Voters in San Francisco overwhelmingly recalled three board members because the board spent too much time on divisive equity issues and too little time on reopening schools, according to the account by Laura Meckler in the Washington Post.
The story subtitle is: “In a warning for the left, critics saw misplaced priorities, as the board focused on equity issues while schools remained closed”
Some voters were angry about the board’s failure to reopen schools. Asian-Americans were angry about the board’s decision to change the admissions procedure for Lowell High School to increase the number of Black and brown students. Others were frustrated by the lengthy deliberations about renaming schools where the name was associated to racism, not always accurately. More unrest was created by lengthy debates about whether to destroy or cover over a mural in Washington High School depicting George Washington as a slave owner and imperialist, which was considered “racist” by critics who did not realize it was a critical depiction. (The board ultimately voted to cover the mural, not destroy it.)
The recall was heavily funded by “reformers” like billionaire Arthur Rock, a major donor to TFA.
Meckler writes:
Voters in San Francisco opted overwhelmingly to recall three school board members from their positions Tuesday, fueled by dissatisfaction over what San Franciscans saw as the board’s focus on issues of social justice at the expense of reopening schools.
The recall election is the latest signal that mainstream voters, even in a liberal city like San Francisco, have grown frustrated with public schools during the pandemic. Education, particularly its struggles with coronavirus measures and racial justice, is expected to play a prominent role in elections across the country later this year. The results in San Francisco offer another warning sign for Democrats.
Preliminary results showed the vote to oust each of the school board members topping 70 percent. Those who lost their seats are school board president Gabriela López and members Alison Collins and Faauuga Moliga.
The recall effort was initiated by a couple frustrated by the board’s failure to reopen schools last academic year. Even as other districts opened or developed hybrid in-person and remote systems, San Francisco remained remote for nearly all students, who returned this fall.
At the same time, the board engaged in a series of divisive moves aimed at racial equity that critics say were ill-advised, particularly for a period when schools were closed and academic and emotional damage to the city’s children was accruing.
It spent months deliberating about how to rename 44 schools after a committee found their namesakes had connections to slavery, oppression and racism, though many of the alleged ties were thin or, in some cases, historically questionable or inaccurate…
The leaders of the recall movement, Siva Raj and Autumn Looijen, appeared on Glenn Beck’s radio show in a segment about parents pushing back against schools, drawing criticism at home.
Months after the recall effort launched, the Virginia governor’s race showed the power of education as a political issue when Republican Glenn Youngkin won with a heavy emphasis on school closures and race.
So, like what happened Oakland, another city falls to the autocratic anarchist billionaires.
I don’t live in CA and I won’t claim first hand knowledge of what goes on with your state’s education departments. I will say that this has been reported in other media to be a Democrat vs Democrat scenario. It may seem like moderate Dems are siding with the “anarchist billionaires”, but that is not true with every single issue. Moderate Dems are getting labeled as “right wingers” all across the US because they won’t side with the far left and some of their crazy ideas. The moderate GOPers are taking a hit from the far right. Most of us are stuck in this culture war and we just want some sanity.
California billionaire Reed Hastings wants to do away with elected school boards. I’d say that’s on the side of anarchism, although I’d probably use a word like plutocratic or oligarchic instead.
Agreed.
and the word “falls” could easily be written “joins.” These days it feels clear that Big Money will have its way and bamboozled parents will applaud.
I’m basically reposting my comment from the earlier post about this. I’m speaking from San Francisco and as a longtime school board watcher and opponent of charter schools and privatization.
The misinterpretations across the land will be wild and were already starting last night. Someone in a politics Facebook group summed it up well: The interpretation from afar will be that San Francisco is repudiating progressivism. The reality is that San Francisco supports progressivism but “don’t be a dumbass,” and another pro-recall leftist said this board practically made a religion out of dumbassery.
I would say the tiny number of anti-recall votes were split between those few who actually did thing these board members were doing a good job and those who oppose the mad recall frenzy that’s going on all around the country in a GOP attempt to undermine democracy, and view this recall as fueling and being fueled by that. That take is that dumbassery is not justification for a recall. Only a very tiny minority disagree that the board was engaging in massive dumbassery — even their supporters have to agree that their lack of political savvy was stupendous.
The school renaming process was underway for quite a while, and the BOE basically mindlessly kept it on schedule rather than putting it on hold in the pandemic emergency — a classic example of utter lack of political savvy. (It didn’t help that the committee appointed to propose the renamings wasn’t super skilled at historical research, though I agree with them in quite a few cases.) (We could debate all day long whether Lincoln and Washington high schools need to be renamed.)
Charter schools and privatization really weren’t an issue in this race, so it seems like the pro-charter money that poured into the pro-recall vote might also have been based on misinterpretations of the issues. That or they decided to see if they could get some pro-charter folks appointed by the mayor, taking advantage of the rest of the situation. I guess we’ll see about that. One of the recalled board members, Faauuga Moliga, had been appointed by Mayor Breed to begin with, and then re-elected. (Moliga was the first-ever Pacific Islander elected to office in San Francisco, by the way.)
