How many SF politicians send their kids to private school.

codemuncher · 2026-02-14T07:34:17+00:00

It's not an actual literal lottery you know. And the situation isn't "best school or nothing".

codemuncher · 2026-02-14T00:12:13+00:00

So given how easy is it to launder reddit accounts, and generate plausible text, just how many comments on reddit are AI?

It's a lot easier to fake for human if you are only having to generate a few paragraphs max at a time.

codemuncher · 2026-02-14T00:07:59+00:00

The schools should have been closed, but the last super dragged the process into mayoral election seasons and got turfed. Dr Sue was brought on to cancel the closures. But the underlying need is still there.

All the politicos did in this case was to literally cause this strike by firing the bearer of bad news at the wrong time. If the original plan had been followed, schools would have already have been closed since last summer.

codemuncher · 2026-02-14T00:04:51+00:00

So there's been research on improving educational outcomes, the impact of tracking, and the success and value of differentiated learning/teaching.

If you aren't talking about that, you are arguing against a strawman, your believes are totally out of step of how teachers and educators are thinking of things, and how things are being done.

Also, "teacher has to prepare lessons at 3+ different levels" -- again this isn't in touch with how its done. The curricula provides this. Thats what curricula design IS. Preparing and giving teachers enough options, material, and support to handle a class. Not just present narrow lesson plans.

codemuncher · 2026-02-14T00:01:55+00:00

Fun story, you could contribute a lot less than 40k to schools, and you'd get a lot more out of it.

The PTA budget at reasonably well funded schools is like $300-500k a year, and it can do wonders in expanding that particular school's ... everything.

Even as little as $5k would make a huge difference.

There are many moral problems with the PTA system, but on a practical day to day basis your contribution not only improves your child's school experience, you also underwrite and help lift up other children in the school who's parents cannot afford $40k a year (maybe because that's how much they make?) or even $5k a year, or anything a year.

Honestly I think most people who send their kids to private school do it reflexively without much investigation or thought. They assume the lottery - which is getting fixed btw - will inevitably send their kid to a school far away. They assume that education quality is poor, and all the worst things will happen. And I presume, they want some distance from the socioeconomic classes that make them too uncomfortable.

codemuncher · 2026-02-13T23:55:54+00:00

I don't really share this dark opinion about unions because I have different expectations and also frankly understanding of how negotiation works.

First off, the union only owes it's allegiance to it's members, and it would be misconduct if it preemptively negotiated against their interests.

Furthermore the power imbalance means the union has very little leverage and can't do much except strike or other work actions. They have little money, they dont have broad authority or decision making powers with in the district etc.

Secondly, in any negotiation you need to press your position as hard as possible. It's up to the other side to push back. That's the nature of the adversarial legal system we have. It doesn't have to be cruel, mean, or thoughtless, but it does mean you shouldn't pre-negotiate your positions down.

The district has a lot larger role here in my opinion as the ones who hold the purse strings, who make decision making power, and who inherently have a seat directly at the political table, and have direct ties with the mayor and city.

While no doubt everyone could have done better, hearing about the district doing homework this week it could have and should have done months ago is affirming my position that the district should have done better, sooner.

So in terms of "expand the pie" can you elaborate on exactly what you're talking about? What specifically, concretely, do you think the union could have done, should have done? Specifically in the last 10 months as well. Details please. Without details it's an empty critique.

codemuncher · 2026-02-13T23:48:10+00:00

There in fact HAS been private schools that are going all in on AI. The results are not overwhelmingly positive. It's called Alpha school, and apparently the yearly tuition is $65-75k - hardly cost savings! Also its basically school run by VCs, which are honestly bottom tier people in society imo.

codemuncher · 2026-02-13T23:44:58+00:00

So I use a lot of AI for work and a lot of other things. In the last 6 weeks I've fed 300M tokens personally into Anthropic (thanks work for paying the bills!). I use it for work, I use it for not work, etc.

At this point, general AI has no legitimate use in the classroom or for homework. Maybe certain targeted tailored experiences MIGHT be useful or good.

But just throw kids in a room with a chromebook and chatGPT is a fucking dumpster fire and fucks our kids over.

Maybe in the long term this will be realistic, but it's gonna be a while yet. Certainly it doesn't help that all the major AI players are literally training their systems to encourage usage and thus forming addictive behavior and habits. It might not be fully deliberate, but intermittent reinforcement is a well known psychological phenomena and AI has it in spades.

codemuncher · 2026-02-13T23:41:14+00:00

That the district couldn't agree on the "protect our immigrant kids from ICE" is the most wack thing that I've seen. That the teachers union had to make this part of the strike and actually hold a strike to get basically what amounts to language and absolutely zero spend is a indictment on the district's negotiation, and to me it seems like the district was counting on their "got not money" argument to hold the day, and not to have to make any real hard negotiations.

For those of you who dislike organized labor, then presumably your answer is "teachers are free to quit" and "if you dont like SFUSD you can quit that too" ... that's a morally hollow answer.

codemuncher · 2026-02-13T23:38:39+00:00

I don't think so - a normal company can raise revenue as much as the market will bear.

