[SFGP] Greenzine - Election Day

Tue Feb 15 07:47:17 PST 2022

Feb 15, 2022
GREENZINE
SF Green Party Weekly News and Events

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Dear Greens,

    Today is Election Day for the School Board recall election, but
you can still vote in person or mail in your ballot; so long as it's
postmarked today, it will count.  The Green Party has endorsed NO on
recalling all three Board members.  Our statement explaining our
reasoning is included in this newsletter, so please share with others.
It is also on our website, here:
  http://sfgreenparty.org/endorsements/99-school-board-recall-2022-endorsements

    Join us next Wednesday, Feb 23, for our regular monthly meeting.
The agenda will be set at this Wednesday's County Council meeting, so
please email us any suggested agenda items.

*===========================*

SF Green Party Statement on School Board Recall

The School Board Recall Election is happening between now and Election
Day, February 15.  If you are voting by mail, your ballot must be
postmarked on or before February 15.  You can also vote in person on
Election Day, or beforehand at City Hall.

Three members of the School Board, Alison Collins, Gabriela López, and
Faauuga Moliga, are up for recall.  Although López is the only one of
the three who previously earned our endorsement, the SF Green Party
has endorsed a "NO" vote on recalling all three of the Board members
in this election (i.e., we support keeping them in office through the
next regular election in November 2022).

If one or more of the Board members is recalled, the City Charter
gives Mayor Breed the authority to fill each vacancy with one of her
own hand-picked candidates.  Greens don't want our public schools to
be subject to the same corruption as we see at other City departments
run by the Mayor, such as the Department of Building Inspection,
Recreation and Parks, and the MTA (which operates Muni).

As we wrote in our School Board endorsements in 2020, concerning our
non-endorsement of Jenny Lam
(http://sfgreenparty.org/endorsements/95-november-2020-endorsements):

  Our biggest concern with Lam is not the policies she supports, but
  rather her close ties to the Mayor's office.  The School Board is
  supposed to be an independent body from the rest of SF government,
  so having a Board member who directly reports to the Mayor is very
  problematic.

Having four such appointees would give the Mayor the majority of the
seven seats on the School Board, allowing her to spend bond money and
give out contracts to Machine-friendly companies without any public
oversight.

Greens have long advocated for a charter amendment that would allow
voters to choose replacements (using ranked choice voting) on the same
ballot as the recall election.  Until that happens, voters who the
Mayor does not listen to can not meaningfully exercise our
constitutional right to recall elected officials.  Because the Mayor
is the only person who gets to choose replacements for elected
officials who are recalled, these elections (other than recalling the
Mayor herself) can only benefit the Mayor and her supporters.

This is not to say that Greens are completely happy with the
performance of the current members of the School Board.  In 2020, we
wrote in our endorsements:

  The biggest issue facing the School Board over the next year will be
  when, and how, to safely reopen SF's public schools.  Zoom classes
  don't work for young children, and keeping kids at home has had a
  serious impact on parents, especially on women, who
  disproportionately provide for childcare and homeschooling.

Based on research from UCSF that showed serious mental health impacts
of Zoom school, and low in-school transmission risk, Greens advocated
for reopening our elementary schools in the Fall of 2020.  We also
advocated for SFUSD support for "pods" of public school students in
all grades (TK-12) as a bridge to full school reopening, noting that
SF's summer camps that were organized into pods of 12 kids did not
result in any COVID outbreaks.

Although SFUSD failed to reopen schools in a timely manner, and lost
many students to private schools, Greens think the majority of the
blame lies with the Superintendent rather than the Board.  The
Superintendent attempted to waste money on an outside consultant
rather than taking free advice from experts at the Department of
Public Health and UCSF.  Although the SFUSD central administrative
budget (i.e., money not spent in classrooms) has ballooned under
Superintendent Matthews, the public (including SFUSD parents,
students, and teachers) have yet to see any benefits.

Members of the School Board also deserve some blame for their failed
attempt to rename a number of public schools.  The centralized
renaming committee, poorly managed and dominated by insiders,
advocated renaming some schools based of inaccurate information, while
being completely comfortable leaving "Willie Brown Middle School" in
place.  This was a stark contrast to the process used to rename (the
former) Drake High School in Marin County, which empowered the
students at the school to participate in the process and therefore
became a learning
opportunity. (https://www.marinij.com/2021/05/12/tam-board-oks-archie-williams-for-new-drake-high-school-name/)

On the other hand, our Board had a major success in reforming
admissions standards at Lowell High School.  For years, Lowell appears
to have been in violation of the CA Education Code, which requires a
"random, unbiased" process to determine which kids get to attend
schools in high demand, and forbids admissions standards based on
"academic or athletic performance."
(https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=35160.5.&lawCode=EDC)

Lowell's previous admission standards used a combination of GPA and
standardized test (SBAC) scores to measure academic
performance. Greens believe that standardized tests have significant
racial and class biases, and are a poor measure of academic potential
(http://sfgreenparty.org/10-campaigns/79-opt-out-of-standardized-tests). We
therefore applauded the School Board's change to change Lowell
admissions to the lottery-based system used at other SF schools, which
does not consider test scores.

With this change to admissions policy, racial diversity at Lowell
improved dramatically, with the number of Black and Hispanic freshmen
nearly double that of prior
years. (https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Lowell-got-rid-of-competitive-admissions-New-16415271.php)
And despite the fears of those parents who opposed the change,
academic standards at the school have remained high.

In summary, the current School Board has had some successes and some
failures, which SF political groups should take into account when
interviewing candidates for office in the next regular election in
November 2022.  If voters instead decide to turn control over to our
corrupt Mayor, it will almost certainly make things worse for our
students and for the City as a whole.  Vote NO on all the recall
questions.

*===========================*

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