Recall Voting Day for San Francisco School Board

The growing number of San Francisco Unified School District parents livid with the school board since the COVID lockdown was in place led to a recall election of the school board members. But the lockdown wasn’t the only reason: an ever-growing number of incidents and scandals bogged down the School Board, including the ill-conceived attempt to rename dozens of schools that took priority over COVID-19 reopening and student safety decisions, controversial school reopening delays resulting in San Francisco being one of the last major school districts in the country to fully reopen, sudden school admission changes, a growing financial crisis, and how one member, Alison Collins, was kept on the Board despite her sending out a barrage of anti-Asian tweets, the Globe reported. She was later demoted.

That recall election is today.

School Board President Gabriela Lopez, and members Alison Collins and Faauuga Moliga are on the recall ballot.

Nearly all of the 115 San Francisco Unified School District schools serving 50,000 students were closed for over a year, from March 2020 to August 2021, even as nearby districts eventually reopened classrooms and private schools across the city held in-person classes, the Daily Mail reported.

“Sadly our school board’s priorities have often been severely misplaced,” Mayor London Breed said in her endorsement of the recall effort. “San Francisco’s public school parents aren’t just voicing normal, commonplace frustrations.”

RecallSFSchoolBoard.org lists the reasons for the recall effort:

Our school board wasted time renaming schools instead of reopening them. As a result, we were the last big city to reopen.

Our most disadvantaged kids fell farthest behind.

Our board has not acknowledged the 1.5 years of learning loss, let alone come up with plans to address it.

enrollment dropped as families fled the district. This cost us millions in state funding.

Our budget deficit doubled to $125M+ under this board’s leadership.

The school board ignored warnings about the budget deficit for over a year. Now the state may take over and teachers’ jobs are at risk.

Alison Collins made anti-Asian tweets, and sued our schools for $87 million. López stood with Collins and supported her lawsuit.

Our superintendent is leaving because the board fired essential staff without consulting him, came to meetings unprepared, and didn’t follow its own rules.

This same board will choose his replacement in June… unless our recall succeeds.

“We need leadership that puts students first,” the recall website says. “Our grassroots force of 1000 volunteers and 80,000 signers triggered San Francisco’s first recall election in decades.”

The list of endorsements was lengthy and included:

Mayor London Breed
State Senator Scott Wiener
California State Treasurer Fiona Ma
Former Mayor Art Agnos
Former President of the SF Board of Supervisors Matt Gonzalez
Former Chair of the California Democratic Party John Burton
Former California State Senator Quentin Kopp

Bay Area Reporter
San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Examiner

The Globe will follow up on this historic recall.