In the district-operated schools of San Francisco Unified School District^↗ET, 54.6% of Black students were chronically absent in 2024-25. More than half of the district's Black students missed at least one school day in ten. Among Asian students in the same district, the rate was 7.1%.

That 47.5 percentage point gap is one of the widest racial attendance divides in California. It exists inside a single district, sometimes inside a single school, and it has barely moved as the rest of the city's attendance has slowly recovered from the pandemic.

These figures count students in San Francisco Unified's district-run, brick-and-mortar schools. They exclude the authorized independent-study charters that California reports under the district's code, which carry very high chronic-absence rates under seat-time rules and would otherwise inflate the picture. On a district-operated basis, San Francisco Unified's overall chronic-absence rate was 23.9% in 2024-25.

Racial divisions that define the crisis

The race-level data in San Francisco describes a district where chronic absenteeism is two very different experiences depending on who a student is.

Black students were at 54.6%, a rate where more students were chronically absent than not. Hispanic students were at 37.5%. White students were at 14.7%. Asian students were at 7.1%, close to where the group sat before the pandemic.

The gap between Black and Asian students, about 47 points, runs through the same district budget and the same superintendent's office. A campus in the Western Addition with many Black students and a campus in the Sunset District with many Asian students can share a calendar and a central office and still operate in two separate attendance realities.

Higher than most of the state, slowly coming down

Before the pandemic, San Francisco Unified's district-operated rate was 14.2%, a little above the statewide figure for that year. The COVID disruption pushed it to 28.9% in 2021-22. Since then the district has come down each year, to 26.5% in 2022-23 and 23.9% in 2024-25.

That is real movement in the right direction, but it is slower than the state as a whole. California's overall district-operated rate fell from 25.4% in 2022-23 to 19.5% in 2024-25, while San Francisco fell from 26.5% to 23.9% over the same span. The district remains roughly 4 points above the state average and about 10 points above its own pre-pandemic baseline.

Near the top among California's large counties

Among California's 22 counties with at least 50,000 students, San Francisco's district-operated chronic-absence rate of 24.2% ranked second in 2024-25. San Bernardino County was slightly higher at 24.5%, and San Joaquin County was close behind at 23.6%.

San Francisco sits in a tight cluster of large counties near the top, separated from the leader by about a quarter of a point and from third place by about half a point. The wider point is that the state's biggest urban and suburban counties are bunched between roughly 12% and 25%, and San Francisco is at the high end of that band rather than a clear outlier above it.

What does set San Francisco apart is its mix of pressures: the highest housing costs in the state, a significant population of residents who are currently unhoused, a school-choice system that routinely sends students across town, and post-pandemic enrollment loss that has unsettled many school communities.

The housing-attendance connection

San Francisco's housing crisis is hard to separate from its attendance crisis. The city's point-in-time count identified more than 4,300 people living unsheltered in 2024, and the San Francisco Chronicle has reported that roughly 20% of SFUSD families report housing instability that affects school attendance.

When a family moves from a shelter in the Tenderloin to transitional housing in the Excelsior, the child's school of origin can become a 40-minute bus ride away. California law guarantees the right to stay enrolled, but the daily transportation logistics fall on families that are already stretched thin.

The intervention landscape

San Francisco Unified has invested in attendance counselors, community-school coordinators, and a partnership with the San Francisco Department of Public Health. The district's attendance improvement work targets the highest-absence schools with home visits and tiered support.

The district's overall numbers are slowly improving, which suggests some of this is working. But the rate for Black students has stayed near the top, and a 47-point gap does not close with better robocalls or attendance awards. It closes when a student in the Bayview can count on the same morning as a student in the Sunset: a stable place to sleep, a short trip to school, and a reason to walk through the door.

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