2013. In math, the dip was from 63% proficient to 48%. The school lost more than 17% of its student body between 2009 and 2014. And teachers say some of the students who remain are homeless or living in unstable conditions. Teachers believe the construction in the neighborhood is partially to blame for the decline in enrollment: Some families who lived in parts of the neighborhood being rebuilt relocated.

First grade teacher Anthony Arinwine says the loss of students and the poor test scores have given the school a branding problem, even with longtime Bayview residents. “It has a lot of reputation to overcome,” he said.

But for Ray McClenter, who finished fourth grade this spring, and recently moved into one of the new Bayview apartments with his family, there is much to be gained if the city can lure newcomers to the struggling school. “If more kids come,” he said, “I can make new friends.”