San Francisco residents recalled three liberal members of the city’s school board Tuesday for its petty lawsuits, misplaced priorities, and decisions to put progressive politics ahead of students’ needs.
Voters overwhelmingly approved the recall in a special election, according to tallies by the San Francisco Department of Elections.
The school board has seven members, all Democrats, but only three were eligible to be recalled: school board President Gabriela López, Vice President Faauuga Moliga, and Commissioner Alison Collins. They were all kicked out.
Opponents called the recall a waste of time and money, as the district faces a number of challenges including a $125 million budget deficit and the need to replace retiring Superintendent Vincent Matthews.
Some critics at CNN even described recall election as a “right-wing campaign to sanitize or censor historical readings and teaching in schools across the country.”
In reality, most parents weren’t asking teachers to “sanitize” historical realities like the civil rights movement.
Rather, more parents have expressed frustration over the board’s decisions to adjust the admissions standards at elite schools and attempts to rename “unwoke” schools during the pandemic instead of reopening them.
Collins, Lopez, and Moliga had defended their records, saying they prioritized “equity” because that was what they were elected to do.
However, both sides agreed that San Francisco’s school board and the city itself became the focus of an embarrassing national spotlight.
One of the first issues to grab national attention was the board’s January 2021 decision to rename 44 schools they said honored public figures the school board said were linked to racism, sexism, and other injustices. For example, the school board planned to erase the names of Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington — founding fathers who raised the bar for public officials at the time.
The board even planned to scrub the name of U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who earned popularity as a “trailblazer” in the 70s but now faces liberal derision for being too “moderate.”
The renaming effort drew swift criticism for historical mistakes. Critics said it made a mockery of George Floyd’s death. Angry parents asked why the board would waste time renaming schools when the priority needed to be reopening classrooms.
After an uproar, the school board scrapped the plan… but the school board’s troubles don’t stop there.
One board member, Collins, came under fire for old tweets posted before she held her school board position. She faced calls to resign from parents, the mayor, and other public officials.
Instead of waiting for the controversy to fade, Collins sued the district and her colleagues for $87 million, fueling yet another pandemic sideshow. The suit was later dismissed.
The school also came under fire for trying to end merit-based admissions at the district’s elite Lowell High School, citing concerns about “Ongoing, Pervasive Systemic Racism.” Lowell’s student body is mostly Asian American.
The board said in a resolution, “Over the years, Board of Education Commissioners, superintendents, scholars and community members have consistently cited Lowell’s selective, exam-based enrollment system as a major contributing factor which perpetuates the culture of white supremacy and racial abuse towards Black and Latinx students.”
One mother, Ann Hsu, said of the resolution, “It is so blatantly discriminatory against Asians.” Some immigrants from China view Lowell as their children’s path to the American dream.
Hsu decided to organize. She helped found the Chinese/API Voter Outreach Task Force, which formed in mid-December. The task force claims to have registered 560 new Asian American voters… for a local election.
Other parents assisted with the recall effort. The election was the first recall in San Francisco since 1983, a failed attempt to remove then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein.
“The city of San Francisco has risen up and said this is not acceptable to put our kids last,” said Siva Raj, a father of two who helped launch the recall effort. “Talk is not going to educate our children, it’s action. It’s not about symbolic action, it’s not about changing the name on a school, it is about helping kids inside the school building read and learn math.”
Mayor London Breed will now appoint board replacements to serve until another election in November. The new board members will likely take office by the end of March, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
“The voters of this city have delivered a clear message that the school board must focus on the essentials of delivering a well-run school system above all else,” Breed said in a statement. “San Francisco is a city that believes in the value of big ideas, but those ideas must be built on the foundation of a government that does the essentials well.”
The mayor, one of the most prominent endorsers of the recall, praised the parents, saying they “were fighting for what matters most -– their children.”
The pressures of the pandemic and distance learning have merged with politics nationwide, making school board races a new front in a culture war as resentments over COVID-19 reach a boiling point.
In San Francisco, one of the nation’s most liberal cities, the recall effort split Democrats. Breed, a Democrat, appointed Moliga to the board but later criticized it for being distracted by “political agendas.”
“It’s offensive,” Breed said in a statement last year.
The Horn News The Associated Press contributed to this article.