The San Francisco Unified Board of Education has unanimously approved a lottery admissions process for Lowell High School, applying to the freshman class of 2021 for one year only.
The vote comes as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
The existing Admissions Board uses grade point average and Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) scores from students’ 7th grade year and the first semester of 8th grade to offer admission to the prestigious school. Since that data isn't available for this year’s applicants, the district is unable to offer admissions based on merit as previously done.
This spring, the Board of Education adopted an alternative grading system in which 6th to 12th grade students were assigned "Credit/No Credit" for each course. The SBAC was not administered in Spring 2020 as directed by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s emergency order suspending the test.
The new policy mandates the elite school maintains the same past admissions standards for 10th, 11th and 12th grades, "not admitting any new students to these grades in the upcoming school year."
Applications are due by February 5, 2021.