Dear SFUSD Superintendent Carranza and Board of Education Members,

I am signing to oppose the recent proposal to relocate over 100 Daniel Webster students to our already overcrowded Starr King Elementary School during the 2015-16 school year. For more than a year, temporary bungalows have reduced our play yard space by more than half, and many problems have resulted. The proposal would keep the bungalows there an additional year, plus add over 100 students to our school site, which will endanger student safety, disrupt student learning, and derail our own reconstruction plans including building an appropriate playground for our Special Day and pre-K students.

This would be extremely damaging to both Starr King and the relocated Daniel Webster students because:

· The safety of all the children in an emergency would be compromised. The yard is already too small to hold any students in the event of an evacuation, so children must leave school grounds. Adding 100 more students would push students further out into the neighborhood and make it difficult to guarantee safety.

· Our reduced play yard is too small for the children to have freedom during recess to play the games they want to play and to have free space to run and release their energy. We have had many more conflicts and discipline problems at the school because of the restrictions on the kids during recess. This has disrupted learning among students who are struggling for proficiency, and led to many unhappy children.

· Adding more students would require additional recess and lunch periods. Some children would have to eat lunch as early as 11 a.m., leaving them hungry and unable to focus by the afternoon. We would also need to reduce recess and PE time for all children.

· Our school has historically struggled with enrollment across all of our strands. Another year of a chaotic school site has the potential to impact future enrollment, leading to reduced funding which will be devastating to our ability to serve our diverse student needs.

· We would be unable to build the playground for the pre-K program and integrate the Special Day class into our play yard space next year as planned and as promised.

· The plan threatens to force the loss of grants and our contractors for our reconstruction plans.

The reduced space has made this a very difficult year for our students, teachers, and staff, and we believe that an additional year will cause us to lose families, teachers, and staff.

Thank you for listening to our concerns,