Photo: Michael Macor/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images

The San Francisco Unified School District recently launched a 10-year plan to repair and renovate its schools and facilities after an assessment found many schools needed maintenance and upgrading.

Why it matters: In 2022, an assessment of SFUSD’s facilities found that $1.7 billion would be needed to fund repairs and improvements, according to the school district.

The big picture: The plan outlines the condition of SFUSD’s more than 140 buildings and makes recommendations on everything from upgrading classroom technology and redesigning outdoor learning spaces to ensuring schools have secure water supplies and security locks for classrooms.

The plan too strives to increase the number of universal transitional kindergarten classes and to create affordable housing for educators.

The cited report a variety of issues including those with HVAC and electrical systems, roofs, windows, furniture, plumbing and more.

• Remarkable: The school district discovered lead in a handful of faucets at the Buena Vista Horace Mann K-8 Community School in December. That came shortly after the district found “unacceptable levels” of lead and arsenic in the school’s garden soil.

What you say: The goal of the facility plan is to “provide comfortable and state-of-the-art study spaces” for students in the district, said SFUSD Superintendent Dr. Matt Wayne in a press release.

• He added that modernizing to meet student needs ensures that “the whole child can come to school supported, engaged and challenged”.

Between the lines: There is a large cluster of poorly equipped school sites in the Mission/SoMa – areas with high levels of poverty.

• In SoMa, 18.1% of households live below the poverty line, according to a US Census Bureau analysis by The San Francisco Standard. In the mission, 11.1% of households live below the poverty line.

Something to see: The district’s facilities department presented the plan at a board of education meeting last week and will continue to seek public feedback.

• The final draft of the plan will be presented to the school board on April 25.
• From there, San Francisco voters will likely have to approve a general commitment bond in 2024 to fund much of the project.

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Lyft, the ride-hailing tech giant headquartered in San Francisco, is laying off about 60 people — in addition to entirely shuttering a division of its company.

A Lyft spokesperson said that the layoffs are primarily in this shuttered division as well as operations workers. According to the Wall Street Journal, which first broke the news, the layoffs comprise less than 2% of his workplace. (One count estimates that Lyft had 4,453 employees at the end of 2021.) Lyft announced Wednesday that it would be shuttering its first-person rental service, Lyft Rentals — and confirmed to SFGATE that the layoffs are largely in rentals.

The service launched in December 2019 — just months before the COVID-19 pandemic, which likely put strain on the service’s viability. It will maintain its third-party rentals service in partnership with Sixt and Hertz.

“We have decided to discontinue Lyft’s first party Rentals business to focus on our best-in-class third party Rentals with Sixt and Hertz,” a Lyft spokesperson told SFGATE in a statement. “This decision will ensure we continue to have national coverage and offer riders a more seamless booking experience.”

Discussions about ceasing its first-party rentals service, Lyft Vice President Cal Lankton said, according to the Journal, “accelerated as the economy made the business case unworkable.”

The Wall Street Journal report also says that as part of a company restructuring, Lyft is also closing a global operations office in Northern California.

These Lyft layoffs come among others during a particularly rough period for the tech industry, as economic headwinds have led once-bullish investors to dial back on funding. In May, its direct rival Uber announced a hiring freeze — as CEO Dara Khosrowshahi called for the company to “be even more hardcore about costs across the board.” Also on Wednesday, Google announced a two-week hiring freeze.

Lyft did not provide any details on laid-off employees’ severance benefits.

Despite what the company called a “better than we expected” Q1 in May, Lyft stock has plummeted to $14.70 a share as of Thursday morning, a third of its value from the beginning of the year.

Hear of anything going on at a Bay Area tech company? Contact Joshua Bote securely at joshuareybote@proton.me or on signal at (707) 742-3756.

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Calm, the meditation and relaxation tech startup featuring a medley of celebrity voices, has laid off a fifth of its staff. The company is headquartered in San Francisco and employs around 400 people, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The affected employees were laid off Thursday, a company spokesperson told SFGATE. Laid-off employees were notified in one-on-one meetings, according to a company-wide message.

