School Board Recall: Down to Wire in Final Month
By Joel P. Engardio
Butterflies in the stomach are common when anticipating the start of any school year. But there’s high anxiety this year as parents and kids return to real, in-person learning.
Even as the delta variant surges, public health officials say being in school is the safest and best place for a child’s well-being.
Yet anxious parents don’t trust that San Francisco’s public school board will put children first — especially after it spent the past year more concerned about renaming schools than safely reopening them.
The issue became a national embarrassment while a cascade of debacles led to multiple lawsuits and a recall effort.
Our school board suffers from a self-inflicted “crisis of governance.” Reform is needed, which starts with recalling the most problematic school board commissioners.
Well-run public schools are essential for a city to function and thrive. San Francisco’s future depends on being able to retain families, but too many are moving away because of our mismanaged public schools. That’s why every resident should care about the school board.
Down to the wire
There won’t be a school board recall in San Francisco if organizers can’t get 52,000 valid signatures by September 7.
They have 50,000 so far. But they really need 70,000 to ensure a validity rate that qualifies for the ballot (up to 30 percent of signatures are typically thrown out by the Dept. of Elections as duplicates, non-residents, or not registered voters).
That means we must collect 20,000 more signatures before September 7.
If you object to school board Commissioner Alison Collins bullying educators, tweeting racist remarks about Asian Americans, pushing to rename schools while refusing to hire consultants to reopen them, and trying to sue the school district for $87 million — imagine how emboldened she will be if the recall fails.
A recent poll shows that the recall will win — if it can get on the ballot. But without 20,000 more signatures by September 7, there won’t be a recall.
Here’s what you must do ASAP to ensure the recall can move forward:
Visit one of the locations throughout San Francisco where you can sign an official recall petition. Click here for locations and times.
Ask four friends and family to sign a petition.
The case for recalling the school board
If you need a reminder on why we must recall the school board, here’s what they did:
Fired top administrators not in line with the school board’s ideology, which created instability and left a vacuum of expertise that made navigating the pandemic even more difficult.
Refused to hire a consultant to create a plan for reopening schools.
Chose to rename schools with a flawed process before making any plans to reopen schools.
Ended merit-based admission at one of the nation’s top high schools rather than focus on reopening high schools or creating more high schools with high academic standards.
Allowed deficits to grow and enrollment to decline to the point that the school district’s credit rating was downgraded by Fitch and Moody’s because of “governance” problems.
Neglected to establish a legally required oversight committee for a $744 million bond passed by voters in 2016.
Click here to read the full case for recalling the school board. It lays out the argument point-by-point.
The greatest indictment against the school board is that it neglected its core job: Getting students safely back into classrooms to avoid the harmful learning loss and mental health stress of being isolated at home on Zoom for more than a year.
And we can’t forget that the school board didn’t bother to start planning to reopen schools in earnest or back off its school renaming debacle until faced with lawsuits, recalls, and protests from frustrated and exhausted parents.
The difference between school board recall and reform
Fixing the San Francisco school board requires a multi-step process:
Get all students back in school safely for full-time, in-person learning. Then hold school officials accountable for serving the needs of students and families.
Recall the most problematic school board commissioners who failed their core duty to safely reopen schools for more than a year.
Structurally change how the school board is formed and set qualifications for serving to avoid ending up in the same mess again.
School Reopenings and Accountability
Decreasing the Distance was a group led by parents that protested and pushed for the safe reopening of public schools with full-time, in-person instruction to all students. They published a compelling report that cataloged the learning loss and mental health effects of a year in Zoom school and how San Francisco schools failed families. With schools finally reopened, Decreasing the Distance took on a larger mission of improving public schools overall. The group is now called the San Francisco Parent Coalition. Founder Meredith Dodson says: “Going forward will be about holding our school leaders accountable to centering our students. We see this as something that’s beyond reopening. This is about great public education.”
School Board Recall
Read the full case for recall. We can’t forget that the school board didn’t bother to start planning to reopen schools in earnest or back off its school renaming debacle until faced with lawsuits and protests from frustrated and exhausted parents. Sign a recall petition at one of these locations. Get a petition mailed to you. Or download a petition to print, sign, and mail back. Be sure to do this ASAP. The deadline is September 7 and there won’t be a recall unless there are enough signatures to put it on the ballot.
School Board Reform
Better SF Public Schools is a group led by parents working on a long term structural solution for our public schools. After the recall, they want to redesign how our school system is governed so we don’t end up in the same situation again. They are working to amend our city’s constitution with an initiative on the June 2022 ballot that would make the school board an appointed body with certain qualifications for running schools. Read their full vision statement and their research paper that makes the case for an appointed school board.