Howard S. Cohen. Ed.D.

Welcome to all students, parents, teachers, staff, and community members to the 2009-2010 school year. I am honored to have been chosen as Superintendent to serve the South San Francisco Unified School District. South San Francisco schools have a very rich and deep history of community pride and engagement. I have had the opportunity to meet many teachers, staff, administrators and South San Francisco City Officials who attended South San Francisco schools and have returned to provide service to their home community. I am fond of saying that South San Francisco is the biggest small town I have had the privilege to serve.

I have had the opportunity to visit all South San Francisco Unified School District school sites and many classrooms since the beginning of the school year and I find the students to be respectful, studious and highly motivated to learn. Our teachers are engaged with their classes and have been hard at work since the opening of our schools. South San Francisco Unified School District administrators are highly dedicated and committed to their schools. I find that school and district staff members are friendly, hard working and service oriented.

My commitment to you is to build upon the successes that the South San Francisco Unified School District, the Board of Trustees and the staff have created; working with parents, community and employees to do all we can to prepare students to be successful. As wonderful and effective as our past has been, we have much hard work ahead of us in order to meet and exceed the challenges faced by our students, staff, parents and community.

Our District is in Year 2 of not making Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). The AYP is how the Federal Government measures the number of our students who are scoring Proficient or Advanced on the annual California Standards Test. The data shows that all of our schools are challenged, in particular, with meeting the learning needs of English Learners, Special Education students, and students considered to be in the low socio-economic class....continued 

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell offers parents his Top 10 back-to-school tips to help ease students back into the love of learning following the long summer recess. Parents and Guardians click on the following link to learn more about O’Connell’s Top 10 Tips!

SACRAMENTO — State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell today encouraged families with college-bound students to take advantage of CollegeWeekLive – a free, online resource to help students search for an appropriate college or university.

"In these tough economic times, families may have a difficult time visiting all the colleges or universities across the country that their children are interested in attending," said O'Connell. "Now they can narrow their search and save a lot of time and money by using a free, online resource called CollegeWeekLive. I encourage families to consider using this Web resource in addition to searching the Internet or visiting higher education facilities to get information, so they may compare facilities." Continued...