Raising Our Kids in San Francisco

Moving to San Francisco and living there for a year left a huge dent in our memories, not in a positive way.

We had to relocate to San Francisco in 2019 when the company my husband and I co-founded was acquired by Twitter. This deal required us to move from Seattle to San Francisco and become part of Twitter’s headquarters, which was in the South of Market (SOMA) of San Francisco. At that time, our two kids were 5 and 7. Anticipated as an exciting and triumphant move for my husband and me, it turned out to be the beginning of a horrifying year for our children.

Proof of Residency

We relocated to San Francisco in June 2019, and our primary concern was ensuring that my kids could attend school in the city by fall. However, for new families, this process is extremely challenging.

In other parts of the US, enrolling children in school is relatively straightforward. You establish a permanent address by either signing a lease or purchasing a home. Then you register your kids within the school district, and typically, the elementary school they attend is the closest one to your home.

In San Francisco, the entire city operates under a single expansive school district known as the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD). School assignments are determined through a lottery system rather than being based on geographical proximity. So, even though you’ve secured a place to live and are eligible to enroll your kids in SFUSD, the lottery system might assign a school located on the opposite side of the city. I’ve heard many stories like this happening to new families.

“Let’s first make sure our kids have school. Then we can figure everything else one by one.”

Once we arrived in SF, we scrambled to find an apartment in a safe neighborhood and sign the lease immediately. So we were eligible to enroll in a school here.

The School Lottery Hell

By the time we arrived in SF, the school district had already completed several rounds of lotteries and selections for the upcoming school year. When we finally sat down with an SFUSD staff member to discuss school options, only those with low ratings left. We initially had a list of criteria (high GreatSchool ratings, close to home), and we had to cross them off eventually.

What about private schools, you may ask? In reality, anyone who could afford private schools had already considered this option. In San Francisco, there’s no shortage of wealthy families. Most top-tier private schools (such as Stratford) have long waiting lists.

We did find one private school that was open for enrollment, so quickly scheduled a tour. The experience was quite surprising. This elementary school was inside a residential building, and we saw children running around barefoot. When we were ushered into a room designated as the “math room,” we noticed that the children only had chairs and no desks. Both my husband and I had come from traditional public schools, so it was difficult for us to imagine learning math without desks. We had to pass on this option.

Back at the SFUSD office, we carefully examined the schools the staff circled on the map, yeah, not many choices left. We just chose the best out of the worst! We chose a school that both our kids could go to (meaning, openings for kindergarten and 2nd grade), and was close to where we were going to work (SOMA) so that we could pick them up right after work.

What about the GreatSchools rating? It’s 3! What the school would be like was out of my ability to imagine. On the bright side, we would learn what a 3 school bring to us!

Well Orchestrated Routine

While most kids were excited about school, our journey to school felt more like an expedition for us.

So here’s how the routine played out:

In the morning, I drove the car with my kids from Twin Peaks, where we lived, to SOMA. I parked our car in a lot under the overpass and walked them to school. After they were settled in their classrooms, I left the schoolyard. I then rented a Baywheel, a ride-sharing bicycle, and rode to the Twitter office. Meanwhile, my husband commuted to work on our electric scooter.

In the afternoon, I took the scooter and ascended the hill on Market Street, heading back home. Meanwhile, my husband picked up a Baywheel to ride to the school, where he picked up two kids. He then walked them to the parking lot and drove them back home.

You see? There were quite a lot of steps involved! And we took pride in the sophistication of our routine. This playbook was highly optimized, and every detail was carefully planned. For instance, why did I drive the kids in the morning but leave with the scooter later? The reason was that I could get home earlier and prepare dinner! By the time they got home, the dinner should be ready, allowing us to enjoy the meal together. Another example: why park under an overpass? In San Francisco, finding safe parking space in SF is hard. We managed to secure a reasonably priced monthly parking spot near my kids’ school. This made sure that my kids didn’t have to walk far to reach school, and our car would less likely get broken into or receive tickets.

Crazy, Messy and Dangerous

No matter how well we planned our routine, every school day still felt crazy, messy, and dangerous.

The parking lot under the overpass was surrounded by a wired fence, with a few homeless tents right outside. Every morning, I held my kids’ hands tightly. Whenever we passed a tent, we intentionally lowered our voices, fearing that our noise might disturb those inside, potentially causing them to chase us.

People often joke about the SF poop map, and unfortunately, my kids have seen it all and can confirm that. On our way to school, we had to carefully scan the sidewalks, as there was human feces scattered around, here and there. The smell of urine became an expected smell in SF.

