S.F. school district’s senior staff rebukes board VP for racist tweets, response.
Senior staff unites against official over racist tweets
The entire senior staff at the San Francisco school district on Sunday denounced a school board member’s racist tweets against Asian Americans, saying she hasn’t adequately taken responsibility for them.
In an open letter to district staff and the school board obtained by The Chronicle, all 19 top administrators at the district’s central office — including deputy superintendents and department heads — condemned the tweets board Vice President Alison Collins posted in 2016.
The top leadership members work directly for the superintendent, but their employment contracts are approved by the school board. The contracts of all 19 administrators are awaiting a board vote, which is scheduled for Tuesday in closed session.
The top officials said they are “united” in a responsibility to share the “grave concerns” of scores of colleagues and community members.
The administrators said they agreed with board members Jenny Lam and Faauuga Moliga, as well as former board members and city officials, that the tweets “perpetuate gross and
harmful stereotypes and leave no room for nuance or potential misunderstanding.”
The letter from district staff was the latest in a string of condemnations from officials regarding Collins’ tweets. On Saturday, the city’s top elected officials, including the mayor, state legislators and nearly all supervisors, called for her resignation, as did Lam and Moliga. Several community groups also asked her to step down.
The controversy over the tweets arrived as the district rushes to get some of its students back in the classroom starting in midApril. The district — already hit with a lawsuit over reopening and a second over a contentious decision to rename 44 schools — is now facing a possible third lawsuit over the board’s decision to strip Lowell High School of meritbased admissions.
As of Sunday afternoon, Collins, who was elected in 2018, had not resigned and the 2016 tweets were still posted online.
She did not return requests for comment about the letter Sunday.
In the thread of tweets on Dec. 4, 2016, Collins said that Asian Americans had used “white supremacist thinking to assimilate and ‘get ahead.’ ” Collins explained in the thread that she was seeking to “combat antiblack racism in the Asian community” and “at my daughters’ mostly Asian Am school.”
The posts also contained racial epithets, including a reference comparing Asian Americans to “house n***ers.”
Collins expressed regret in an online post Saturday morning for the pain her words caused. She declined to identify her tweets as racist and repeatedly insisted they were taken out of context.
Several officials, including the mayor and Lam, said Collins did not take responsibility for her words. Lam called it a “nonapology.”
Superintendent Vince Matthews declined to address the tweets specifically, but sent a note to district staff Saturday saying, “We have to band together and speak up when we see or hear racist actions or behaviors perpetrated against any member of our community.”
Board President Gabriela López defended Collins on Saturday, saying she appreciated her colleague’s apology.
A statement posted on social media Sunday asked supporters of Collins to sign in support, saying she has been “one of the few consistent antiracist voices amongst politicians in this city.”
“The opportunistic targeting of Commissioner Collins distracts from the national conversation around addressing antiAPI and antiBlack hate,” the unnamed authors said.
As of Sunday evening, the page showed 61 people had signed onto the statement, including parents and teachers in the district.
In contrast, the district’s top administrators said they are disappointed that Collins “has not seemed willing to take meaningful responsibility for her actions.”
They called on the school board to join them in condemning “racist, hurtful language.”
School board members Matt Alexander, Kevine Boggess and Mark Sanchez have not responded to requests for comment since the tweets resurfaced Thursday.
“As public servants, we work for the Board of Education through the superintendent, but we serve the students and families of San Francisco,” the 19 administrators said. “Although we believe it would be inappropriate for us to call for the resignation of an elected official who is part of the governing body of our district, our silence should not be interpreted as complicity or approval. We condemn Vice President Collins’ statements in the strongest possible terms.”