San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
A blunt but necessary solution
The foul stench of the recall attempt against Gov. Gavin Newsom is still wafting in the air, and San Francisco voters are already being asked to go back to the ballot box to consider the premature ejection of three members of the city’s Board of Education: board President Gabriela López, former Vice President Faauuga Moliga and former Vice President Alison Collins. All three face the guillotine despite being up for re-election in less than a year.
Recall under current rules in California is a blunt, expensive and easily manipulable tool. The Chronicle editorial board opposes its use in all but the most dire of circumstances.
That said, we also believe in changing local and state rules to raise the threshold for recall qualification, not summarily rejecting each and every recall attempt on principle. In our opposition to the Newsom recall, we wrote that “cutting an elected term short based solely on the incumbent’s performance makes sense only in the context of abject failure or unfitness.”
Do López, Moliga and Collins meet this criterion?
They do. All three should be recalled. (In fact, most, if not all, of San Francisco’s school board members arguably deserve recall if election rules would permit it. They don’t.)
Our rationale in arriving at this decision was not ideological. Nor was it punitive. Even Collins’ inflammatory tweets, though unquestionably offensive, were not sufficient grounds alone for recall, as she published them two years before her 2018 election — ample time for voters to consider them.
Our decision was solely based on the board’s competence in shepherding the district and its students through the gravest of times during the pandemic. And it is on that measure that López, Collins and Moliga have failed irredeemably.
Take, for instance, the decision of the three board members to vote in favor of reversing the longstanding merit-based admissions policy at Lowell High School. Reasonable minds can disagree over this choice — and we do not begrudge board members for taking a controversial but defensible stance. It is, arguably, in keeping with the platform of equity and inclusion that all three campaigned on in 2018.
But consider the execution.
In its rush to make the change, the board not only outraged parents, who felt blindsided by a lack of outreach, it broke the law. Its decision was reversed in court because board members didn’t bother to follow the Brown Act — the most basic California transparency law — when implementing the policy.
This botched handling of Lowell admissions might actually be the highwater mark for a board that has consistently failed to rise to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Much has been made about López, Collins and Moliga’s misplaced priorities in pursuing the renaming of 44 schools at a time when the district had yet to reopen from COVID closures. We certainly agree with that criticism. But the board’s renaming plan was more than a distraction; it was so poorly executed that it made a mockery of the broader push for historical reckoning in the United States at a time of unprecedented receptivity to change. Board members bulled forward with a renaming proposal so farcical and riddled with historical inaccuracies that it alienated instead of educated, and invited national ridicule.
Competence matters. That’s as true for those pursuing a progressive agenda as it as for anyone else.
Without question, however, all three board members’ most grievous sins surround school reopening and mishandling the budget. Board members, particularly Collins, fought against the creation of in-person learning hubs at a time when schools were still closed and a student mental health crisis was snowballing out of control. All three recall candidates refused to grant Superintendent Vince Matthews’ request to hire a consultant to help expedite reopening, with Collins grandstanding for the cameras while doing so. Then there was the broader alienation of Matthews, who runs the district but serves at the board’s discretion. If members disapproved of the job Matthews was doing, they could have found another superintendent whose views more closely aligned with their vision. Instead, they undermined Matthews’ work, wasted staff time and money, and set back reopening, student recovery and COVID preparedness in the process. After using Matthews as a political football, they then begged him to return when he threatened to leave.
Students suffered immensely from these decisions, particularly students of color. The very educational equity gaps that all three board members were elected by their constituents to overcome have grown markedly worse as a result of their actions. And what would have happened had Collins’ $87 million lawsuit against her colleagues proved victorious? How would funneling funds meant for kids into her bank account have helped ease racial disparities in education?
Out of the three board members, the case for recall against Moliga is the thinnest. He was not the outwardly disruptive force that Collins and López were. But he did help cut their ill-advised path at most turns, voting in favor of almost every ill-fated decision the board made. San Francisco needs school board members who can lead us through a pandemic, not follow their colleagues down each and every deadend trail they stumble upon.
The stakes are too high for continued failure.
Most urgently, there is a need to find a replacement for Matthews, who will step away from the job on June 30, notso-subtly hinting at his unwillingness to continue working with this board. His replacement will be selected by board members and will be responsible for bringing the district back up to speed after years of missteps. We have no faith in the ability of these members to recruit a replacement who is up to this challenge — or to work suitably with one even if they should find that person.
To be clear, recall is no panacea for the challenges our schools face. But nine months until the next election is an eternity in the learning lives of students who have been chronically disadvantaged by this board’s performance. San Francisco’s kids shouldn’t have to wait any longer for a chance to get on track.