SFUSD’s Consolidation Process Disrespects Teachers

This year, health and ELD teacher Sara Mokhtari Fox is being consolidated. “She is an awesome health teacher for freshmen students, especially newcomers, and has become an amazing community member,” Joaquin Martinez-Sun, a sophomore, stated in an interview. How do consolidations affect all parties in the process including, teachers, students, and the district?

Ms. Mokhtari is very passionate about teaching health. She left her position teaching Spanish in the district to teach health here at Mission High. She says, “I’ve wanted to teach my entire life and finding a place at Mission High felt like a dream come true.”

One of her former students, Joaquin Martinez-Sun said, “It’s really upsetting for me, because I’ve been fortunate enough to have Ms. Mokhtari as a teacher.” He stated in an interview with me that Ms. Mokhtari has taught him many things, including “safe sex, and harm reduction strategies.”

Joaquin has been a student of Ms. Mokhtari since seventh grade, he considers her one of his mentors at this school. He said “[She] helped me come out of my shell in a lot of ways.”

At the time of publication, the school board and the superintendent, Maria Su, have not responded to repeated requests for comment about the consolidations at Mission High School. “[Being consolidated], it feels like you’re just a number in a system or an email address that they just need to put in the right place.”

Ms. Mokhtari continued “They treat us like retail workers, like, you work at this Macy’s, ok, you can go to this other one. Teaching is not like hanging up clothes, it’s building relationships.” Ms. Mokhtari has been teaching in the district for 8 years. During the interview, she became emotional at the mention of being consolidated.

Ms. Mokhtari was also only given three and a half hours to select her preferences for her consolidation, and for most of that time she was actively teaching. She described the process as very disorganized and disrespectful. She immediately filed the paperwork, and finished it a month in advance.

The consolidations are both disrespectful to the teachers and the students. Making classes bigger damages a student’s ability to get one-on-one attention, “And it sucks, not being able to have her be around ‘cause she’s such a good teacher, and she’s so caring and so helpful to all the students here,” Joaquin stated.

Teachers also face the challenge of having to pack up their lives and rebuild their connections at a different campus. The district is not being fair to students or teachers. The district should stop its consolidation efforts for the well being of students and its teachers.