San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Heather Knight: Parent advocacy group to keep up fight for school safety, board productivity as students return to school.
San Francisco’s public schools have long been run by central office administrators and school board members. But when the COVID-19 pandemic struck and those groups let parents down big time — brushing off their concerns about distance learning harming their children — parents found a group that wanted to listen. They found each other.
Parent advocacy group Decreasing the Distance — founded in the thick of the pandemic— drew thousands of fellow fed-up parents to sign petitions demanding
schools reopen safely, attend protests, advocate on social media and call in to endless and endlessly frustrating school board meetings to voice their discontent.
Supporters, including Mayor London Breed, hailed their advocacy in a city that was among the last in the country to welcome back any of its students — and will only now, on Monday, fully open middle schools and high schools for the first time in 17 months. Opponents, including some school board members and teachers union leaders, waved them off as adversarial complainers. But, let’s be real, when it came to the school district, there was a lot to complain about.
The group became so controversial, somebody even hurled eggs at parents and kids marching near City Hall on the first anniversary of schools closing.
Well, this parent group doesn’t consider its work complete just because San Francisco has finally decreased the distance between kids and their teachers. In fact, it’s only just begun. The group has formed a nonprofit called the San Francisco Parent Coalition. It will have a paid staff after it finalizes funding from undisclosed education foundations. It has a fiscal sponsor in Community Initiatives, which will provide infrastructure like human resources and payroll support. It has an impressive and diverse board of directors. It has members from 85 schools and is seeking more; membership is free.
And it intends to ensure parents play a far bigger role in district decision making — like, for example, making sure the district communicates with parents before making unilateral changes such as its recent overhaul of scores of school start times and early dismissals on Wednesdays with no parent input.
“There was something missing in San Francisco, and that is parents’ voices,” said Yvette Byes Edwards, a board member and mother of two boys in the district. “We answer only to our children. We answer to no one else.”
That’s how the coalition differs from the Parent Advisory Council, a group of parent volunteers that’s supposed to advise the school board, but can only participate if members get preapproved by the same people they’re supposed to advise.
The school board in February famously rejected the nomination of Seth Brenzel, a gay dad who would have been the Parent Advisory Council’s only man and only member of the LGBTQ community. The board declined to appoint him because he’s white and the 10-member council already had three other white people. Nobody else applied.
Well, Brenzel is now a board member for the San Francisco Parent Coalition instead. He’s also pulled his daughter from the school district, and she will start fifth grade at a private school. He said he still wants to help the school district improve because all San Franciscans should care about the public schools, not just those who have kids in them.
“There’s so much work to be done, and we should be uniting and working together,” he said.
Parents for Public Schools is another nonprofit in San Francisco, but it mostly seeks to help families navigate the confusing enrollment process and stays out of politics.
I met most of the new coalition’s board members outside the school district headquarters on Franklin Street the other day, as school board members arrived for a meeting. The parents and board members, who’ve clashed repeatedly in the past year, said hello, and the coalition said it wants to work with everyone who puts kids’ needs first. Whether that commitment goes the other way remains to be seen. Board President Gabriela López didn’t return a request for comment. Neither did a spokesperson for the school district.
Faauuga Moliga, vice president of the school board, said he always welcomes more parental involvement.
“I appreciate the work they did as Decreasing the Distance, and I look forward to working with them as the San Francisco Parent Coalition,” he said.
Cassondra Curiel, president of the United Educators of San Francisco, said, “We would hope that the rebranding and move to permanency indicate a commitment to work collaboratively with all students, families and educators, which would be a refreshing shift.”
Many parents are die-hard supporters. Chanel Blackwell, whose son, a 10th-grader, hasn’t been inside a classroom since March, 2020, said he didn’t pay attention in Zoom school, spent his time playing video games and grew sad.
When Blackwell learned about Decreasing the Distance, she formed a chapter of sorts at her son’s school, learning how to read up on the latest public health guidelines and speak at school board meetings. “They showed me how to get stuff done,” Blackwell said.
The coalition’s to-do list is long. The group will weigh in on who should be the new superintendent to replace Vince Matthews, who’s retiring and with whom the group meets monthly.
Members also want to help to ease the shortage of aftercare slots, bridge the academic achievement gap and curb the enrollment drop.
Beth Kelly, another public school mom and member of the coalition, keeps an eagle eye on the district’s enrollment and budget documents. In February, Moody’s downgraded the district’s bond ratings and called its financial outlook “negative” in part because of poor governance.
“There needs to be structural reform of SFUSD, and nobody’s thinking about it,” Kelly said. “And all the while, they’ve been denigrating parents and totally disregarding them.”
“There’s so much work to be done, and we should be uniting and working together.”
Seth Brenzel, board member of the San Francisco Parent Coalition
Edwards knows that denigration well. She said she was shocked by the opposition toward Decreasing the Distance, particularly those on social media who claimed only white parents wanted their kids back in the classroom. Edwards is Black and saw her sons struggle academically and emotionally during the pandemic.
“It got wildly, unexpectedly political,” Edwards said. “Conversations related to race, class and sometimes the nastiness directed at us was something I don’t think I’ve ever experienced in my entire adult life.”
The coalition has formed so it will have the ability to make political endorsements, but it hasn’t taken a stand on the recall attempt of three school board members. That campaign has now gathered 51,500 signatures, just slightly more than the required number to get on the ballot. But it’s unlikely all of those are valid, and the group seeks to collect 19,000 more signatures by its deadline of Sept. 7.
The coalition said it will educate voters about school board candidates, but all members recoiled when asked if they personally would run.
“Next question!” joked Cliff Yee, a board member and father of two kids in the district.
There’s time for that. First, they’re focused on a safe and successful return to the classrooms for all students. It’s been a long time coming.