San Francisco public school students are sometimes sent home early, held in offices or removed from class without the records required for formal discipline, according to families, researchers and district officials. The practice leaves the district unable to say how much instructional time students lose or whether school interventions are working. Roberto Guzman Rivera said a Guadalupe Elementary administrator told him in April 2025 that his third-grade son was suspended for the rest of the day after struggling to follow classroom directions. Rivera asked for written notice but said he received none. State records show Guadalupe reported no suspensions that school year. Rivera also said his son had been taken from class on other occasions without documentation. San Francisco Unified School District officials acknowledge that discipline-related removals cannot be handled informally. Tony Payne, who leads the district’s Student and Family Services division, said a student sent home for disciplinary reasons must be suspended. The district’s guidance, issued in July, directs schools to document interventions and consequences and to send support staff into classrooms rather than routinely removing struggling students. But SFUSD does not have a districtwide system to count informal removals. Its public dashboard reports annual suspension rates, while the district’s Safe and Supportive Schools policy calls for broader reporting, including office referrals, instructional days lost and alternatives to suspension. The district has not publicly updated the Board of Education on the policy as required, according to a report by Coleman Advocates. SFUSD said it plans to provide records on referrals, removals and transfers next month after receiving a public records request. Coleman Advocates found that one unnamed school serving about 300 students recorded 3,639 office referrals in a year, which the group estimated represented roughly 1,800 hours of missed class time. The organization said its research was intended to show the cumulative effect of discipline practices, not to blame teachers. Researchers who interviewed 63 parents, educators, administrators and behavior specialists for a separate study said every teacher they spoke with knew of at least one informal practice used to remove children from class. The practices range from brief, supported breaks to lengthy time outside instruction. Researchers caution that a calm-down space can help a young student regulate emotions, but repeated or prolonged use can become exclusion. Other students may be sent home early or, in some cases, pressured to transfer to another program. SFUSD staff and researchers pointed to heavy workloads and limited support staff as contributing pressures, rather than attributing the problem to individual educators. The district’s formal discipline numbers show a persistent racial gap: about 8% of Black students were suspended in the 2025-26 school year, compared with 2% of all students. California has barred suspensions for “willful defiance” in kindergarten through third grade since 2014; SFUSD extended that restriction to every grade through its own policy, which also called for restorative practices and public discipline reporting. Statewide, California does not require teachers to document every classroom removal. Coleman Advocates argues that lost instruction compounds existing achievement gaps. In 2024-25, more than 80% of Black students in San Francisco did not meet state English standards, and about 89% fell short in math. The group cautions that removals alone do not explain those outcomes, but says incomplete discipline data makes it harder to identify which students and schools need more support. Payne said the district is trying to set clearer expectations and eventually track supportive alternatives, too. He said informal discipline is unacceptable, while acknowledging that schools currently keep their own records and that a districtwide system is lacking. Without consistent data, families and educators have little way to assess how often students are losing class time or whether the district’s approach is improving conditions in classrooms.