Campaign to Appoint Versus Elect School Board: Reform Update 6
Parents rally against school board’s inaction to plan for safely reopening classrooms. Photo credit: CNN
Welcome to my special newsletter about actions to change the school board. This is update 6.
This update includes:
Charter Amendment Launch
Appointing Vs. Electing School Board
Video Profile of Recall Leaders
Rally to Open All Schools and Grades Full Time
Communication Links
The goal of this newsletter is to provide information on the ways to reform the school board and give direction on how you can get involved. More than 1,500 parents and residents are newsletter subscribers so far.
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Thanks for your support,
Joel Engardio
CHARTER AMENDMENT LAUNCH
Truly reforming the school board is going to take two steps:
Recall the most problematic school board members this year to stem the immediate damage that’s being done.
Amend the city charter/constitution next year to change how we choose the school board. This will ensure we don’t end up in the same situation again given the down ballot and low information nature of school board elections.
The recall effort recently launched by parents Siva Raj and Autumn Looijen is going strong (see previous newsletter).
Now, parents Patrick Wolf and Jennifer Butterfoss have launched a campaign to end the election of the school board and turn it into an appointed position based on qualifications.
They created an organization called Campaign for Better SF Public Schools to put a city charter amendment on the June 2022 ballot (see the Chronicle article about their effort).
They published an excellent paper that makes the case for appointing instead of electing the school board. You’ll want to read the entire report.
Here’s the gist: “San Francisco has a school board election system where incumbents nearly always win and candidates for open seats only need to win the endorsement of a small number of insiders. This makes it hard for voters to make informed choices and hold incumbents accountable. The school renaming debacle illustrates these problems.”
APPOINTING VS. ELECTING SCHOOL BOARD
First, a history lesson: San Francisco’s school board was appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the electorate until 1971. It was changed to direct election when voters who opposed school desegregation successfully amended the city charter. They felt a directly elected school board would better reflect their wishes to oppose busing than an appointed board.
Today, the Better SF Public Schools paper shows how our elected school board is not meeting the needs of families. It said San Francisco has the highest opt-out rate among large U.S. cities with parents choosing private schools over public, “while our schools suffer from a persistent achievement gap for its low income students of color.”
Returning to an appointed school board could improve student outcomes and management of resources, according to a national study. The report also pointed out that major cities like New York, Chicago, and Boston have seen positive results after moving from an elected to appointed school board.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said it made all the difference in getting kids safely back to school during the pandemic.
“We would never have opened without mayoral control. It’s quite clear,” Lightfoot told the New York Times in an article about her battle to open Chicago’s schools. “The fact that Los Angeles and San Francisco had to sue to force the conversation about reopening? Look, what’s easy, the path of least resistance, the political expediency, would have been to do nothing and just let the unions dictate what the state of play was going to be in education.”
Jason McDaniel, an associate professor of political science at SF State, said in an analysis that he was “persuaded by the theory that responsiveness increases with an appointed board compared to an elected one.”
The Campaign for Better SF Public Schools will use community input to craft the specific language for a charter amendment to appoint the school board. They will also need volunteers to get the signatures required to qualify for the June 2022 ballot. Sign up here to help.
VIDEO PROFILE OF RECALL LEADERS
Watch this compelling video profile of the two parents leading the school board recall effort. Get to know who is behind the “brownie-powered” campaign. You will be inspired.
Be sure to sign up for the recall here so you can download the petition when it is ready in a few weeks.
RALLY TO OPEN ALL SCHOOLS AND GRADES FULL TIME
The school district recently announced an April 12 reopen date for “select” schools through second grade. Other elementary school grades could return by the end of April. But there was no mention of reopening middle and high schools, an incredible amount of information was missing from the announcement (see Chronicle report).
While some schools and limited grades will reopen in April, there is still a long way to go to get all students back into classrooms.
Decreasing the Distance is organizing two big events to keep the pressure on the school board to open all schools and grades. The events will mark the one year anniversary of closed schools and distance learning.
Decreasing the Distance is a parent advocacy group that has been calling for the safe reopening of all schools grades K-12. Their outdoor “Zoom In” protests use volunteer parent power to draw attention to the need for students to get back into classrooms (see Chronicle article).
Would the school board have offered any reopens if parents hadn’t applied so much public pressure? For many months, the school board refused to prioritize any planning to reopen schools while it pursued a deeply flawed process to rename schools.
Why do parents have to work so hard to get an elected school board to focus on essential matters like reopening schools? Anything the school board does now has a feeling of too little, too late. Parents are grateful some students can return to school in April, but they will not forget what the school board put them through.
Decreasing the Distance is led by Meredith Willa Dodson and a team of volunteer parents. Look for a profile on Meredith in a future newsletter.
COMMUNICATION LINKS
It’s important that we can find and share information in a central place on social media. Join these groups:
Charter Amendment Campaign seeks to change the formation of the school board from elected to appointed.
Decreasing the Distance is a parent-run advocacy group to reopen all schools full time.
Nextdoor
How to Change the School Board is a citywide group for information about the recall and charter amendment efforts.
Do you have friends who would like this newsletter? Ask them to sign up here.
NOTE: This newsletter and previous updates are also published as blog posts. Click to read and share on social media:
Update 6 (Charter amendment launches to appoint versus elect school board)
Update 5 (Recall helpers 7,000 and growing, recall timeline)
Update 4 (Recall launches, find out who is behind it)
Update 3 (Where is the recall? What are the options?)
Update 2 (Lowell becomes lottery, school board says gay dad not diverse enough)
Update 1 (City Attorney lawsuit)
First Edition (How do you recall the school board? Process and hurdles)