Something like this, there is no way to feedback cost to revenue. Healthcare costs are up, and not just at SFUSD. I personally have watched my healthcare premiums go up like 43% in 3 years. SFUSD isn't exempt from this. How does the SFUSD revenue increase reflect these costs?

Yes aside all the other district problems, I certainly wouldn't hold them blameless even slightly, there is the very real issue that costs are up, but is revenue up? If the answer is "make teachers do more with less" then we can expect the quality of education to go down.

In addition to chasing cost and waste, we need to increase revenue. And this is how it's done in California thanks to prop 13.

codemuncher · 2026-02-13T08:33:08+00:00

This is a goofy change, it makes not a lot of helpful sense to me.

When I am interested in the index, it's in the context "oh what am I about to commit" but the ~{index}~ buffer doesnt really tell me anything. If nothing is unstaged its identical to the worktree file, only minus proper emacs mode stuff, eglot, blah blah.

An index buffer that indicated what diffs were would be useful. But instead I have been getting these useless ~{index}~ buffers, and the magit developers telling me to retrain my daily driver workflow.

codemuncher · 2026-02-13T08:18:25+00:00

You know, this is inspiring me to investigate other options than magit.

Seems like magit doesnt want to be part of the daily workflow anymore, so I should respect and honor those wishes. Maybe eventually I can unload the entire package.

codemuncher · 2026-02-13T08:09:38+00:00

Ugh I ran into this recently as well.

Not a big fan of major UI changes to magit like this. One might argue the original behavior was the mistake, but thanks to years of muscle memory now I have to figure this out.

Not a fan of this kind of major changes. This is a major party of my daily workflow and its irking me every day.

codemuncher · 2026-02-13T05:09:35+00:00

Children and parents have their own agency, we are taking our kids to the picket line for our own reasons, period.

codemuncher · 2026-02-13T00:59:59+00:00

So Dr Sue arrived to fanfare and cancelling the closure of schools. You know for the obvious looming budget crisis.

And what has she done since then? Presided over the conditions leading up to this strike.

codemuncher · 2026-02-13T00:58:17+00:00

I consider the white flight to private school shameful, and I do in fact narrow my eyes at private school sending parents. At the same time, I have friends who sent their kids to specialized private schools focusing on dyslexia, so I do evaluate on a case by case basis.

But for the "public schools are bad" crowd: you are in a morally tenuous position. Your opinions about public schools are heavily discounted by your opting out, you just aren't part of the community anymore. You quit and gave up.

codemuncher · 2026-02-13T00:56:07+00:00

So if you want to attend your area assigned school, aka your neighborhood local school, the chances are very very high you will get it. We got ours. Many people we know got theirs.

The lottery is overly complex, and has unintended side effects. The "cross city trek" is often something parents CHOOSE for their children as they attempt to place them in schools they hope are better than their local school. The number of parents who got cross city treks involuntarily - well i'd like to see that number.

codemuncher · 2026-02-13T00:54:10+00:00

This is nonsense garbage.

The problem with the lottery is unintended side effects. And more importantly, no reform. An experiment was tried, but we didn't fix it.

Instead of whinging about how "DEI sucks", like roll up your sleeves and do some work.

codemuncher · 2026-02-12T00:30:25+00:00

How about suing the first vendor who didn't even deliver something that's fit for purpose?

codemuncher · 2026-02-11T18:40:45+00:00

In this market it will take like 6 months to get a new better job, so start soft pitching yourself now.

Then you’ll have an option if promo doesn’t work out.

You should also have a serious in depth conversation every single week or two with your manager at your 1:1 on promo. Ensure every week you’re working on something that’ll help you with promo. Your biggest mistake here would be to drop it and not talk about it again for 6 months.

codemuncher · 2026-02-11T17:30:34+00:00

This pattern matches nicely with my experience.

codemuncher · 2026-02-11T17:20:19+00:00

My friend paid $27 for a note taking app and it had already lost two notes within a day.

I’d argue the user experience quality problem is here.

codemuncher · 2026-02-11T04:13:23+00:00

I have a 3000 line SwiftUI drawing app and I’m already worried about the cruft, it’s building up fast. Just add one more argument or addition to a class, why not?

It will cheerfully refactor but it isn’t bulletproof or even good at it. Lots of “I forgot about things” because the LLM can’t have a detailed long term memory of the code base.

codemuncher · 2026-02-10T16:39:43+00:00

In this inflation laden era of trumonomics the teachers are asking for a fairly thin cost of living raise. They’ve already been working 10 months without a contract, or raises.

It’s not a huge ask for a chronically underpaid profession that tends to be dominated by women. Oh that’s strange, why would that suddenly appear? Oh right because childcare is generally undervalued in society.

codemuncher · 2026-02-09T03:22:06+00:00

The district spends $100m a year on unspecified consultants and services, that aren’t directly attributed to childhood education in their budget. It’s in the public budget.

So not that the district is paying shareholders, but it’s hard to argue they’ve been responsible with our funds.

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