San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
San Francisco voters are sick of the school board’s drama
For nearly nine months, San Franciscans got a reprieve from the whacky Board of Education drama that received national mockery — until the recall of three members restored a semblance of normalcy to its affairs.
That brief respite appears to have lapsed.
This week, the new school board — now including Alida Fisher, who replaced Ann Hsu, the mayoral appointee who lost her seat in November — announced its intention to oust its president, Jenny Lam.
Lam has only served a partial term as president, during which time she has received broad support from San Francisco parents and students. In pushing to replace Lam, some board members appear committed to bringing back the uncertainty of old as their first order of business in 2023.
School board nominations for president and vice president are typically rote affairs. Only one candidate is nominated for each office, and those candidates are usually elected unanimously by their colleagues.
That tradition of collegiality ended in January 2022, when there were competing nominees for president: Gabriela López and Faauuga Moliga. The year before, Allison Collins was removed from her position as vice president over racist tweets against Asian Americans, but she remained on the board. Collins nominated López for another term as president, which López accepted. While it is typical to rotate leadership annually, board members Matt Alexander and Mark Sanchez did not object to giving López an additional term and voted for her.
Lam eventually ascended to finish the remainder of López’s second term as president after López was recalled. During this short tenure, Lam steered the board to pass a balanced budget, avoided a state takeover, hired an effective new superintendent, stewarded a schedule of good-governance training with outside experts and set a new vision for the district focused on improved student outcomes. School board votes shifted from previously divisive and dramatic 4-3 votes to nearly unanimous or unanimous votes on most issues. What used to be 10-hour marathon public meetings became calmer, shorter, focused, and quite simply, more boring.
Some board members appear committed to bringing back the uncertainty of old.
The San Francisco Unified School District still has many serious problems to tackle, from the teacher payroll fiasco to learning loss coming out of the pandemic school closures, and especially declining enrollment. The year before the pandemic, the district served over 61,000 students. Now it serves closer to 50,000. For every student who leaves the system, the district loses $10,000 in state funding.
Even under the best circumstances, reversing this trend would require years of dedicated focus from a united school board, school district and city government. Instability will make the task impossible.
As a Chinese American parent raising two kids in the city, I was especially disheartened to learn that Lam is being pushed out. She is the only Chinese American on the board, and her removal as president would be a slap in the face to the 40% of district students and 34% of San Francisco residents who are Asian American and Pacific Islander. These are the same voters who powered the recalls and made a significant impact in the November election.
Officials in San Francisco have had more than ample opportunity to gauge what the voters want. This city had never successfully recalled an elected official in over 100 years —
but we did it four times in 2022. The message was clear: San Franciscans are tired of political nonsense. They want leaders to focus on students and rebuild trust with families.
With new school board members and a new superintendent, voters affirmed a new direction for schools with the election of three public school moms who have endorsed the district’s vision for student outcomes.
Lam hasn’t yet had the chance to be elected to a full term. Her performance thus far indicates she should be given the same courtesy as former board member Stevon Cook, who was elevated to president when Hydra Mendoza stepped down in the middle of her term to take a job in New York City. Cook’s colleagues voted to give him a full term the following year.
School enrollment season is upon us, and families are deciding not only where to send their children but whether they should be going public at all. The Board of Education should not be giving residents any reason to question where their focus lies. A return to the chaotic years before the recall sends a signal to families like mine that the school board cares more about the political careers of its members than how students are doing in our schools.