Thomas Laursen knows the value of San Francisco’s education system.
The San Francisco native, who spent much of his childhood in Ingleside Terraces, is the associate manager of volunteer engagement for the San Francisco Education Fund, a nonprofit that supports the city’s public schools. For the last 12 years, he has helped the SF Ed Fund provide tutoring and literacy programs, grants for teachers and organize volunteers.
Laursen has marshaled these resources to schools throughout the Ocean View-Merced Heights-Ingleside area, including Sheridan Elementary, a school that Laursen said wasn’t on the organization’s radar until he joined.
“I was able to get things to the point where one year there were more volunteers at Sheridan than any other school in the school district, and that's not the case now, but we have this solid core of volunteers who've been there seven or eight years,” Laursen said. “I'm really proud of that. It wasn't on anyone's map just because the neighborhood is not on anyone's map, and now they know, and I love the neighborhood.”
When Laursen, 62, isn’t corralling volunteers, he can be found gardening, caring for his pets, including a tortoise and a four-foot-long lizard, biking, kayaking and spending time with his wife, Susan.
The Ingleside Light caught up with Laursen to learn about the SF Ed Fund and volunteering.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How did you end up at the San Francisco Education Fund?
I got laid off from the job [as a corporate trainer], and I thought, “OK, well, what do I want to do? I don't think I want to do corporate training again.” And I was just looking for job postings, and there was one from the Botanical Garden, and I've always loved plants — I’ve gardened for 50 years — so I thought, “OK, well, my jobs have all been people-interfacing jobs, and this is the Botanical Garden, I've been there many times.” So I applied for the job. It was one of those things where you have the skills that they're looking for, not necessarily the background in doing that work, so it worked out really, really well.
That was my experience with managing volunteers. Just right away, it was a fit. Sometimes you step into a job and think, “Wow, this is just the perfect fit.” I did that for 12 and a half years, and then I did some other things for a while that I thought, “I want to get back into volunteer management.” There was a job posting for the education fund, and I knew that they had at one point been called San Francisco School Volunteers. It was actually a merger. I volunteered for them because I had thoughts over the years of wanting to be a teacher. Because I didn’t think I'd be too good at [being a teacher] and education is so important to me, when I saw there was an education-based nonprofit and they're looking for someone to manage their volunteer program, I knew it would be a good fit.
What does a typical workday look like for you?
I'm not able to get out to the schools as much as I'd like because we have to do a lot of recording. We're training volunteers. Just last night, we had a training for 45 people who signed up, and 33 showed because, as volunteers, they're working with students. They have to be cleared, so they have to get fingerprinted. They have to be TB tested because for us, for the district, the safety of the students is paramount, and then we help them find a placement in a classroom. I spend a lot of time with those steps in the process — contacting teachers for volunteers, talking to volunteers. But all of that has to be recorded. I spend a lot of time in front of a computer too, just doing data entry on all of that. When I have a chance to meet with a volunteer, or if we have our volunteer recognition event, or some opportunity where we can bring volunteers in to meet personally, that's really, that's the fun part.
How do you feel about San Francisco’s current education system? A lot is going on, like the soon-to-open new Mandarin language school, the AI school, and ongoing budget issues.
Over the 12 years that I've been doing this and meeting lots of teachers along the way, the SFUSD school staff is amazing. They're really, really dedicated to what they do, and I'll bring up Sheridan again just because I know the school better than most. The principal at Sheridan was a teacher there, so she's been at that school for probably 30 years. I was talking with one of the teachers just the other day. He's been teaching for 31 years. I don't know how many in Sheridan, but you have very experienced teachers in school, and every teacher really, really cares. That's what I think is so neat: When you love what you're doing, [the students] can sense it. I mean, there are just so many amazing stories, but the school staff is incredible.
What’s one piece of advice you have for someone who wants to get into volunteering?
Just do it. We can't guarantee it's going to be the greatest experience in the world, but you can't find that fit any other way than just doing it. Find some time in your schedule for something you're really excited about.
