San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
A toxic tally of ruined school careers
When San Francisco school board member Alison Collins sued her colleagues and her own district for $87 million, she described how they “sprinted to judgment” before coming after her, voting to strip her of her vice president title and committee memberships.
Using dramatic language interspersed with poems, biblical passages and accusations of racism, her March lawsuit detailed how the vote — a response to comments Collins made on social media attacking Asian Americans — had harmed her career, reputation and enjoyment of life while causing anxiety, fear, embarrassment and “spiritual injury to her soul.”
About 2,500 miles from San Francisco, in Oaxaca, Mexico, Patricia Theel could only marvel at the irony. Someone had come after Theel, directly causing her, she said, to lose two jobs she loved, the first as principal of Francisco Middle School in North Beach and then in the district’s special education department. She lost income, credit toward retirement and even her relationship after she became so miserable that her partner left her.
That someone was Alison Collins, first as a parent with unusual power at Francisco, then as an elected board mem
ber.
“It’s been four years, and it still hits me,” Theel said in a phone interview, her voice cracking as she cried. “She ruined my life.”
Theel was one of three San Francisco Unified School District employees who told me Collins took an active role in costing them their jobs, for reasons they didn’t fully understand. They described how she complained incessantly and couldn’t be satisfied. Several other former district officials, a former board member and another parent said Collins bullied and berated them, often publicly. And in 2017, Collins seemed to boast in a tweet that she was responsible for Theel’s firing.
“This is about a bully. She’s her own worst enemy,” said John Calloway, who led the elementary instrumental music program for the district’s visual and performing arts department until last year, when he learned his contract wouldn’t be extended at the board’s behest. “She’s really good at playing the histrionics game and really good at playing the victim.”
The accusations come after Collins spent a year playing a big role in sideshows that distracted from the district’s No. 1 job of getting students back in class, not to mention dealing with its looming budget crisis and enrollment drop. The district now faces lawsuits or legal threats over issues including renaming schools and changing the way kids are admitted to Lowell High.
If the school year has felt like one big soap opera, that’s in part because Collins, who was elected in November 2018, made herself one of the stars. But what most San Franciscans don’t know is that she’s long been a divisive figure behind the scenes, causing strife at her two daughters’ schools and in the central office for years. Now, her stunning lawsuit has prompted people to speak out.
Former school board member Rachel Norton described Collins as “very passionate about her work and her views,” but added that she “sometimes has less awareness of how that lands with others . ... People expressed feeling scared of her.”
Collins declined an interview for this column, saying she couldn’t comment on personnel matters. Sent numerous detailed questions via email, she responded with a statement.
“Like many parents, I have high expectations for our public schools,” she wrote. “People know I am an educator and effective community organizer who understands what safe and supportive schools look like, and when district practices and state laws are being broken. “While my advocacy has brought to light these and other issues,” she said, “it is up to District leadership and ultimately the Superintendent, to investigate parent concerns and ultimately make staffing decisions that best carry out SFUSD’s mission.”
A school district spokesperson declined to comment on Theel losing her job or almost anything else related to this column.
Before her time on the board, Collins, who has a master’s in education, worked several short stints in SFUSD and at nonprofit organizations, focusing on antibullying programs, curriculum design, peer tutoring and parent engagement, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Collins’ supporters say her top priority of ensuring equity among all students in the city’s public schools is essential work — and that her intensity and directness, too, are sometimes necessary.
The Rev. Amos Brown, president of the San Francisco chapter of the NAACP, is a vocal backer of Collins and said her focus on racial equity is important in a city with a shrinking Black population — now just 5% — and a stubborn academic achievement gap between Black students and their peers.
“She’s not bashful about speaking the truth about discrimination, and that’s a plus,” Brown said. “People don’t want to hear the truth. They don’t want people who will speak truth to power. They want people who will kowtow to them.”
But Collins’ unwillingness to back down has hurt her. She hasn’t deleted the string of racist tweets from December 2016 that a proponent of a recall campaign against her unearthed. The tweets made broad generalizations about Asian Americans and said many of them “use white supremacist thinking to assimilate and get ahead.”
Collins wrote on social media that the tweets were taken out of context and in her lawsuit that “her seasoned social metaphors” were “aimed at uniting all marginalized, colonized and racially oppressed people against racism.”
