Are racist postings cause for removal?
School community split on Collins ouster
The San Francisco school board, already embroiled in the debate on when and how to reopen schools, finds itself fractured as it navigates a new controversy amid a series of crises.
The board, often unified in the past, is now split over whether one of their members should resign in the wake of racist tweets about Asian Americans even as they face several lawsuits, a departing superintendent, a recall effort, a massive budget deficit, a dip in kindergarten applications and families angry over the slow reopening of classrooms.
The path forward is not clear. On Monday, the tweet scandal involving Vice President Alison Collins — who posted the messages in 2016, before she was elected — only grew. Nearly the entire power structure of the city called for her resignation, joined by more than 1,300 people who had signed a petition urging her to step down.
The district’s entire senior staff also condemned Collins, saying she had failed to accept responsibility for her actions.
Board members Jenny Lam and Faauuga Moliga demanded Collins resign, while President Gabriela López and board members Matt Alexander and Kevine Boggess
criticized her tweets but did not ask her to step down. Board member Mark Sanchez has not commented.
The board will meet Tuesday for the first time since the controversy erupted.
The turmoil involves a school board that has prided itself on putting racial equity at the forefront of its agenda, including covering a high school mural that included images of enslaved people and slain Native Americans; changing 44 school names deemed to be offensive and eliminating meritbased admissions at the academically elite Lowell High School.
But now board members face accusations of racism from one of their own and have split over the right thing to do.
In her thread of tweets, from December 2016, Collins said Asian Americans had used “white supremacist thinking to assimilate and ‘get ahead.’ ” The string of messages, she said, was part of an effort to “combat antiblack racism in the Asian community” and “at my daughters’ mostly Asian Am school.”
Later in the thread, Collins singled out Asian Americans in recounting an incident she said had occurred in the past. She wrote that her “mixedrace/ Black daughter heard boys teasing a Latino about ‘Trump, Mexicans and the KKK.’ The boys were AsianAmerican . ... She spoke up when none of the other staff did. The after school counselor was Asian.”
Collins responded Saturday to outrage over the tweets, saying her words had been misunderstood.
“I acknowledge that right now, in this moment my words taken out of context can be causing more pain for those who are already suffering,” she wrote. “For the pain my words may have caused I am sorry, and I apologize unreservedly.”
As of Monday afternoon, more than three days after critics unearthed the 2016 tweets, the posts remained online.
Collins did not return requests for additional comment. Supporters have said Collins has consistently pushed for racial justice and stood up for the Asian American community and that the campaign to get her to resign was orchestrated by those trying to recall her and two other board members.
If she does not resign, voters could recall her, a process already initiated over school reopening and other issues for her as well as López and Moliga, but one that would take several months.
The city charter does give the mayor the authority to suspend a school board member for official misconduct, with a hearing by the Ethics Commission and a vote of threefourths of supervisors to remove them from office. It’s unclear whether city officials are looking into this.
Whether Collins’s refusal to remove the tweets or other actions would qualify as misconduct is not clear, given the original posts are from 2016 and before she took office.
Former school board member Rachel Norton, who served 12 years in the role, said she cannot remember a time of such chaos and strain in the school district.
“My fear for the board now that it’s split on this issue, is that this is a crisis of governance now,” she said. “That is a very, very perilous place for a school board facing all the issues that it’s facing.”
The board, Norton said, is isolated, with district officials issuing essentially a vote of no confidence in the vice president, and the mayor, nearly every supervisor, state Assembly members and an array of other political and community leaders calling for her to resign.
In a strange twist, the Board of Supervisors is expected to take a final vote Tuesday on a skyscraper development project that involves Collins’ real estate developer husband, which the board endorsed in its first vote.
It does not appear the final vote — which would have a positive financial impact on a school board member that supervisors have called on to resign — would pose any ethical or legal concerns, said Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who voted against the project last week.
“But it’s weird,” Peskin said. “It’s definitely small town, onlyinSanFrancisco stuff.”
Also this week, the powerful San Francisco Democratic Party, which endorses candidates and plays a lead role in city politics, could demand Collins resign following a vote Wednesday, joining several other community organizations, including the Alice B. Toklas LGBTQ and Chinese American Democratic clubs.
Nancy Tung, one of the elected Democratic party leaders who has authored the resolution calling for Collins to resign, said the school board vice president had not acknowledged her words are the problem.
“That is ultimately the most important thing to do, to understand you have your own biases that you have not recognized,” she said.
Tung questioned the response of board member Alexander, who condemned the language in the tweets and Collins’ failure to recognize bias, but did not call for her to resign.
“He wants her to continue to serve on the board and work it out,” Tung said. “You don’t do that on public time.”
Alexander defended Collins Monday, saying that while her tweets show racism against Asian Americans and she needs to show more humility, he wants her to stay on the board.
“Leadership is complex. It is more complex for a woman of color, tackling issues of race,” he wrote in a blog post. “But in Alison’s case I believe that she is a leader. And a good leader is able to listen to her critics when they deliver constructive criticism. Let’s hope that this is the beginning of that journey for Alison as a leader in San Francisco.”
Boggess said he was not calling for her resignation because, “ultimately, I believe those decisions are up to voters.”
“I do think real steps must be taken immediately by our Board in order to regain the trust of the members of the Asian American Pacific Islander community, who were harmed by the tweets, in ways that were not accomplished through (Collins’) released statement,” he said.
An online petition supporting Collins included 80 signatures, including parents and teachers, as of Monday afternoon.
“Commissioner Alison Collins has been one of the few consistent antiracist voices amongst politicians in this city,” according to the petition statement, adding she has supported Asian American and Pacific Islander students as part of her equity work. “The opportunistic targeting of Commissioner Collins distracts from the national conversation around addressing antiAAPI and antiBlack hate.”
The Collins tweet scandal and split on the board come even as the district faces multiple challenges, including a lawsuit filed by City Attorney Dennis Herrera over reopening schools, with a first hearing on it Monday, as well as litigation related to the renaming of schools and the threat of legal action over a change to Lowell High School’s admission process.
All the while, schools remain shuttered despite the vaccination of educators, declining COVID19 case rates and the devastating impact of distance learning and social isolation.
Meanwhile, the board has yet to fully grapple with the imminent departure of the superintendent in June and a budget deficit even as families are fleeing city schools. Applications for fall enrollment in district schools dropped to 13,917 students this year, down 551 from last year, with a 10% drop in kindergarten. An enrollment loss could pitch the financially unstable schools into a deeper hole in future years.
It’s unclear how many of the hundreds of previously enrolled students, some of whom left this year to attend reopened private schools or other alternatives to distance learning, will return in August.
“Families applied to schools this year with an unprecedented amount of uncertainty,” Superintendent Vincent Matthews said in a statement. “We want families to know that we are committed to offering inperson school next fall.”