San Francisco's School Board has placed an emergency meeting on their schedule for Sunday morning. The meeting's agenda has only one item listed, a "public employee performance review" for its embattled Superintendent, Matt Wayne.

San Francisco Unified School District, the district that Wayne leads, is undergoing a period of chaos and uncertainty, as the district grapples with a budget deficit projected last year to grow to over $400 million by the end of the 2025-2026 school year.

In response to the looming fiscal crisis, Wayne has implemented sweeping changes, adding up to a $103 million dollar budget reduction for this year alone.

In June, the district announced that 610 current teachers and staff are slated to be slashed over the next two years, following a previous plan that cut 900 already vacant positions. On November's ballot is a $790 million bond measure, which would be the largest bond in San Francisco history if passed.

School closures are expected to be announced in October, in response to the deficit and sharp decreases in enrollment. Wayne told KQED last month that the district currently serves about 49,000 students, down from an early 2000s peak of 60,000 students, and an amount he expects to continue shrinking.

However, despite his efforts, Wayne's future remains in the air, with criticism mounting over several critical errors that have occurred under his leadership.

This year, the district's special education department was left $20 million short on its budget, leading to legally required educators not being hired. EMPower, a mostly defective payroll system implemented mere months before Wayne took office, left teachers often unpaid or underpaid, with the district spending $40 million trying to fix it before scrapping the program altogether. Dozens of people have seen their job offers get rescinded weeks after the fact, and the district began this school year with as many as 145 teacher vacancies.

These issues have culminated in Lainie Motamedi, the former president of the school board, publicly calling for Wayne's removal earlier this week.

In an interview, Motamedi told The San Francisco Chronicle that she left her position last month because of declining health and intense frustration with Wayne's leadership. She expressed that in her view, Wayne has not offered up the correct "road map" to addressing issues she views are easily fixable, and that the district needs to "cut bait" in favor of someone who will.

“I firmly believe that quality education in our city and quality neighborhood schools that no longer require a convoluted and ineffectual assignment system is completely possible and doable in this city,” Motamedi told the Chronicle. “We have the skills, we have the tenacity. We have the resources. We just have to do the job.”

Image: San Francisco School Board Commissioner Jenny Lam via X