Her colleagues stripped her of her title and committee memberships, and she responded with the $87 million suit against the cashstrapped district. A district spokesperson confirmed officials have been served papers, meaning the suit is moving ahead.
“It just makes me so angry, the hypocrisy,” Theel said. “So it happens to you and now you get to turn around and sue for an exorbitant amount of money, but the rest of us, we’re screwed.”
Collins’ daughters started sixth grade at Francisco Middle School on Aug. 15, 2016 — and almost immediately, Theel felt Collins was out to get her. Collins sent long complaints over email, demanded oneonone meetings and proposed major changes within weeks.
Theel still has scores of emails from Collins and shared them with The Chronicle.
Less than two weeks after school opened, Collins became concerned that Francisco’s new counselor hadn’t introduced himself to the community. On Aug. 24, she sent Theel a letter she’d drafted in the counselor’s name, suggesting that Theel send it to all the parents as if it was from him.
By Sept. 12, Collins had filed complaints with the central office about students using profanities. An Oct. 3 email from Collins to Theel was cc’d to four of Theel’s superiors and Collins’ husband, real estate developer Chris Collins.
The 25paragraph email said Theel had been dismissive of her
and proposed a host of changes, including implementing a new antibullying curriculum. Collins suggested one she had experience with, when she led workshops for teachers as a consultant, or a similar program that looked at bullying in the context of social justice.
Theel said she declined to replace the districtvetted curriculum for which teachers were already trained, prompting Collins to carry hers on to campus and try giving it directly to teachers, a move one teacher confirmed to me.
Collins also accused Theel of running the school site council in violation of the committee’s bylaws. The councils are committees of parents and staff that plan for a school’s needs. The central office started an investigation that turned up nothing improper, according to Theel and the president of the Parent Teacher Organization. A district spokesperson did not respond to questions about the investigation.
In her blog on racial equity in schools and in social media posts, Collins expressed dissatisfaction with the school administration, saying among other things that Theel and Kristen Vogel, the assistant principal, excluded families and teachers from giving input on school discipline policies.
Vogel, now a principal in Santa Rosa, said she left at the end of the 201617 school year because Collins made the school’s atmosphere so toxic.
She said she received numerous complaining emails from Collins and held several meetings with her to understand her concerns.
“It felt like an ongoing attack, and you never knew why,” Vogel said. “She slandered both Patricia and I by name on Facebook. She’s a public figure and now she’s suing for the same thing she’s done? There’s a little spiritual injury to my soul, too, and I’m not suing anybody.”
Vogel said she saw Collins circling the campus in her sport utility vehicle so many times it became “creepy.” She said she had never encountered a parent like Collins. “And I’ve been in education for 18 years.”
Vogel said it was well known Collins wanted Theel fired, but she never understood why, describing Theel as a good principal who cares deeply about kids — visiting a boy in the hospital, for example, and taking in a former student who’d become homeless.
Teresa Dal Santo, the president of the Parent Teacher Organization at Francisco at the time, said Theel was a very effective principal — and wasn’t the only one Collins criticized.
Collins regularly told staff and other parents what they were doing wrong, but rarely offered to help, Dal Santo said. She recalled buying 10 pizzas once for a PTO meeting before pulling up in her “20yearold Ford Taurus station wagon that smells like pizza eternally.” Collins, she said, pulled in next to her without offering to help carry the food.
“She floats in and says, ‘Are we having pizza again? Is that ethnically correct?’ ” Dal Santo said. “I told her, ‘You find a caterer, and I’ll pay for it. We can have any food you want.’ It never happened.”
The incident that prompted Collins’ tweets about Asian Americans occurred that November when her daughter told her about racist statements made by Asian American boys after school.
Theel said — and Collins’ lawsuit confirms — that Collins asked for a restorative justice circle, a discussion in which participants talk about how to repair the harms caused by an incident.
The afterschool program held the circle on a later day, but Collins’ daughter did not attend, according to Theel and other people who worked at the school.
Theel was due to receive a threeyear contract in spring 2017 and thought she had earned it. She showed me several letters of recommendation from her central office bosses, praising her inclusivity and cultural sensitivity. She’d cut suspensions by using restorative practices to address disputes and started a program to help students with emotional difficulties, the letters said.
But the central office didn’t offer Theel the contract extension. Collins later suggested she had been behind the decision.
