For nearly a quarter century, SFUSD has assigned students to schools through a lottery system — a mechanism that was supposed to promote equity and choice but has instead become a symbol of a district that loves process more than outcomes.

Now, as District 2 school board candidates weigh in on whether the lottery should stay or go, the bigger question is one nobody in the district seems eager to answer: does it even matter how you assign kids to schools if the schools themselves are struggling to function?

Let's be real about where SFUSD stands. The district has spent the last several years teetering on the edge of a state takeover because it simply cannot balance its books. Teachers have received pink slips in back-to-back years. Resources are perpetually described as "lacking." One local parent put it bluntly: "Budgets are tight. The district has spent the last couple of years trying to avoid a state takeover because they can't get it out of the red."

The bureaucratic dysfunction runs deep. One SF resident shared that a friend who works at a middle school in the Richmond District waited three months just to get his classroom keys. Three months. To open a door. That's not a quirky anecdote — it's a symptom of an institution that has lost the plot.

And here's the libertarian case against the lottery in a nutshell: when you strip families of meaningful choice and funnel kids through a centralized randomization process, you remove the competitive pressure that might actually force underperforming schools to improve. Families with means flee to private schools or — as one blunt Bay Area resident suggested — "consider San Mateo County school districts; they are better funded and better organized." The families left behind get whatever the lottery hands them.

The District 2 candidates should absolutely debate assignment policy. But let's not pretend that rearranging the lottery algorithm fixes a district that can't hand a teacher his keys in under 90 days. SFUSD doesn't need a better shuffle — it needs fiscal discipline, administrative accountability, and the humility to admit that 24 years of this experiment haven't delivered the results San Francisco's kids deserve.

Fix the schools first. Then we can talk about how to sort kids into them.