CONVERSATION
On Feb. 15, San Francisco voters recalled three school board members for controversial behavior and decisions, many of them coming while the district was slow to return students to in-person school. The recall was a landslide. Ann Hsu, a mother of two SFUSD students and PTSA president at Galileo High School, played an important role by organizing outreach to Chinese and other Asian voters for the pro-recall side.
Hsu also threw her hat in the ring to be a replacement, touting her experience as a tech entrepreneur and yogurt-company investor, as well as her own parent and immigrant bona fides; she came to the United States from China more than 40 years ago. She was also chair of a committee, known as CBOC, that oversees how the school district spends hundreds of millions of dollars of bond money.
After the recall, Hsu was one of three mothers with SFUSD students whom Mayor London Breed appointed to the board. They have less than eight months for their terms, but it could be one of the most significant periods in the district’s history. The administration and board must navigate through a huge budget deficit, layoffs, declining enrollment, educational inequity, and a fight over the future of Lowell High School — all while keeping an eye on COVID and recruiting candidates to replace Superintendent Vincent Matthews, whose contract expires in June.
Hsu and the other new board members — Lainie Motamedi and Lisa Weissman-Ward — have pledged to run for their seats in the upcoming November election.
The Frisc spoke with Hsu two days after the new members’ first board meeting, which featured a discussion about a payroll debacle that has saddled dozens, maybe hundreds of teachers with missing salary and benefits. The board members also debated the budget deficit; a final budget must be hammered out by June. The latest plan would cut $50 million by laying off as many as 151 teachers, social workers, and counselors, 71 administrators, and 42 other employees. Hsu and others voted for it, but not before grilling top SFUSD officials, who said extra money from the state, which could come in May, might be too late to save those jobs — especially teachers and others in the schools.
We talked about the board’s priorities and politics, the fate of Lowell, and much more, including — why not? — yogurt.
This conversation has been edited and condensed.
The Frisc: Before we get to big topics at hand, you founded a yogurt company. That’s not something you hear every day. How did that come about?
Ann Hsu: I have a friend I’ve known since 1991 who’s Uighur Chinese. Yogurt was kind of invented in that region, Central Asia, so it’s his culture and he wanted to start a company. I was doing high tech for 20 years. When my dot-com wrapped up, I wanted to do something completely different. Yogurt was pretty different, and it was a great business opportunity in China. I gave him some money as an angel investor. Unfortunately because of what’s happening in Xinjiang, we had to shut down that factory four years ago. My friend is a Turkish citizen now, so he’s in Istanbul.
You were vocal about the recall. Some of your colleagues were vocal opponents of the recall. Has that affected your relationship so far?
I’ve known Jenny Lam for a while. The other three holdover commissioners, Mark Alexander, Kevine Boggess, and Mark Sanchez, I met for the first time before the first board meeting. We didn’t talk about the recall. I knew they were not for it; I wanted to find out where they’re from, their career paths, a little about their families. Then at the end, a little about the board and their advice for me, because I’ve never done this before.
It was clear Tuesday night at your first meeting that you and Alexander and Boggess — and Lam to some extent — were aligned on urging budget staff to try harder to restore school cuts if extra money comes from the state in May. Did you talk about that before the meeting?
Not at all, it was pretty organic. I’m no politician, I don’t think politically about alliances or whatever. I’m not shy about voicing my opinion, and if others want to jump in, that’s great. There was nothing pre-planned.
On a seven-member board, every vote counts. Alliances and consensus building are important. Can you do that after the fractiousness of the past couple years?
I want to know how other people think, and would like to convince them if they don’t agree with me. I haven’t thought about building alliances in political terms.
But the CBOC was my first exercise in counting votes. I was the chair, and trying to get the CBOC to approve recommendations, I went through that exercise on the advice of other people. At one point I thought to myself, “Wow, I’m counting votes. This must be what Nancy Pelosi does all day.”
You’ve pledged to run for your seat in the fall. How did being involved in a recall prepare you for running your own campaign?
That was my first political campaign. I guess it was successful because it was part of the bigger campaign. Our Chinese-API voter outreach task force was positioned to be the Chinese arm of the two recall campaigns. I just used whatever business knowledge I had — organizing a group of people, how to execute and achieve a goal.
The part that was new was the press. You guys! I had no exposure before Jan. 14, our first press conference. As it went on that month, and the week after the election, I learned by doing. That has prepared me for the coming campaign.
You’ve had a short time to prepare for your board seat. In your preparation, has anything surprised you?
Yes. Being on CBOC I had limited exposure to the district’s workings and staff, about five people at most. I encountered some, I would say, actions or habits that other people have told me are representative of wider district culture.
How would you characterize those actions or habits?
The tendency to not respond quickly, to pontificate, to take a long time to get to the point. We had 90-minute meetings and a lot of questions. Each question generated 10 minutes of explanation. And I’m sorry, but I was getting impatient. They were filibustering.
We agreed to keep presentations to 10 minutes and answers to questions to two minutes, and I had an alarm clock, just like for public comment. That was my exposure to SFUSD.
So this past week I’ve seen the payroll thing, [heard] the CFO, the CTO, and other parts of this district. It reminded me of my initial [time at CBOC]. Not so much taking a long time — although they do take a long time — but there’s a lot of detail. I’m a tech person and I know there’s infinite detail in everything. But past the first five minutes, I don’t want to hear it, because it’s endless. Let’s get to the bigger picture of what can be done, what has been done, and what we’ll do in the future.
