San Francisco is racing to wipe out a months-long waitlist for a high-intensity literacy tutoring program, moving trained reading tutors into more of its highest-need elementary classrooms as soon as next week. Powered by a new pot of city school grants, the San Francisco Education Fund and SFUSD are expanding short, individualized reading sessions that posted striking gains in a pilot last year. Officials say most of the new tutors will be on campuses next week, with additional hires arriving in the first week of February.
According to KQED, the Department of Children, Youth and Their Families is using Student Success Fund dollars to add roughly 1,440 students to the program and clear a waitlist of more than 800. The new money will cover tutors employed through private providers, Chapter One and Braintrust Tutors. Representatives for SF Ed Fund and the district told reporters that most of those tutors will start next week, with some following in early February.
Early Results Turned Heads
The San Francisco Education Fund reports that the initial phase, about 1,250 students in 12 schools, more than doubled the share of participating students reading at grade level. In five months, that group climbed from 24% to 54%, with kindergarten proficiency topping 71%. At Sanchez Elementary, participating first graders jumped from roughly 15% to 59% during the pilot, a shift the fund links to quick, frequent one-on-one sessions. Program managers emphasize that the tutoring is designed to supplement regular classroom instruction and relies on consistent scheduling and standardized materials.
How The Expansion Gets Funded
City officials are tapping the Student Success Fund, the pool of grants created by Proposition G in 2022, to underwrite the cost of the tutors, according to the city’s program materials. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the district will also contribute nearly $830,000 as part of a three-way partnership among the city, SFUSD, and philanthropic groups. Together, those commitments clear the nonprofit’s waitlist and make it possible to place paid tutors in additional classrooms this semester.
Where The Need Is Sharpest
The district’s own progress monitoring report shows third-grade proficiency slipping from about 49% to 47% in Spring 2025, a drop SFUSD staff flagged in a public presentation. KQED also reported that district data show far lower proficiency for some groups, especially English learners, Latinx students, and Black students. That is why the expansion is concentrating tutors on campuses where fewer than half of the students meet literacy standards. Officials say the goal is to use tightly coordinated, short-term tutoring to jump-start learning in the early grades while broader curriculum work continues in the background.
What Happens Next
Leaders at SF Ed Fund describe the expansion as a targeted, high-intensity push to get students off waiting lists and boost literacy where the stakes are highest. CEO Ann Levy Walden has called the model the organization’s most effective literacy intervention and noted that public funding enables the nonprofit to scale up without sacrificing consistency, according to the fund’s materials. City and district officials plan to track participation, fidelity of implementation, and spring results to see whether the pilot’s gains can be repeated across a wider range of schools.