In August 2017, Collins responded to a tweet asking Black women to share their most memorable experience with “#WhiteFemaleAggression.” Collins tweeted that “WW Principal,” referring to a “white woman,” had said a committee Collins wanted to join was full.
“I printed screenshots of our email conversation and handed out copies to our Board of Ed,” Collins continued. “Let’s just say, she is no longer principal.” She added a winking emoji.
Emails provided by Theel, though, show a fairly standard exchange in which Theel told Collins the committee was full. Theel added that there were other opportunities for Collins to participate. Theel said she interpreted the tweets as meaning that Collins got her fired.
Theel said she was devastated to leave Francisco. She took a lowerpaying job in the central office’s special education department, which will reduce her retirement pay. The stress drove her and her partner apart, and he moved out. She struggled to pay her mortgage.
But she wound up liking her new job and earned a promotion. Again, in spring 2019, she was up for a threeyear contract. Again, she had great letters of recommendation.
The contract went to the school board — which would typically rubberstamp such a request — where it was killed in closed session. Collins was a school board member by then, and Theel said she was told Collins had persuaded three colleagues to reject the contract because Theel didn’t work well with parents.
“I was just shocked,” Theel said. “I couldn’t believe she was allowed to come back at me a second time.”
A school district spokesperson declined to answer questions about why Theel’s contracts weren’t extended or to arrange an interview with Superintendent Vince Matthews.
Board President Gabriela López also didn’t respond to a request for an interview. Vice President Faauuga Moliga, a former ally of Collins whom she blasted at a recent meeting after he was nominated to replace her as vice president — she said he undermined women and tweeted too much — said he couldn’t comment on personnel issues.
Theel used all of her sick days after the vote, then got a partially paid sabbatical. She’s in Mexico studying Spanish and relaxing at the beach.
Other administrators and teachers say Collins pushed them out for no good reason.
Calloway, the arts administrator who worked in the school district for 33 years, said Collins expressed concerns about equity in the music program. He said he tried hard to rectify them, including by purchasing 1,000 instruments so no children had to rent them. The Grammynominated musician also started an arts festival in BayviewHunters Point. But nothing seemed good enough.
He said that when the board called him into a meeting in 2019 to answer questions about the music program, Collins leveled a series of attacks, appeared to have her mind made up that the music program wasn’t equitable, and didn’t engage him in a conversation.
“It felt like I was in King Joffrey’s court in ‘Game of Thrones,’ ” he said. “I felt it was an
inquisition, and I couldn’t fully counter or speak.”
Calloway said the board made it clear his contract wouldn’t be extended, so his bosses in the central office didn’t put it forward for a vote. He retired in July 2020. He and others said the board, fueled by Collins, criticized the visual and performing arts department and its leaders for not being focused enough on equity. He said it was clear Collins wanted to get rid of the department’s leaders.
He said that, as a Black and Filipino man, he doesn’t see antiBlack racism as the reason so many people have taken issue with Collins’ tweets and her lawsuit, as some of her backers say.
“This isn’t about race,” he said. “This is about an intolerant person who hurt herself because of personality conflicts.”
Collins’ backers disagree. At a rally on the district steps the day she filed suit, supporters said she’s been targeted because she is Black and advocates for Black students.
Joseph Thomas, 17, credited Collins’ support for making him “a strong Black man.”
“Alison Collins is a strong Black woman. She is powerful. She is intelligent,” he said during the rally. “She is here for all communities.”
But those she’s tussled with over the years say it’s not always clear what she’s aiming for or why she’s attacking them.
Former school board member Emily Murase said that, several years ago, Collins grew concerned about racism at Lowell High. Murase offered to broker a meeting between Collins and parent leaders at Lowell, and was shocked when Collins lambasted her at a board meeting.
“Alison Collins comes to the microphone to lodge allegations of racism and points to me — singled me out — and said, ‘You, Emily Murase, are the problem!’ ” Murase recalled.
Missy Mastel, thenpresident of the Lowell Parent Teacher Association, attended that meeting and confirmed Murase’s account, adding, “We were all taken aback.”
Rob Daniels, who worked in the district for 24 years as a music teacher and then as the director of visual and performing arts, said he encountered Collins years ago when her daughters attended Jean Parker Elementary in North Beach.