That comes back to Tuesday night. You, Alexander, and Boggess said to the budget staff to be more proactive about potentially saving jobs this spring, and they were reluctant. It reminded me of some conversations with the previous version of the board — they’d say to administration staff, “Why can’t you just do this, why are you dragging your feet?” So how do you balance two things: holding administrators’ feet to the fire, but also not meddling? That was a charge that came up in the recall, that board members weren’t letting the administration do its job.
That’s an excellent question and I do not have an answer yet. But with my limited experience with district staff on CBOC, I really believe in making personal connections. If I have to change minds one by one, I’ll try to do it. Like the recall campaign on the street, talking to random people, it’s one by one. I really enjoy that. But I don’t want to get into the minutiae, that’s their job. I don’t get paid enough to do that. [Editor’s note: Board of Education members are paid a stipend of about $500 a month.]
In software and technology, everything can be done with enough time and money. Don’t tell me you cannot do this, just tell me: Do you need more money, more people, more time?
Well, the budget staff were saying Tuesday they would need more time, that it might be too chaotic to squeeze in last-minute revisions before finishing the budget, even if those revisions save people’s jobs and help students.
Then let’s change the process. You don’t have to do the whole thing. Let’s do the most important parts in one month. It’s an attitude shift.
‘I encountered some, I would say, actions or habits that other people have told me are representative of wider [SFUSD] culture: The tendency to not respond quickly, to pontificate, to take a long time to get to the point.’
Is a big audit of central office functions and budgets coming? Can you press for that?
We are pursuing [an] audit or consulting project that looks at the central office; that definitely should be done.
The budget staff is being forced to make these numbers work, and I have full confidence they can. But you can’t just have the budget staff move around numbers. You have to start with all the services we provide and bucket them — core, direct, indirect services. I want to know what they are. As you list them all, you attach data to them and say: “This service impacts X number of students.” These are objective data. You make a big spreadsheet, and then you can see the impact.
You’ve talked about keeping the board’s list of priorities short. What things should the board not be doing in the next 6 months?
Charter schools. We should not be talking about them at all.
You’ve said you think it would be legal to go back to merit-based admissions for Lowell. Have you gotten more legal clarity since you’ve joined the board?
I’m not a lawyer, obviously. I haven’t talked to the district’s legal staff, but I understand it’s their opinion that it’s illegal. But I’ve talked to Lowell alumni who are lawyers who think it’s legal. It’s useless for you and I to debate, we’re not lawyers. If there’s a potential challenge, let’s go to court and find out. The district has gone to court for far less significant issues.
Lowell is part of a larger debate about equity and academic differentiation. The district has gotten rid of 8th grade algebra and middle-school honors classes, and people on the board and in the district feel AP classes are inequitable. How do you address the needs of kids — or maybe their families — who want to move faster, but avoid inequitable distribution of resources?
I wouldn’t say [we need to] focus on academics or merit. I’d say the choice of having that program at Lowell needs to be restored. The district, for how big and diverse we are, not in terms of race but in terms of kids, should provide service to all. I have two Chinese boys who are completely different. One would love the Lowell atmosphere. The other one doesn’t want to touch Lowell. We should have a Lowell for one son and other programs for the other son, and that goes for all students.
There aren’t that many kids who want to go to Lowell. They have other interests. Like JROTC, it’s such a great program. We should be offering all these options to serve all the different students.
Should honors classes in middle school be restored?
That’s a question I haven’t thought about before and don’t want to give an off the cuff answer.
The teacher contract extension, which cut AP prep funding across the district for one year and has a big impact on Lowell, was approved by 56 percent of voting teachers — a relatively low margin and perhaps a sign of discontent. How does that affect the board’s approach to the next contract negotiation?
I’ve never encountered labor unions before. I’m looking forward to it. I approach it like yogurt, I want to learn about it.
Unions are good for your gut microbiome?
Exactly! People have told me SF is a big union town — I didn’t know. I’ve been in Silicon Valley all my life.
SFUSD enrollment is in decline, which is the source of so many woes. Can the district and the board do anything specific about the decline?
I’ve heard applications at [some private high schools] are up. I’d venture it has something to do with AP classes. We need to be more mindful of the impact not just on current students, but also impact for future students. President Lam mentioned that the other night.
After Lowell is restored to merit-based admissions, I want to prepare kids from K through 3rd grade who are falling behind and can’t catch up in middle school. Rather than changing the Lowell standard, let’s prepare kids from K to 3 so they can read at grade level and do math, and then a certain percentage will get into Lowell from every community. So you get the diversity.
I want to pause on this idea of Lowell being the North Star for so many decisions. First of all, it only has 2,800 places. Why not create focused academic programs at other high schools?
A “Lowell everywhere” is a nice idea, but in terms of resources, it’s inefficient. A company can’t do everything. From my entrepreneurial experience, there are so many distractions. If Lowell has an academic focus, keep the academic focus. If Ruth Asawa School of the Arts has an arts focus, have an arts focus. I’m not advocating for every high school to have a pure focus; there should be general education. Many kids have multiple talents they should be able to explore.
But unless you, say, double the size of Lowell, you’re creating a bottleneck and turning away kids who want that focus.
You know there are kids who leave Lowell after a year. And other kids transfer in. There’s movement. We also need education for the parents, especially immigrant Chinese parents who just blindly think that everybody should get into Lowell. In China everyone wants to get into Tsinghua or Beida, the top universities in China.
Not everybody can go there, and that’s OK, it doesn’t mean they won’t have a good or successful life. Lowell shouldn’t be the North Star for everybody, just for a certain type of kid.
Alex Lash is the editor in chief of The Frisc.