Wow. San Francisco’s getting a new, PUBLIC Mandarin immersion K – 8 program!

San Francisco’s Mandarin immersion landscape has increasingly one of a new private school opening every few years, as I wrote a few weeks ago. There are currently four, with one more coming. Parents pay up to $44,000 a year for these programs:

Chinese American International School
Presidio Knolls School
Bertrand Hsu American & Chinese Bicultural Academy
Stratford School
Hiba Academy (opening in 2026).

During that time, the San Francisco Unified School District has opened exactly two Mandarin immersion programs, one in 2006 and one in 2007. With space for no more than 66 incoming Kindergarten students each year.

Imagine my shock and thrill when the San Francisco Unified School District announced Wednesday that an anonymous benefactor was donating the money to create a new, comprehensive K–8 Mandarin Dual Language Immersion school.

Not only that, but Superintendent Dr. Maria Su has gotten the incomparable Liana Szeto, to lead implementation of the program.

Szeto founded Alice Fong Yu K-8, the nation’s first whole-school Cantonese Immersion public school. [Note that San Francisco’s West Portal Elementary school began a strand Cantonese immersion program in 1984.]

Szeto recently retired after 30 years at Alice Fong Yu but will now come back to serve as a Special Advisor to the Superintendent starting in January 2026, the District said in a release.

“Szeto will lead the implementation of a new comprehensive K–8 Mandarin Dual Language Immersion school, as the district moves forward with its plans under her guidance.”

According to the San Francisco Examiner, the district hopes to launch the new school in by the 2027-28 school year.

I cannot express to you how exciting this is, and how amazing. Parents have spent almost two decades clamoring for more Mandarin immersion, five new private MI schools have opened/are planned to open and SFUSD just let all those families – and their lovely funding – slip through its fingers.

Kudos to Dr. Su, who is new to the district and who clearly is willing to lift her eyes up and see what families want and what will keep them in a district that just last year said “SFUSD’s enrollment has decreased by over 4,000 students since school year 2012-13. Demographic trends such as declining birth rates indicate that SFUSD will lose 4,600 additional students by 2032.“

Note that since 2010, 20 new private schools have opened in San Francisco (see the list below.) It’s not demographics, it’s supply and demand.

Thankfully, Dr. Su seems to be finally paying attention to demand, rather than dismissing parents who want something else.

The announcement comes as the school board was set to vote in two weeks on a petition to open a Chinese immersion charter school in San Francisco.

The district in its release says:

“This work is made possible through funding provided by Spark SF Public Schools, thanks to the generosity of a San Francisco Bay Area benefactor who believes deeply in the power of public education and the promise of multilingual learning. Their investment reflects a shared commitment to great public schools in San Francisco, by expanding opportunities for all students and strengthening language programs that leverage the strength of the city’s rich and diverse global populations.”

Let’s hope this isn’t a bait and switch but a real move at the District’s upper levels to meet parents where they are and create programs that draw families to the district.

How about French, SFUSD?

If I may be so bold, if I were the District I’d also be thinking about French.

About eight years ago a group of Francophone SFUSD parents, including families from Haiti and Africa, tried to convince the district that a French immersion school would be well received and would interest new families as well as being a draw for the District’s African and African American families.

After all, 30% of Africa is French speaking.

But the district turned them down, saying a French immersion program would be elitist. Despite there being at least 14 public French schools in New York City, two in Washington D.C., three in Los Angeles, one in Portland, Oregon and 16 in Utah.

San Francisco already has two private French immersion schools, the French-American International School, Lycée Français de San Francisco as well as the École Notre Dame des Victoire, a K-8 Catholic school that offers daily French instruction. .

At $41,000 a year, I expect there are more than a few parents who would love to go public, have their kids learn French and save a cool $400,000 over the course of a K – 8 education. (And only two SFUSD high schools out of 15 even offer French.)