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The San Francisco School of the Arts, renamed the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts in 2010, is a four-year public high school founded by Ruth Asawa and others. SOTA's arts-intensive program within a regular academic context was modeled after NYC's School of Performing Arts, with the Artists-in-Residence concept inherited from the Alvarado Arts Workshop. An arts/alternative magnet school was first discussed in the early 1970s, and Ruth wrote a proposal for a High School For The Creative Arts in 1976, but it really took until Myra Kopf's election to the Board of Education in 1980 for real planning to begin. An ad hoc committee met for a year and a half, and in September 1982 SOTA began with a ninth grade class, adding a class each year until June 1986's first graduating class of 65 seniors.

As a public school, it relied on San Francisco Unified's administrative support, and SFUSD's well-chronicled difficulties in the 80s and 90s were SOTA's too. To assist with the guiding and fine-tuning of the school's mission, the SOTA Task Force was charged in 1987, and the Laniers were active members. The SOTA Foundation developed from the Alvarado Arts Workshop, in large part to manage fundraising for SOTA. Support came mostly from philanthropic foundations, as well as the NEA, California Arts Council, and local organizations. Ruth was on the Foundation Board from 1980 to 1988 with six years as president. After leaving the foundation, Ruth mostly devoted her SOTA efforts to fundraising and independent site planning.

SOTA had begun by sharing a campus and many classes with McAteer High School, but in 1985 a concerted effort had begun to find an independent site (one in fact that continues today). In 1992, the district approved a move to 700 Font Boulevard, an unused elementary school across from San Francisco State University. To alleviate some of the moving expenses, students and staff volunteered to renovate the space themselves. The location's proximity to SFSU had advantages, but its remoteness and limited size were problematic. Within a few years, Superintendent Bill Rojas promised SOTA a site at the former SFUSD headquarters at 135 Van Ness, a location central to the Arts District which the school had long campaigned for. After innumerable hurdles, including lawsuits, rising costs, and endless meetings, reports, and disagreements, SOTA in the end chose to return to 555 Portola Drive after McAteer was dissolved in 2002.

Asawa's SOTA files are relatively comprehensive and there are many copies of correspondence and memoranda that she was not directly involved with. They are chronological for the most part, except for separated administrative files, class files, printed material related to performances and events, Albert Lanier's 135 Van Ness dossier, and others.

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Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts

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