I’ll clarify some detail about the Washington High School murals. Yes, they were painted by a leftist/communist artist with the goal of highlighting atrocities committed by our founding fathers, etc. Some students of color still objected to seeing themselves — people who shared their heritage — depicted as victims and slaves in the front hall of their school, even in a work that was calling attention to the injustice and oppression. I totally oppose destroying the murals, but that’s more complex than often portrayed. (An artwork elsewhere in San Francisco is an installation outside the Legion of Honor art museum showing a Nazi death camp scene, and I well remember that when it was being planned, there were objections from some voices in the Jewish community on the same basis —the objections died down and the installation has been there for decades now.) Meanwhile, in the Washington HS situation, voices like Bari Weiss in the NYT were sneering at the students who raised that issue as “snowflakes.” So this just gives some nuance to the dumbassery.
Good comment. Also can’t overlook that the decision to turn Lowell into a lottery school (again, in the middle of a pandemic) was met with outrage from a lot of Asian-American parents, and reports are saying that the Asian-American vote (which traditionally is quite low relative to their population) was very strong in the recall.
Oh yeah, that was definitely a huge issue — good point. Again, utter lack of political savvy.
Carolinesf: Thank you for the nuanced post. It seems that when dumbassery meets a LACK of nuance is where propaganda has its most influential moments.
The experience of SF also reveals to us how politics is always the latest to arrive at history’s parade, just after the horses have left the scene. CBK
I totally second FLERP’s comment, and apparent far greater knowlege concerning ‘Frisco’s’ politics than one might expect from a Washington (DC) paper owned by Bezos.
Thank you, Caroline.
Second that.
carolinesf,
Thank you for this brilliantly nuanced and informative post.
I will never understand why the media cannot provide the public with a nuanced take about anything except potential wrongdoing by right wing Republicans. It’s obvious the media can do this for any issue, but somehow they only want to do it when it comes to protecting a sacred cow of the right wing.
Even more depressing is seeing supposedly “thoughtful” moderate and progressive folks repeating the same talking points that the right wing wants, and using only the framing the right wing wants.
Washington High School, Washington DC, Washington State, the Washington memorial? Where would it end?
Ted, it never ends. Maybe we should stick to numbers
Based on the reaction we are seeing, by national media big money support seems not to have anything to do with privatizing SF Schools so much as advancing the anti-public school narrative of ALEC and the Heritage Foundation.
Ray,
The big money saw a chance to advance their narrative that public education is broken and school boards are obsolete.
Excellent!
“The reality is that San Francisco supports progressivism but “don’t be a dumbass,” and another pro-recall leftist said this board practically made a religion out of dumbassery.”
Progressive cities like mine feel the same. Boards are not prioritizing, simply relying on software that repopulates what’s on the the agenda. And they call that progress!
Since when is the Washington Post the expert on San Francisco politics?
Watergate!
Multiply this “dumbassery” thousands of times over several decades, and it is no wonder that disrupters, politicians, “reformers”, and profiteers have gained so much influence over public education.
The national press is framing this as shocking for liberal San Francisco. Hot flash: San Francisco isn’t all that liberal. The majority of white parents send their children to private schools. (SF is so expensive it has more dogs than children.) The recall campaign got a lot of money from pro-charter donors, so let’s see how that plays out. I am not optimistic.
When did re-opening schools become a priority? I could’ve sworn that reopening schools was far too dangerous unless new cases were practically non-existent, all schools had thorough testing and contact tracing procedures in effect, universal mask mandates were imposed, ventilation was improved in every school in the country, class sizes were reduced so that every class could comfortably space at 6 feet and all teachers and students were vaccinated and maybe not even then because HOW MANY TEACHER AND STUDENT LIVES ARE YOU WILLING TO RISK???!!!
I wonder what’s happened between March 2020 and today to change that? Cases have gone down? The virus is controlled? Universal mask mandates? Widespread testing? Modernization of school buildings? Hmmm…?
Yeah, absolutely nothing happened between March 2020 and now to change why schools would be open.
Even now some parents are upset about the end of mask mandates, but I can’t figure out what your opinion is except to get angry at whatever the Democrats want to do and defend whatever the right wing Republicans want to do.
I have no idea what you think is good except defeating the Dems and empowering the right wing Republicans.
Do you believe that Kamila Valieva accidentally ingested her grandfather’s heart medicine, too?
For profit health is more corrupt than for profit education in lies and PR?
Vaccinations, of course, are what has changed since March 2020:
“The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) first granted emergency use authorization to the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccine on December 10, 2020; mass vaccinations began on December 14, 2020.”
