Mark Sanchez (politician) - Principal of Horace Mann Middle School

Principal of Horace Mann Middle School

In 2009, the San Francisco school board waived its own rules and offered Sanchez a one-year interim position as principal of Horace Mann Middle School. In order to give Sanchez the position, board members suspended a 30-year-old policy that prohibited the district from hiring or contracting with former board members within two years of the end of their term.

In March 2010, Horace Mann Middle School was put on California's 5 percent lowest-achieving schools list. Schools on the list were required to be closed, converted to charter schools, or subjected to a complete staff overhaul, including the principal. However, Sanchez was not replaced because regulations allow schools to keep principals who have been on the job two years or less.

In July 2010, Horace Mann Middle School appeared on the state Board of Education's list of 1,000 schools deemed so bad that parents have the right to transfer their children to a better school in their district or any other district.

In August 2010, a charter high school, Metropolitan Arts and Technology, began sharing the Horace Mann Middle School campus. The school was built to hold some 600 students, but enrollment in Horace Mann Middle School had dwindled to 330. Some middle school parents were uneasy about their children sharing the campus with older high school students.

In February 2011, the school district announced that Buena Vista, an elementary school with a well-regarded Spanish immersion program, would merge with Horace Mann to form a kindergarten through eight-grade school called Buena Vista Horace Mann. "We wanted to expand into a K-8," Sanchez told the San Francisco Chronicle. "There have been massive surveys of kids that show that kids feel safer in them. And they do better in testing." When the 2011-12 school year began in August 2011, Maria Dehghan became principal of the new school.