“While some of you will be impacted, all of you will be affected,” Calm CEO David Ko said in the message Thursday. “I can assure you that this was not an easy decision, but it is especially difficult for a company like ours whose mission is focused on workplace mental health and wellness.”

Calm, like direct competitor Headspace and digital therapy services like BetterHelp and Talkspace, capitalized on the recent uptick in demand for mental health care and wellness — a demand that was only intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic. But Calm’s big draw over its competitors was its reliance on mega-celebrities, from boy-bander turned pop dreamboat Harry Styles to actor Matthew McConaughey, to read “sleep stories” on the platform.

By 2020, it was valued at $2 billion — making it one of the largest unicorns in the mental health tech space. But it, too, has been forced to pare back as a more-constrained tech industry has seen demand drop after profits — and hiring — soared during the pandemic.

“We did not come to this decision lightly, but are confident that these changes will help us prioritize the future, focus on growth and become a more efficient organization,” Ko said.

A spokesperson did not provide additional details on laid-off employees’ severance packages.

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Fewer students means fewer dollars to pay for teachers, and the college is now facing a $5.8 million deficit in its 2025-2026 fiscal year, according to The SF Standard.

Despite the start of new programs like Free City College, which offers free tuition to San Francisco residents, other factors soon compounded the existing drop in student population, including a statewide community college enrollment plunge during the pandemic. A CalMatters analysis found that, at 42 out of 116 California community colleges, more students left in the fall of 2021 than in the fall of 2020. That comprised a statewide loss of more than 300,000 students, which California tried to correct by spending an extra $120 million.

A coalition of unions has tried to pitch tax proposals to stem the gap, including Service Employees International Union 1021, which also represents City College of San Francisco workers and met with Mayor London Breed in February to propose new tax mechanisms to raise dollars for CCSF.

Bravewoman said those efforts are ongoing. Right now, it looks like the funding mechanism may be a parcel tax that’s shaped to affect new home buyers, as opposed to existing homeowners, that may raise as much as $45 million a year. Polling shows strong support for the measure, she said. The unions will soon begin the signature-gathering effort.

“We’re confident we’ll be successful at the polls,” she said.

In the meantime, the recent cuts are striking departments of all sorts, affecting everything from workforce training courses like aircraft maintenance and auto mechanics, to classes needed to transfer to four-year schools, like chemistry and English.

Pink slips — layoff notices — already have been mailed.

CCSF teachers and students block Frida Kahlo Way at the entrance to CCSF’s main campus to protest layoffs at the school, on May 5, 2022. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)

At the May Day rally and march in San Francisco on Sunday, City College faculty who’d been served with pink slips spoke out.

Golnar Afshar, a full-time biotechnology teacher, told KQED she got her pink slip in February. Afshar is one of only three faculties in the biotechnology program. Now those students will have fewer classes available to complete their learning.

Most of Afshar’s students are older and changing their careers. They have bachelor’s degrees but need to fulfill hands-on training experience to get laboratory jobs — a highly sought-after career path in the Bay Area, which Afshar called “the Mecca of biotechnology in the world.” Now those students may have a tougher path.

“I have no idea what’s going to happen,” she said. “If the classes are canceled, the students will not be able to finish up.”

And for Afshar, who is 55 and was looking toward retirement in the next decade, “I’m just going to have to start looking for a job.”

Kathe Burick, a former dance instructor at CCSF, speaks outside Conlan Hall to protest layoffs at the school, on May 5, 2022. Burick was one of 10 faculty members arrested by SFPD at the protest. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)
From left: Arlene Bugayong, Ella Rose, 6, and Sarah June Harris protest layoffs at CCSF, on May 5, 2022. Bugayong is a counselor at the school and received a pink slip, or layoff notice, earlier this week. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)

KQED’s Annelise Finney, Haley Gray and David Marks contributed to this report.

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