Lowell High has spent years recruiting Black students. Just 7 plan to enroll as a freshman this fall

Efforts to enroll more Black students at San Francisco's premier public high school have yet to pay off, with no more than seven African American students joining the nearly 700 freshmen expected in the fall.

Lowell High School has faced criticism for its lack of diversity for decades, with its academically competitive admissions process leading to a disproportionately Asian American and white enrollment. Students have long complained of racially charged incidents as well as a lack of Black teachers.

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How to address the issue and whether to change the admissions process from a merit system to a traditional lottery is perhaps one of the school district's most contentious debates.

For years district officials have offered application help, peer support and incentives to encourage more Black, as well as brown, students to consider attending Lowell, which generally requires top grades in middle school and high standardized test scores.

That includes guaranteed admission to Lowell for students who attend Willie Brown Jr. Middle School, as long as they meet the minimum academic admission requirements, a "golden ticket" in place since 2014. The Bayview neighborhood school has historically enrolled a disproportionate number of the district's Black and brown students.

This year, 52 Black students applied to Lowell and 13 got in. Four of the 13 were assigned to another district high school they ranked higher for the fall enrollment process, and seven have said they plan to go to Lowell.

Overall, 2.1% of Lowell's 2,589 students this year identify as Black compared to 7% districtwide while 46.1% of the school's students are Asian American (26.5% districtwide), 15.3% are white (12.1% districtwide) and 15.3% are Hispanic or Latino (35.3% districtwide).

Another 10.4% identify as two or more races, which include some who identify as African American and other races or ethnicities, district officials said.

Increasing that number isn't an easy lift. It requires deciphering the needs of individual students, said Bobby Pope, partnerships manager of the district's African American Achievement and Leadership Initiative.

"The numbers are one thing," he said, "but the story that goes with the numbers is really how you get a clear picture of what was happening."

Mentors or tutors are provided for middle school students who have faced significant challenges - poverty, homelessness, trauma, foster care, family issues, immigrant backstories - which has affected learning.

But it's also about challenging the preconceived ideas Black students have about Lowell and themselves. Many are choosing not to go because they've heard about the lack of diversity, the racial issues or the stereotypes they could face at an academically rigorous school.

Senior Ivana Carroll, who is in a leadership role with Lowell's Black Student Union, wanted to go to Lowell, mostly because it was her parents' dream school.

"For me, personally, I didn't go through heavy racism here," she said, adding that some students would make racially tinged jokes or say inappropriate things. "But I don't really take it to heart … if somebody's choosing to just be ignorant, then I'm not going to stress on that."

That's part of the answer in getting more Black students to Lowell, Pope said.

"The goal is to … give them a strong sense of self and identity of who they are," he said.

But it's also critical to refine the culture and environment, "to make it safer, improve the equity, reduce the racism that is all in the world that we are."

The school has pushed Lowell student and alumni tutors into middle schools while also sending out Black and Latino/Hispanic students to school sites to do presentations about their experiences, said Lowell High Principal Jan Bautista.

She noted that 66% of the nearly 100 Black and mixed-race Black students at the school are on the honor roll.

"It's flipping that narrative of African American students' failure rates and all that," she said. "Let's look at the successes and what's going well and what is working well. Because that's where you find the power, is building on those successes and those strengths of students."

The idea is to defeat the message "that students aren't welcome here and it's too hard," she said.

Yet that thinking doesn't just plague potential students.

Kayden Buckett said he stood out amid the nearly 700 freshmen when he started at Lowell in the fall - a tall teen and one of 17 Black students in his class.

"It was weird, coming from a mostly black and Hispanic (middle) school," he said. "It was a hard transition, like walking in class, you don't see people like me in the hall. I just automatically think these people don't like me, they don't see someone like me here."

His grades plummeted. He wanted to transfer. His counselors encouraged him to stay. For now.

Freshman Legacy Bean, who attended the diverse Willie Brown Jr. Middle School, chose Lowell for the opportunities it would give him. But when he arrived in the fall, he found it presented more of a culture shock than he expected - few Black peers and other classmates nonchalantly using the N-word.

"Many people would think it's a joke when they don't really know the true history behind it," he said, "even when I would explain it to them."

He too has thought about leaving. Based on the community environment, he would probably recommend someone like him to choose another school.

"But opportunity wise, I'd say to come here for sure," Legacy said.

In the past decade, the Black freshmen class at Lowell has ranged from 1% to a high of 2.5% this year - with the exception of the two years the school switched to a lottery admissions during the pandemic.

Given the lack of test scores and widespread impact on grading, the admission process for the fall of 2022 and 2023 was not based on merit, but rather the same mostly random process used at the other large high schools in the district.

During those years, nearly 4% of Lowell's ninth graders were Black. While the school board at the time considered making the change permanent, given the increase in diversity, the ensuing uproar resulted in the recall of three board members and the return to merit admissions.

This month, the second lottery class will graduate, returning the school to a fully merit-based study body this fall.

It's possible the 2026-2027 freshmen class will have the smallest proportion of Black students in recent memory, although district officials note there were also 34 mixed-race applicants for the upcoming fall semester who identified as Black Hispanic or two or more races with Black as one, officials said. Of those students, 16 plan to attend Lowell in the fall.

It's unclear whether Kayden will be there to welcome them.

With his freshman year winding down, he said how he feels about being at Lowell is "kind of" better, "but it's kind of still the same."

The same nagging thought continues to plague him.

"I feel like I don't belong here," he said.

Still, he "might not" transfer at the end of the year because at Lowell there's "good learning, a good education," he said.

Kayden wants the word to get out that there are Black students at Lowell.

"We want them to join us," he said. "They get a better education, we get more Black students, right?"

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This story was originally published May 14, 2026 at 10:35 AM.