She complained about their music teacher and that it took too long to carry instruments into the classroom. He said he met with Collins several times, reassigned the teacher and purchased instrument storage cabinets for the classroom, but she still wasn’t satisfied.
She complained that letters to parents about the instrumental music program weren’t translated into enough languages, so he translated them into more languag
es. She needed a deep data dive about the program, so he hired extra clerical staff to compile it. She demanded the department’s website have all the arts and music curriculum in different languages, so he hired a web developer.
“I looked at my boss a million times and asked, ‘What is going on?’ ” he said. “I spent the last two years of my career doing things just because she asked for them. As a parent.”
One summer, Daniels ran an arts program at Everett Middle School in the Mission District. Collins asked that her daughters be admitted, he said, and he complied. Then she asked that their friends be placed in the same classes, which were already full. When Daniels’ secretary explained to Collins that enrollment was first come, first served, Collins complained to Daniels’ boss about the secretary, Daniels said.
The friends were admitted, but Collins’ daughters never showed up, Daniels said.
“She brought my staff to tears because of her rudeness,” Daniels said.
Daniels received an award from the school board for his work in 2018. But when Collins was elected, he said, he seemed to fall out of favor. She learned that he’d hired a web developer for the website changes she had requested at a cost of $30,000.
“She thought that was horrific that we couldn’t find somebody in our own department or that I couldn’t do it myself,” he said. “I was like, ‘Lady, I play the piano!’ I don’t know how to do that.” By March 2019, he was a goner. The school board, in closed session, did not renew his contract even though his bosses recommended it.
“I was shocked,” Daniels said. “I was given no reason at all.”
He said his early removal will cost him $600 a month in retirement benefits and that his blood pressure spiked for months because of the stress.
Jill Wynns, who served for 24 years on the school board before losing her seat in the 2016 election, said board members over the years have rejected contract extensions supported by the superintendent and his deputies in a few cases, but that the practice was rare.
Superintendent Matthews’ new contract forbids the board from interfering in the hiring and firing of staff. He agreed to stay in his role for one more year only if the board approved new contract language including “treating everyone with civility and respect” and voting on senior staff contracts in public rather than behind closed doors.
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William Hack, who retired as a supervisor for visual and performing arts last year, said Collins created a “hostile environment,” but that staff members were too scared to push back.
“They don’t want their contracts not renewed,” he said. “They have families and rent to pay and mortgages to pay, and they love their jobs.”
Other administrators questioned why Collins had so much power. Susan Stauter, a retired artistic director for visual and performing Arts, said Collins’ distaste for a beloved, decadeslong student festival at the Asian Art Museum seemed to spell its end in 2019.
“It just got smashed,” Stauter said. “She was fired up and charismatic ... But then you look and see she’s taking things apart and not putting anything back … Everything got blown up like a big balloon and popped.”
Norton, the longtime board member who left in January, said some people had raised concerns that the festival was too expensive in the past. But she wasn’t aware that its fate was ever in jeopardy, she said, until 2019 after Collins joined the board.
“There was an argument that it was too fancy or superfluous in some way,” Norton said. “I just disagree. I think it was really, really exciting for kids to see their artwork hung in a museum.”
To be sure, administrators and school board members disagree on programs and policies.
But the discussion typically remains cordial — except when it comes to Collins, said Kevin Truitt, who left the district in 2019.
He retired after 23 years, saying he beat Collins to the punch because she “absolutely would have campaigned against me.”
The district’s chief of student, family and community support, Truitt said Collins was the only school board member in all of his years in the district who didn’t treat him and other staff with respect. He said her agenda was “to find fault and make it public.” She often expressed her views by referencing what her daughters told her, he said.
“Staff used to joke that when you go to a board meeting, it’s too bad you can’t make it a game where you take a shot every time Alison said, ‘My daughter,’ ” he said with a laugh. “You’d be drunk before the board meeting was over, which is probably the only way to watch a board meeting these days.”
Down in Mexico, Theel admitted she’s sort of enjoyed her phone dinging with old colleagues sharing the latest startling news about Collins. But she’s dreading going back to work as a teacher, as required by the sabbatical conditions, with Collins overseeing her.
“I am afraid of her,” Theel said, “of what she can say and what she’s capable of.”
San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Email: hknight@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hknightsf Instagram: @heatherknightsf