Saga of San Francisco's school board heads to the ballot box

• Published date: 10 February 2022
• Publication title: The China Post

A seemingly endless amount of drama, name-calling, lawsuits and outrage from parents and city officials have made the saga of San Francisco's school board a riveting pandemic sideshow that is about to play out at the ballot box.

A special election on Tuesday will decide the fate of three school board members, all Democrats, in a vote that has divided the famously liberal city. It has also motivated many Chinese residents to vote for the first time, driven by controversial school board decisions and a batch of unearthed anti-Asian tweets.

The parents who launched the recall effort say it was born of frustration at the board's misplaced priorities, mishandling of a budget crisis and failure to focus on the fundamental task of reopening public schools during the pandemic. Most of San Francisco's 50,000 public school students did not see the inside of a classroom for over a year, from March 2020 until August 2021.

'It comes down to incompetence,' said Siva Raj, a father of two who helped spearhead the recall effort. 'The message we want to send is, if you don't do the job you are elected do - your primary responsibility is to educate our children - you're fired.'

Opponents call the recall a waste of taxpayer money and a right-wing attack on liberal San Francisco that is part of a national movement to oust progressives from power. Both sides agree that San Francisco's school board and the city itself became the focus of an embarrassing national spotlight.

Organizers say they would recall all seven board members if they could, but only three have served long enough to face a challenge: Board President Gabriela Lopez and two commissioners, Alison Collins and Faauuga Moliga.

One of the first issues to grab national attention was the board's decision to rename 44 of the city's public schools they said honored public figures linked to racism, sexism and other injustices. On the list were names like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and trailblazing California Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

The renaming effort drew swift criticism for some of its targets, but also for its timing in January 2020, when public classrooms were closed because of COVID-19 restrictions. Angry parents asked why the board was focused on changing school names rather than getting children back into classrooms. The effort was also riddled with historical inaccuracies and shoddy research that drew criticisms of political correctness gone awry.

'It was so poorly executed that it made a mockery of the broader...