About Bridge to Success

Our Mission

Bridge to Success is a partnership among San Francisco’s public education institutions – San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), City College of San Francisco (CCSF), and San Francisco State University (SFSU). The initiative aims to increase college ACCESS & COMPLETION rates by 5% district-wide, and by 10% for African American and Latinx youth, by 2025.

Metrics of Success 

Bridge to Success Equity Stance 

San Francisco Unified School District’s Vision 2025 declares, “If our students are to retain the option to make their lives in the city in which they were raised—and, in so doing, to preserve the city’s multicultural heritage—we must ensure they graduate well-equipped to compete in the local workforce and to address the social, economic, civic and environmental challenges of life here in the mid-2020s.”

Bridge to Success contributes towards Vision 2025 by impacting college access and completion rates, particularly for SFUSD’s African American and Latinx students. In addressing African American and Latinx student success - we believe it is critical to recognize that the historical context in which the US education system was created has intentionally excluded and marginalized African American and Latinx students to varying extremes. This manifests in a myriad of ways, most notably through funding disparities and access to quality, culturally-relevant education, diminished expectations, and implicit bias. Though San Francisco is the highest achieving urban district in the state of California, it has some of the largest achievement gaps for African American and Latinx students. As Vision 2025 affirms, “these current conditions will be neither tolerated nor ignored.”

Bridge to Success re-imagines a public education system in which African American and Latinx student achievement is recognized, celebrated, and supported. We build on the spirit of W.E.B. Dubois, Chicano activists of the 1960’s, and founders of African-American and Chicano studies, who declare the ultimate goal of higher education should be the self-development of the individual and the self-determination of a people; not simply the production of a labor market to sustain an inequitable economic system.

Just as critically, we follow the lead of Dr. Shaun Harper & Dr. J Luke Wood in their work Advancing Black Male Student Success from Preschool Through Ph.D., who reminds us to “reject the zero-sum game mentality that leads many to erroneously believe that civil rights and racial equity wins for one group must result in losses for other groups.” (pg. xvii). In prioritizing African American and Latinx student success, in no way do we negate the needs of Indigenous students, Pacific Islander students, Middle Eastern students, or other ethnic groups historically and currently marginalized in the US education system. As Dr’s. Harper & Wood state, “we envision becoming a blueprint for educators who seriously commit themselves to...the most underserved Americans.” (xvii)