The school is next to a street park. We passed through the park and entered school every day. The park has a soccer field and play structures. It sounds very nice, right? However, the park was also surrounded by homeless tents. One day, as we quietly walked by a tent, I saw a long knife just lying next to the tent. Holding my breath, I quickly grabbed my kids and ran to school. After I made sure my kids were inside the school, I told the janitor working at the park about the knife, but he merely shrugged it off.

My kids had their most frightening moment, an incident they often recall. While walking along the sidewalk, a homeless man, clearly struggling with mental illness, suddenly started yelling at me, “He is not your son! Let him go! He is not your son!” My son was terrified, leaving all of us stunned. Luckily a yellow cab stopped nearby; the driver began shouting at the man, “You stay away from them!” and even threatened to call 911. The courageous cab driver successfully drove the homeless person away, saving us that day.

If your car doesn’t get broken into, consider yourself lucky! Every day, we witnessed cars with broken windows. However, there was one particular car we passed by daily that miraculously remained intact. The owner had put up a sign stating, “No valuable things inside the car.”

Bullying at School

Every morning, when the bell rang, the school held a morning assembly where students from all grades lined up in the schoolyard. The principals took turns speaking, reiterating the goals (such as full attendance, this school had a low-attendance problem), and then allowed students to walk to their respective classrooms.

Before the bell rang, kids were playing and chasing each other around. However, I occasionally saw some older kids getting into some serious fights. It was surprising to see such behavior in an elementary school. This concerned me, so I often waited until both kids entered their classrooms before I left for work.

I thought that was good enough to at least keep them from bullying in the morning. I was wrong.

One morning, a classmate pushed my son to the ground and then punched him repeatedly like a punching bag. I quickly ran over, pulled the student away, and saw my son curling on the ground.

I never saw my son be bullied like this. It was heartbreaking for a mother to see. I never saw my son land a punch on others. He was a 2nd grade. At that moment, I finally understood in America, you must learn something to protect yourself physically.

The crazy thing was, that while I was pulling the student away from my son, the student continued to punch me! One principal quickly intervened, separating the student from me and telling me that the student would get detention for this.

Yet, this wasn’t the craziest part.

The day I arrived at the office and settled down, my phone rang. It was another principal. I assumed she was calling regarding the incident with the bully. To my surprise, this principal informed me that the student who bullied my son and punched me told his mother that I had pushed him. His mother wanted to meet with me. It was unbelievable that a principal would handle bullying in this way.

I told her that the other principal had witnessed the entire incident, and there was no need for his mother to question me. I promptly ended the call, finding myself shaking, feeling angry, disappointed, and frightened.

Now, let’s recap the incident: my son was bullied at school, and there were no teachers present to assist him. When I intervened to pull the bully away, suddenly I became the one to blame. The principal didn’t dare to make a judgment and allowed the child to control the narrative.

I was not a political person, but this incident made me think; that there seemed to be something morally wrong with San Francisco that they couldn’t figure out.

Later, my son told me about other bullying instances. He wrote another story in his essay.

My daughter, a kindergartener at the time, mentioned that kids in her class commonly gave each other the middle finger. Whenever she disagreed with someone, a child would suddenly throw chairs at her or poke her with pencils. This behavior was beyond belief for me.

In 2020, COVID-19 happened, and schools closed for the latter half of the school year. That means, we no longer had to attend that school. Looking back, COVID cut our everyday nightmare short.

When our lease in San Francisco ended, we quickly moved out of the city to South Bay, which had the best school district in this area. The school nightmare finally ended.

Writing down all these stories still gives me chills. When you experience these situations every day, you’re forced to accept them as normal. It’s only when you step out of that bubble that you realize these aren’t normal at all.

What should be normal? A school ought to be a safe place. Public schools, funded by taxpayers, should serve the families contributing to those taxes rather than sending them to schools distant from their homes. Schools should acknowledge positive behavior and address negative behaviors with appropriate consequences. That is not what we experienced in SF.

To us parents, we learned and made a firm decision that we would never again sacrifice our children’s well-being for our career decisions. SF is an exciting place for careers but a hell for raising children.

To our children, they have seen the worst through this experience. It led them to appreciate the schools they attended afterward. Just as Ali Wong once wrote, “It (the challenging situation) makes you so much more open-minded, adaptive, and confident. You become so much more real.” That’s the positive aspect of raising our children in San Francisco.