On Tuesday, Feb. 15, San Franciscans will decide the fates of three members of the SF Board of Education, in the city’s first recall election in 39 years. (Then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein survived that one.) Mail-in ballots will arrive soon, so if you’re just tuning in or still feel unclear about how to vote, we’ve put together a FAQ for you.
(Note: The Frisc plays by nonprofit rules, which means we do not make endorsements or recommendations in elections.)
Q: Three of the seven SF school board members — Alison Collins, Gabriela López, and Faauuga Moliga — are up for recall. Why them?
A: The other four board members were elected in the fall of 2020, and so were not eligible for a recall. Otherwise, it’s possible the entire board would have been targeted.
Once COVID hit and lockdowns lingered, many San Francisco parents grew increasingly vexed at what they considered a lack of urgency to reopen schools. In addition, early in the pandemic, as evidence mounted of online school’s toll on students, the board rebuffed a plea by Superintendent Vincent Matthews to hire a consultant to expedite the reopening of schools. (At the time, Collins said bringing on the consultant would be “recreating white supremacy.”)
As the pandemic’s one-year anniversary approached, the virtual school board meetings turned into marathons spanning nine or 10 hours. A lot of time was spent on changing Lowell High School’s admissions process, renaming dozens of schools, and other issues; the matter of reopening classrooms was often relegated to the end. Critics of the board, including Mayor London Breed and former City Attorney Dennis Herrera, said both the board and the district didn’t have their priorities straight. (Herrera sued to reopen schools faster, which a judge deemed unnecessary once a plan was in motion to bring back the youngest students.)
In February 2021, recall efforts emerged. A few days later, López, the president of the school board, acknowledged that “mistakes were made” and that the board needed to focus on reopening. Others on the body quickly took up that mantra as well.
Is it an all-or-none vote?
No, each person’s recall is a separate vote.
Who’s behind it?
That has become a complicated question. In an op-ed last year, Moliga criticized the recall organizers, parents Autumn Looijen and Siva Raj, as newcomers to the city and cozy with right-wing media. Collins called the recall an “information attack,” and part of a “political tactic” being wielded nationwide. López said it was an effort against the whole board, but also indicated that if she had a different background (that is, not a woman of color), “I don’t think I would be getting as much pushback as I am now.”
Recall supporters have raised nearly $1.1 million total. Of more than 1,000 contributors, the largest sums by far have come from veteran venture capitalists Arthur Rock and David Sacks, as well as a California Association of Realtors PAC.
There’s no evidence of big entities or outside money flooding in; 85 percent of contributors are individuals, and 82 percent of contributions have come from San Francisco. That’s more individual and in-city funding, for example, than the 2020 school board races, with four seats up for grabs, in which only 63 percent of contributions came from the city and 41 percent from individuals.
It’s also a different mix from the funding sources in support of recalling District Attorney Chesa Boudin. (That vote is scheduled for June, and we’ll do a FAQ for it in due time.)
But the two recall efforts are related, right? Both have been cast as reactionary attacks to beat back reform.
It’s important to address the school board and Boudin recall campaigns separately, so let’s stick with the SFUSD situation here. To get onto the ballot, recall backers gathered roughly 80,000 signatures for each of the three recalls. They needed a count of at least 10 percent of SF registered voters, or roughly 50,000.
The signees certainly weren’t all Republicans or Trump supporters. There are nearly 34,000 registered Republicans in San Francisco, and more than 56,000 San Franciscans voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 election, believe it or not.
The three recalls have full or partial support of many Democratic officials, including Breed, state Senator Scott Wiener, and all four candidates for SF’s open state assembly seat. (Two of them, including Boudin’s chief of staff David Campos, have said that only Collins should be recalled.)
Why Collins?
Most people point to her notorious tweets from 2016, three years before she was elected, in which she called out Asian Americans for anti-Black behavior and used a racist slur to describe them. (The tweets were surfaced by a recall supporter in March 2021, after the campaign began, and are still online as of this writing.)
In the wake of her response and refusal to unequivocally apologize, the board voted 5–2 to strip her of her vice presidential post and committee seats. (López voted with Collins in dissent.) That didn’t end the matter: Collins then filed a lawsuit against the school district and fellow board members, seeking reinstatement and $87 million in so-called damages. The civil claim was tossed out of court four months later. Although the suit cost the district $110,000 in legal fees, Collins justified it like this: “I needed to protect my family.”
Campos, a former supervisor and progressive stalwart, recently told the Bay Area Reporter that as chair of the local Democratic Party he supported a resolution to condemn all the recalls, but he would vote to recall Collins: “I could not stand in solidarity with my Asian American husband and vote otherwise.”
Speaking of costing money, isn’t the school district mired in a financial crisis?
Indeed. It faces a $125 million deficit for the 2022–23 school year, with big deficits in the years beyond as well. (After a first failed vote last month, the SF Board of Supervisors voted this week to cover SFUSD’s costs for the recall.)
In mid-December, the board approved an austerity plan that will potentially stave off a state takeover but will bring painful cuts: $40 million from the central office and $50 million from school sites. (The current school year budget is $1.16 billion.) There’s talk of a windfall from the massive state budget surplus, but the state’s appointee overseeing SFUSD’s budget plan has warned that the district must also fix deep structural problems, not paper them over.
How did the three recall subjects vote on the austerity plan?
Collins and Moliga voted for the plan. (Moliga had one of the more memorable lines in the process leading up to the vote, saying that city officials, philanthropists, and others who might want to work with the district were watching to see if the board could be a “good steward” of its finances.) López was the only board member to vote against the plan.
What happens if the recall is successful?
If any school board member gets recalled by voters, the mayor will then appoint a replacement, who will have to run for a full term this November.
So if they’re not recalled, I’ll be able to vote for or against them in 10 months (assuming they run for reelection)?
Correct.
Between now and then, what will the board be deciding?
A lot; the budget crisis is by no means resolved. The austerity plan approved last month is subject to revision until the final deadline in June. In the next few months, the board might try to tilt the mix of cuts away from school sites and teachers, and more toward the central office. It’s unclear if the state would approve any broad changes to the agreed-upon blueprint.
Superintendent Matthews ends his term in June, and candidates to replace him will certainly know how difficult a position it will be. The board is responsible for hiring his replacement. (Note that Matthews threatened last year to retire early, but stayed on when the board promised to follow procedural rules, focus on reopening schools, and meddle less in his hiring decisions. Those stipulations went into his contract.)
There’s also the ongoing struggle with COVID, of course, and the longer-term drop in student enrollment that began before the pandemic, which informs difficult decisions about staffing and school consolidation. The fewer the students, the less funding the district receives from the state.
School renaming was punted indefinitely, but the Lowell High controversy could reemerge. A judge said the process to change the school’s admissions policy was illegal, but Matthews said it was too late to revert to the merit system for the 2022–23 year. The board will likely go through the process again, this time with the proper transparency and notifications.
No matter how you vote in the recall, it’s clear that school board elections matter. After the recall dust settles, a round of regular elections is coming in November. It will be important to pay attention.
Alex Lash is editor in chief of The Frisc.
