JJSE’s student body of about 250 students lives primarily in San Francisco’s southeast neighborhoods, where young people confront powerful socio-economic obstacles to academic success. These neighborhoods—the Excelsior, Visitacion Valley, Bayview/Hunters Point, and the Mission—are all working-class and low-income, with some of the highest concentrations of families with children in the city. At the same time, many of these communities are experiencing rapid gentrification, which is forcing long-time residents to leave the city and undermining community-based efforts to stem rising crime and violence. For example, San Francisco’s Black population, concentrated in Bayview/Hunters Point, declined from 96,000 in 1970 (13% of San Francisco residents) to 51,000 (only 7%) in 2006. And in 2007, 25% of the San Francisco’s homicides took place in the Bayview, which has about 5% of the city’s population.

The demographics of JJSE’s student body reflect the communities in which our students live. For example, in 2008-09, 62% of JJSE students were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, the second-highest rate among city high schools. The vast majority of our students will be the first in their family to attend college. Approximately 15% of JJSE students are classified as special education students (including two Special Day Classes), and approximately 16% are classified as English language learners. Moreover, JJSE serves the second highest percentage of African-American students of any non-continuation high school in the city, and a much higher share of Black and Latino students than other SFUSD high schools:

June Jordan School for Equity
Latino 46%
Black 33%
Chinese 6%
Filipino 6%
White 4%
Other 7%

All SFUSD High Schools
Latino 21%
Black 12%
Chinese 37%
Filipino 6%
White 9%
Other 15%