New year, another election

If you are in San Francisco, you are facing an Election Day on February 15. WTF? Yes, that's when we'll be voting on whether to recall three members of our elected Board of Education -- the body which more or less runs the S.F. Unified School District. Members Gabriela López, Alison Collins, and Faauuga Moliga, all elected in 2018, are on the ballot. And their chances don't look good.

Like citizens everywhere, San Franciscans are in a pissy state of mind after two years of pandemic. Many parents are even more pissy than the rest of us, furious with a public school system that closed down for months and then reopened without giving parents and teachers confidence it was taking every available precaution, such as new ventilation and making testing available. Everyone inside the schools is required to mask and every student has had the opportunity to be double vaxxed. Ninety-six percent of the teachers are fully vaccinated. But some schools, like the one near me, Buena Vista-Horace Mann, opened plagued by rats, gas leaks and mold. The Board of Ed. didn't seem to be able to do anything about these facts.

And then, in mid-pandemic, the Board seemed to take leave of its senses by announcing it was going to rename 44 schools without going through any plausible process with students, alumni, parents, and historians. Now it's a sure bet that plenty of schools are named after people who were awful racists and settler capitalists by our current standards -- but you have to get at least a plurality of interested citizens on board with changes if those changes are going to satisfy the community that pays for the schools. (And how do you pick your targets? This citizen could do without a school named for Dianne Feinstein, though I am sure our Senior Senator has her fans.)

And then it emerged that Board member Alison Collins had texted some bigoted anti-Asian opinions and the rest of the Board stripped her of her position as vice-chair. Whereupon Collins sued her own colleagues. That's imploded.

With this combination dereliction and crazy antics, it's no surprise that the three members (of seven) who are eligible for recall have been put to a vote.

BUT that's not all that's going on here. United Educators of San Francisco, otherwise known as the teachers union, is at loggerheads with the Board on a lot -- but the union opposes the recall. They claim that the recall is just an attempt by right wing funders and charter school zealots to seize control of public schools away from voters and give it to San Francisco's mayor. Should the recall succeed, the mayor appoints replacements. Here's what the teachers union has to say:

UESF President Cassondra Curiel said, “As educators who love our communities and care for our students, we are urging voters to reject this recall. The recall will waste precious resources when decision-makers need to be laser-focused on meeting the needs of our students. A successful recall ultimately results in mayoral control of the board of education, making it harder for families and the educators they entrust their children with every day to advocate for resources.  

“SFUSD is facing as much as a $112 million deficit next year, which could mean layoffs, increases in class sizes and cuts to essential services to our most vulnerable students. We need an independent board that will fight for the resources our students deserve, not a board beholden to City Hall. The distraction of a special recall election with potential mayoral appointments is NOT what our students and educators need most at a point of real crisis for our classrooms. 

“The central issue here is not the individual commissioners themselves. This is about the voice of our parents and our communities. The recall undermines the voices of parents and voters about who should represent them on the Board of Education. It makes the mayor the sole decision-maker about who should sit on the board. Parents and voters want a school board that answers to them, not unelected appointees that answer to City Hall.”

I'll buy this. 

The big bucks in this city have a hard time winning a straight up vote. The city is a truly awful specimen of urban inequality. But when we see fairly clear cut choices between the greedy and the needy, we usually vote for the latter. So Big Money wins here by subterfuge -- such as hiding behind pissed off parents to change school governance in directions they favor.

I hate the whole thing; I think the current board is full of it; and I'm reluctantly voting NO.

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I'll come along  next week with commentary on the other February 15 contest, a special election for a San Francisco Assemblymember.