San Francisco's Lowell High School Officially Switches To 2021 Lottery Admissions
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) -- Citing changes forced on San Francisco schools by the COVID-19 outbreak, the San Francisco Board of Education announced Wednesday that admissions to Lowell High School for the 2021 academic year will be determined by a lottery and not the traditional merit selection system.
Lowell is one of few public schools in the country where admission are merit based, similar to how universities select students. In recent years, school officials have used grade point average and Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) scores from a student's 7th grade and the first semester of 8th grade to determine admission to the prestigious high school.
But with the outbreak of the pandemic, officials said those scores are not available so for the 2021 academic year, a lottery will be used.
Students who live in San Francisco and wish to apply to Lowell will submit the same application form used for SFUSD's comprehensive high schools.
They may list as many high schools as they like and will be assigned to their highest ranked request as long as there is space at the school.
If there are more students applying than there are openings at Lowell, choice assignments will be made by looking at a series of tiebreakers.
School district officials did not immediately disclose what those tiebreakers will be.
When the tentative plan was released earlier this year, it was greeted with disappointment from some parents.
"It is disappointing that we don't have a better solution and this is just the option for now," said San Francisco parent Annika Ehrlich.
Ehrlich has two boys in the district. Her eighth grader has been studying hard and is applying to attend Lowell, one of the best and most competitive high schools in the country.
"He might be one of these kids that would've had a good chance of getting into Lowell and now it might be more equal to everybody else," Ehrlich said.
The school reported about 900 students were admitted to this year's freshman class out of 2,000 applicants. About 650 students chose to enroll in the school.
The district said the proposed random lottery admission system would be limited to the 2021-2022 school year but some parents worried the board will later make it permanent to increase diversity. Right now, less than 2 percent of the students at Lowell are Black.
"I wish I had a larger campus. I would really love to have all the students," said Lowell principal Dacotah Swett.
