San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
School board recall weighs heavily in vote
Eight months after San Francisco voters ousted three school board members, the recall continues to reverberate across the city, with the upcoming school board election offering residents a chance to restore a progressive majority or keep the more moderate slate backed by Mayor London Breed.
Six candidates are vying for the three open seats up for grabs on Nov. 8.
Three are Breed’s post-recall appointees: Lainie Motamedi, Lisa WeissmanWard and Ann Hsu.
The others include Gabriela López, who was among those removed from the board in the recall, as well as two new
comers, Alida Fisher and Karen Fleshman, both of whom opposed the recall. López, Fisher and Fleshman are backed by many of the city’s more progressive politicians and groups.
The teachers union, which typically has a strong pull in school board elections, has endorsed Weissman-Ward and Fisher.
Currently, Breed-backed candidates have a majority on the board — board President Jenny Lam was an education adviser to the mayor. That slim majority reverted the academically elite Lowell High School to meritbased admissions. If either Motamedi, Weissman-Ward or Hsu lose, the political balance of the board could shift.
“This (San Francisco) school board election is arguably the most important school board election we’ve had in a generation,” said Phil Halperin, president of the Silver Giving Foundation and a longtime public education advocate. “It can no longer be argued that the school board election is the last thing you get to on the ballot. It can be argued it should be the first thing you look at.”
Before the recall, the school board was widely criticized for failing to focus on students amid the pandemic while siding with the teachers union on keeping the public schools closed months if not a year after other districts and private schools reopened.
As students remained in distance learning, the board voted to rename 44 school sites, make the admissions process at academically elite Lowell High School a lottery, and continue the fight to cover up a controversial mural of George Washington.
All those decisions were ultimately reversed amid lawsuits.
In addition, the district has grappled with a huge budget shortfall, resulting in ongoing state intervention.
Post-recall, the new board has undergone several weeks of governance training and adopted a plan to focus on students, setting performance goals while leaving most policy decisions and implementation to the superintendent.
But controversy didn’t die with the recall.
Hsu was lambasted in July for her response to a candidate questionnaire that reinforced the stereotype that Black and brown parents don’t value their children’s education as much as white and Asian American parents, a false narrative used to explain lower academic performance. Motamedi and WeissmanWard, who had been campaigning with Hsu, distanced themselves from their fellow appointee.
Hsu ultimately lost a slew of endorsements, but the recall organizers, as well as many in the Chinese American community, have stayed behind her. Her campaign has raised more than $62,000, more than twice the amount donated to any other school board candidate.
In years past, school board elections were often given short shrift by voters, who typically opted for incumbents or skipped those boxes on the ballot altogether.
Yet increasingly, the job has been gaining more attention across the country — and in the Bay Area — with political efforts on the left and the right organizing and funding slates of candidates.
The stakes are high, education experts say, with a need for school boards to be laser-focused on learning loss in the wake of a devastating pandemic that left students struggling emotionally and academically, wiping out three decades of academic progress nationally. What’s more, school boards are deciding many hot-button issues, such as how or if anti-racism discussions are allowed in classrooms, what can be taught in health or sex ed classes, and which books are allowed or banned, among other policy decisions.
School boards set the foundation for everything that happens in a student’s day, said Lange Luntao, a former Stockton school board member and director at Ed-Trust West, which advocates for equity in education.
Schools are continuing to recover from the disruption in teaching and learning and students have had a few hard years, he said, raising the stakes even more.
“Too often, only a small minority of community members engage in these races. That’s unfortunate, because our schools need the wisdom of our whole community to thrive,” he said. “While every election matters, this November’s election is especially important.”
It is a relatively thankless job with a lot of potential public backlash, but also one that brings political capital and offers a stepping stone to higher office. Many former board members have moved on to the Board of Supervisors or seats in Sacramento.
This election’s six candidates have expressed little desire to become full-time politicians. All are district parents except López, a former teacher.
All have expressed a desire to rebuild trust in the wake of the recall and said they are focused on students.
To a degree, however, the battle lines have been drawn by supporters and endorsements.
Anti-recall school board members Mark Sanchez and Matt Alexander, as well as highprofile progressives such as Supervisor Dean Preston, want López back on the board and are also supporting Fisher.
Lam has backed Motamedi and Weissman-Ward, speaking at their campaign kickoff, while Breed has endorsed all three of her appointees.
Yet despite specific endorsements, city officials said it is critical for people to vote — to have a say in the future of schools.
“SFUSD is rebuilding post-pandemic slowly but surely with many challenges ahead,” said Supervisor Hillary Ronen, who crossed the moderate-progressive divide by endorsing Motamedi, Weissman-Ward and Fisher.
“Students have already lost enough throughout constant scandals and ego-driven conflicts,” she added. “All adults must work together to restore faith in and excellence at SFUSD.”
“Too often, only a small minority of community members engage in these races. That’s unfortunate.”
Lange Luntao, director at Ed-Trust West