So the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce has stepped forward to serve as a clearinghouse for donations and volunteer efforts aimed at public schools, Mayor Ed Lee announced Wednesday.
The partnership, known as UniteSF, highlights an attempt to raise more private money for San Francisco schools and to streamline what to now have been largely uncoordinated donations of money or time by businesses like Zynga, LinkedIn and Microsoft.
“We are strengthening our public-private philanthropy partnerships so we can advance opportunities for youth,” Lee told an audience of about 800 at the chamber’s annual breakfast Wednesday.
Lee said he expects the chamber to coordinate millions of dollars in donations that will support everything from sports programs to healthy lunches. Equally important, he said, would be the chamber’s role in coordinating volunteer initiatives, such as after-school programs and internships.
The idea, Lee said, is to create a “jobs pipeline that will focus on knowledge and skill development.”
The partnership is not unprecedented — Los Angeles has a similar collaboration — but it highlights the growing role of outside entities in supporting public schools.
It also gives the chamber an influential say in divvying up money and volunteers among San Francisco’s public schools. In addition to support from businesses, UniteSF has commitments from nearly a dozen local colleges, law schools and nonprofits. They include United Way Bay Area, the San Francisco Labor Council and City College of San Francisco.
Chamber President Bob Linscheid said the idea is for the UniteSF umbrella to raise public and private funds, and to develop a plan that matches donations with the schools’ needs.
The initiative has three goals: a high school graduation rate of 100 percent, preparing every graduate for college or a vocational program, and aiming all students toward employment. It will reinforce the school district’s emphasis on STEM fields: science, technology, engineering and math.
“UniteSF is an incredible opportunity” to unite efforts to help city schools, said schools Superintendent Richard Carranza. The challenge is to identify jobs of the future “and give those children those skill sets,” he said.
San Francisco Unified School District has an annual operating budget of roughly $600 million that covers 57,000 students. The district is still trying to rebuild after cuts during the recession.
It has been helped in recent years by private donations, including $7.7 million from Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and part of the $120 million that Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is channeling to Bay Area schools.
Lee said donations like those are key to helping students develop the skills needed for success and dismissed the suggestion that the private sector could end up driving the school district’s policy goals.
“No one has suggested they wrest control from our education efforts,” Lee said. “It’s more about joining in our goal.”
©2015 the San Francisco Chronicle. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC
