Bert Hsu Academy to Offer Kindergarten to Eighth Grade Classes in Potrero Hill

Opening this fall, the Bertrand D. Hsu American & Chinese Bicultural Academy will offer “quality, rigorous, affordable and bicultural education” to kindergarten to eighth grade students. The school will be located at 450 Connecticut Street, a space first used as Saint Teresa of Avila Catholic Church’s elementary school that’s been home to the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine’s acupuncture and herbal clinic for the past 27 years. 

Founder and Head of School Ann Hsu worked with a broker to find a space that had an education permit, and which wouldn’t require renovation. While ACTCM is closing it’ll remain open to students who can complete their degree by Summer 2024. The Academy is negotiating with ACTCM on the possibility of retaining access to part of the space.

According to Hsu, the Academy will provide a much-needed option for parents living on the City’s east side to access quality education for their children. Many immigrant families from China move from Chinatown to neighborhoods like Visitacion Valley and Bayview once they can afford to, but children often commute to schools on the City’s west side due to a lack of local options.

Nearby elementary schools include Starr King and Daniel Webster in Potrero Hill; and Dr. Charles R. Drew College Preparatory Academy, Malcolm X Academy, and Bret Harte in Bayview. Middle schools comprise Visitacion Valley Middle School, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Academic in Portola, and Willie L. Brown Jr. in Bayview. None of these schools cover K-8 grade levels, which is available at Bessie Carmichael South-of-Market and the independent Live Oak School in the Hill.

The idea for the Academy came to Hsu last January during a strength conditioning class at the YMCA. Over the previous two years, she’d become intimately involved with her twin sons’ schooling during the pandemic. Both at Galileo Academy — one of 11 San Francisco Unified School District high schools — one boy “did fine on Zoom school” while the other was the polar opposite. 

“I asked myself how many of the 50,000 students in SFUSD are like this? I Zoomed into school board meetings, and saw lots of parents wanting to open schools, but the school board was not discussing that, or any other solution to address the Zoom school issue. Instead, they were discussing renaming schools, removing Lowell’s merit-based admissions criteria, and painting over the George Washington mural,” she said.

Hsu got involved with school board issues. She served as the Parent-Teacher Student Association (PTSA) president at Galileo Academy, and chaired the District’s Citizens Bond Oversight Committee, which is charged with review and oversight of public-school bonds. She played a prominent role in last year’s successful recall of three San Francisco Unified School District board members who were accused of neglecting priorities and budgets, amidst a delayed return to in-person school, leading outreach efforts to Chinese and other Asian voters for the pro-recall side.

Post-recall, she was appointed to the Board by Mayor London Breed, but lost her seat in last November’s general election by a margin of 0.6 percent, about 4,100 votes. 

“After November, I took a few months to fill in my background knowledge of education and politics,” said Hsu. “And what we’re doing is not working in the public schools. The environment for students, administrators and teachers has been going downhill. SFUSD is like the Titanic; huge and sinking. Adults like me are advocating for students, trying to get the water off. The kids are in the cabins, and the lifeboats are $40,000 to $60,000 a ticket. We’re left with parents who don’t know better or who can’t afford it.”

According to Hsu, of 120 SFUSD schools only two—Alice Fong Yoo and Starr King—cater to Chinese students, who she considers have “historically been ignored. About 25 percent of the 48,000 students in the SFUSD are Chinese, and that’s not counting biracial kids. Around half are recent immigrants whose parents don’t speak English well; the other half are American-born Chinese, who want their kids to learn Chinese.”

Two private schools in San Francisco offer Mandarin immersion:  Presidio Knolls School and Chinese American International School. Tuition at each approaches $40,000. 

For Hsu, what’s missing from these schools is a marriage of Chinese and American education, beyond language skills. 

“Today what’s happening is creativity and critical thinking in a vacuum, without a core base of knowledge. Too much feeling, not enough thinking. The Chinese approach focuses on knowledge acquisition and skills mastery, memorization and repetition. While good, it’s not an approach you want for the rest of your life. The American approach focuses on critical thinking and creativity; but, if you don’t have a core base of knowledge, it’s hard to think critically,” said Hsu. 

Hsu attended middle and high school in Erie, Pennsylvania after finishing elementary school in Beijing. She brought her sons to Shanghai for elementary school, reproducing her own academic experience. 

The Academy is named after Hsu’s father, Bertrand D. Hsu, a bilingual and bicultural Chinese American who designed the first car in modern China in 1958, was awarded General Electric Engineer of the Year in 1984 and was a Fellow at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. The Academy touts three distinguishing features: integration of traditional direct instruction with creative inquiry-based approaches; American and Chinese bilingual and bicultural education, including Chinese and American history; and a community hub to engage students, parents, grandparents and other community members.

“We want to go broader and deeper,” said Hsu. “We’ll bring the broader culture into the school, so parents don’t need to pay extra for that exposition.”

Chinese martial arts, folk dances and sports will count as physical education; Chinese classical books, Chinese arts, such as calligraphy, and traditional Chinese medicine, will also be studied. By incorporating these classes into the curriculum Hsu aims to alleviate the transportation hassle and cost associated with typical after-school programs. She plans to invite service providers on site, to offer enrichment activities that aren’t included in school programming.

Hsu believes that students should gain proficiency not only with Western attitudes, but with Chinese philosophies like Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism, along with Chinese and American history. 

“Given US-China tensions, we need to teach our young people about Asian American and Chinese history, and their place in the world. After you drop off the kids, you can stay; either volunteer in the classroom to help with reading in Chinese, chaperone field trips, teach tai chi, or work in the garden,” said Hsu. 

The garden was part of ACTCM’s campus and will remain in place at the Academy.

A key partnership will be with the Chinese Hospital, located at in Chinatown. 

“Starting in middle school, we’ll bring students to the hospital to visit with seniors, while exposing them to various roles in the healthcare system. In addition to internships and volunteering, we’ll invite the hospital community to come to school to give classes on heart health and other topics, to benefit our school community’s parents and grandparents.”

Bert Hsu Academy’s tuition is $18,000 a year, which includes lunches and summer programming. The nonprofit, K-8 private school can accommodate 20 students per grade. The only admission criteria are that students sign a contract to learn, and parents commit to support the student and the school.

The deadline for formal applications was June 16, followed by evaluations and interviews. Students will be accepted on a rolling basis. Open houses and tours will take place in August.