Here’s an excerpt from a district press release issued Friday afternoon:
On Monday, September 13 at the Ad Hoc Committee of the Board of Education, the Superintendent will be recommending that the district move forward with the elementary and high school placement policy and take another year to further develop the middle school placement changes, which would mean postponing the decision on elementary to middle feeder patterns.
Superintendent Carlos Garcia says “We are still committed to enacting the new placement policy in its entirety. Next fall we will have even more opportunities for middle school students and their families than those currently available and we’d like to get those in place before we institute the feeder patterns.”
The previously proposed attendance areas for elementary schools and the citywide high school plan are still before the Board for approval on Sept. 28; if approved they will be implemented this Fall for 2011-12 enrollment. The delay Superintendent Garcia is suggesting will only affect current 5th grade parents seeking 6th grade placements for their children next year (yeah, I’m one too).
Tomorrow night’s meeting will be televised and streamed online — after I hear the presentation and Q&A I’ll be able to explain much better what this recommendation means and what its merits are.
Rachel Norton 
Hi, Rachel, thanks for the posting. Could I ask one thing. I know you hear from kindergarten parents about the stress of the assignment system, but middle school placement is also a very difficult process for parents, and in some ways more difficult. It is particularly difficult to sweat the “wait pool” period over the late spring and early summer. I know anecdotally more parents who, unhappy with their Round I choice, simply opt for private. For the fifth grade families who are now losing a guarantee of an assignment at their “feeder” middle school and who will now have to deal with a full choice system and possible long waits on wait lists, isn’t there some way to lessen the stress of the assignment system? In this regard, I’m wondering whether a preference could not be added simply based on the fact that the fifth grader applying for middle school is currently enrolled in a SFUSD K through 5. That would come after the sibling and CTIP 1 preferences. It would at least give those families who have demonstrated a significant commitment to SFUSD (in that their kid is now at a SFUSD K through 5) but who don’t have right now a guarantee option (like the K through 8’s have) at least some leg up in terms of gaining a middle school assignment. It seems the least that could be done at this point.