Now CA needs to recall the deluded politicians and edu-leaders behind the War on School Discipline. It’s the K-12 equivalent of the Defund the Police delusion. Our school is on the brink of anarchy because our superintendent punishes principals who punish. School ratings are tied to punishment rates, and draconian punishments (for adults, not students; do you see the irony?) can happen if rates are higher for minority groups. So kids, especially kids of color, do not get the discipline they need. (Exception: if a kid flouts the mask rule or says something racist –punish! I support this. But if a kid disses a teacher or wrecks the learning environment –don’t you dare punish!) Learning suffers. Kids do not feel safe. Teachers are quitting. The progressive elites in the state government, Department of Justice, unions, academia and media think they are helping the Oppressed by dismantling school’s ability to punish anti-social behavior. Trained to view the world as Oppressor vs. Oppressed, today’s post-structuralist liberal arts grads view teachers as the former and kids, especially minority kids, as the latter. People, teachers are not oppressors; kids are! They form mobs that torment other kids as well as adults. They wreak havoc on schools’ ability to educate. This is blasphemy for those who sanctify children, but it’s the truth. No one benefits from this situation. Alas, public schools’ greatest advocate, Diane Ravitch, seems blind to this giant problem. They live in romantic fantasy land based on a false conception of what kids are and what reality is. It is a fantasy to think any humans –young or old –can be governed with carrots and no sticks. This fantasy is killing our schools and harming children. Punishment for misbehavior does not harm children; failure to correct misbehavior does.
There should be punishments for students. But the punishments for poor and disadvantaged students should be the same as the punishment for affluent students.
No one benefits from students being allowed to act out and disrupt class. But over the top punishments for the type of things that middle class students get wrist slaps for is not the answer. Neither is simply dumping them to be someone else’s problem (the charter school method).
Frankly, I think the solution would be to send all those kids to charters which apparently have discovered magic ways to turn them into high performing scholars.
Thank you for explaining this situation so well.
You would not believe how many people are moving to Montana and surrounding states (Idaho, even South Dakota) to escape this type of extreme-left lack of common sense. Unfortunately, this huge population influx is creating a housing crisis here, wrecking open space for wildlife, and bringing in a lot of right-wingers who are polarizing our moderate Montana politics that we used to have.
Three of my school’s best teachers have moved to Montara, Idaho and Arizona respectively this year.
State’s School Report Cards mandated under Every Student Success Act includes information in School Ratings about school climate.This section usually includes safety and discipline
information. Student discipline policies in public schools could be related to the School Climate section on the State’s School Report Card. I did review the California School Accountability Report Card.
They report this:State Priority: School Climate
The SARC provides the following information relevant to the School Climate State Priority (Priority 6):
Pupil suspension rates;
Pupil expulsion rates; and
Other local measures on the sense of safety.
In regards to school Climate you may also want to look at:
The National School Climate Center
Multi-tired Systems of Support
School Climate Improvement Process
Accountability under the State’s School Report Card may be driving
policies. It’s worth looking into.
It’s important to understand what happened, but what is clear is that the GOP is celebrating this division in the Dem party. Recalls undo elections. Elections are held to undo prior ones. Breaking Education breaks Democracy. Why did the citizens of San Fransisco feel that they could not work through their issues with the School Board? Why did they think it was their prerogative to undo an election over issues like this? There was no fiscal mismanagement, inappropriate behavior, no corruption (at least not by this description) – usual reasons for recall. Was the School Board unwilling to work with citizens to find amicable solutions? I ask because we have citizens in my Virginia county attempting this same strategy. We have never had Democrats on our School Board. Two were elected during the last election 3 years ago and they want them off the Board. They are not unreasonable. Our schools did not stay closed like San Fransisco’s. Schools are mask optional now. The parents behind our recall are Qanon followers who tried to collect against the county’s Surety Bonds (not joking). Point, is, the division is not unique to SF. Here it is the liberal homeschool parents that they are trying peal away from the Dem party.
*Francisco
Hello from San Francisco. Disclosure that I opposed the recall on the basis that recalls are for corruption and criminality and I don’t feel any of the issues rose to that level. Lots of my friends — left/liberals who support public schools and oppose school privatization — voted for (and even campaigned for) the recall, though.
My pro-recall friends felt the school board was treating parents’ concerns with disdain and refusing to hear them, so that’s why they felt they couldn’t work through their issues and that it wasn’t undemocratic to undo an election.
My pro-recall friends do feel there was fiscal mismanagement, because the district is in a big financial hole now, though it’s not the first time, so MY feeling is that this board isn’t uniquely to blame there. My pro-recall friends also feel the board was unwilling to work with citizens to find amicable solutions, and the drastic action of a recall was the last and the needed recourse.
Parents in San Francisco are overwhelmingly pro-mask and pro-COVID safety, but felt the board wasn’t putting its efforts into working on safely reopening the schools and was turning its attention to less urgent topics instead. These aren’t Qanoners or homeschoolers, though I’m sure a few of those tagged along.
My view is that the board was in over its head in this unprecedented crisis and displayed dismaying lack of political savvy. My view is also that those aren’t recallable offenses, but obviously the vast majority of the voters disagreed.
The main thing to be aware of is that this it not parallel to school board recalls elsewhere in the nation and that most of the national pundits commenting on it range from wildly clueless to uncomprehending of the nuances.
Best to you — Caroline Grannan in San Francisco (SFUSD alumni parent)