Voters in San Francisco will decide Tuesday whether to replace three of the city’s school board members after months of frustration with the slow pace of school reopenings and the board’s decision to focus on left-wing projects in the midst of the pandemic.
The recall will test the strength of a movement that has gained momentum in far less liberal parts of the country but that has not yet been put to the test anywhere as deeply blue as San Francisco.
It also comes at a time when temperatures on education are running high nationwide, with tensions that simmered during months of school closures boiling over on issues from mask mandates to curricula.
Here is what to know about the recall.
Who is getting recalled?
Only three of the seven board members for the San Francisco Unified School District have been in office long enough to be eligible for a recall. So, the remaining four members will not be on the ballot on Tuesday.
Board President Gabriela Lopez, Commissioner Alison Collins, and Commissioner Faauuga Moliga will all three face voters this week amid rising frustration nationally with the kinds of pandemic-era restrictions they supported.
Lopez has decried the recall effort as “all political” and has suggested her race has factored into the opposition she is now facing from parents.
“I’m not going to say that we’re not noticing that this is a recall against people of color, and it’s against people who have also been doing a lot of work to support those communities across our city who are often not in these spaces,” Lopez said in October. “So, I do believe if it wasn’t someone with my background, and I’ll speak for myself, my experience, my understanding or cultural understandings, I don’t think I would be getting as much pushback as I am now.”
In addition to supporting the liberal efforts and COVID-19 measures that drove San Franciscans to support the recall, Collins has come under scrutiny for her past tweets targeting Asian Americans, including one in which she said Asians rely on “white supremacist thinking to assimilate and get ahead.”
How did the recall start?
The recall effort was started by two single parents who met on Tinder in July 2020 and began organizing other parents in opposition to continued school closures.
By August 2021, Siva Raj and Autumn Looijen had collected the requisite 51,325 signatures (making up 10% of San Francisco’s registered voters) a month ahead of their deadline, placing the recall on the ballot for Tuesday’s election.
The frustration over the performance of the school board extends beyond the way it handled COVID-`19 closures.
Parents also expressed outrage that the school board dedicated a significant amount of time and resources to an effort to rename 44 schools whose namesakes had been deemed offensive, including a school named after Abraham Lincoln.
School board members also faced scrutiny for voting during the pandemic to end the merit-based admissions process at a top high school in the city, citing “pervasive systemic racism” to push through what was ultimately an unpopular decision.
The recall effort was largely focused on the board’s perceived prioritization of the ideologically-driven projects over getting schools fully reopened.
Who supports the recall?
A number of Democratic groups support recalling some or all three of the board members despite their left-wing ties.
San Francisco’s liberal mayor has endorsed the recall effort as well. Mayor London Breed said in November that the school board had pursued “severely misplaced” priorities during the pandemic and that the city’s parents deserve a change in school leadership.
Multiple local newspapers, including the San Francisco Examiner and the San Francisco Chronicle, have endorsed the recall.
The San Francisco Examiner’s editorial board wrote in a January piece that “[i]nstead of tackling urgent problems, the board indulged in performative activism and other controversial projects” that had nothing to do with the urgent problems of COVID-19 and falling enrollment.
The San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial board also said in January that “competence matters, even for progressives.”
The city’s teachers union opposes the recall effort, however.
United Educators of San Francisco said in October that the recall campaign is “a waste of time, energy and resources that will ultimately hurt our schools.”
