San Francisco residents on Tuesday recalled three members of the city’s school board for what critics called misplaced priorities and putting progressive politics over the needs of children during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Voters overwhelmingly approved the recall in a special election, tallies by the San Francisco Department of Elections showed.
“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,” San Francisco Mayor London 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.”
Breed is to appoint replacements to serve until another election in November.
The school board has seven members, but only three were eligible to be recalled: school board president Gabriela Lopez, vice president Faauuga Moliga and commissioner Alison Collins.
Opponents called the recall a waste of time and money, as the district faces a number of challenges including a US$125 million budget deficit and the need to replace retiring superintendent Vincent Matthews.
Parents in the city launched the recall effort in January last year out of frustration over the slow reopening of district schools, while the board pursued the renaming of 44 school sites and the elimination of competitive admissions at the elite Lowell High School.
“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.”
The mayor, one of the most prominent endorsers of the recall, praised the parents, saying they “were fighting for what matters most — their children.”
Breed had criticized the school board for being distracted by “political agendas.”
Collins, Lopez and Moliga had defended their records, saying they prioritized racial equity because that was what they were elected to do.
One of the first issues to grab national attention was the board’s decision in January last year to rename 44 schools they said honored public figures linked to racism, sexism and other injustices.
On the list were former US presidents Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, and US Senator Dianne Feinstein.
The effort drew swift criticism for historical mistakes.
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.
Collins came under fire again for posts on Twitter in 2016 that said Asian Americans used “white supremacist” thinking and were racist toward black students.
Collins said that the posts were taken out of context and were written before she held her school board position.
She refused to take them down or apologize for the wording and ignored calls to resign from parents, Breed and other public officials.
Collins sued the district and her colleagues for US$87 million, but the suit was dismissed.
Many Asian parents were already angered by the board’s efforts to end merit-based admissions at Lowell High School, where Asian students are the majority.
Ann Hsu, a mother of two who helped found the task force, said that many Chinese-American voters saw the effort to change the Lowell admissions system as a direct attack.
“It is so blatantly discriminatory against Asians,” Hsu said.
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