After the shouting was over, after the packed hearing room at San Francisco Unified School District headquarters was cleared, after a break to let everyone cool off, the vote last night was unanimous.
Every school board member voted to admonish their colleague Ann Hsu for her written remarks, submitted last month to a parents’ advocacy group as part of a candidate questionnaire, that blamed Black and brown parents for poor student performance.
Even Hsu, who is Chinese American, voted to admonish herself, after speaking for two minutes to repeat an apology that she issued on Twitter soon after her original comments surfaced.
In those original comments — written, not spoken; deliberative, not off the cuff — she wrote: “I see one of the biggest challenges as being the lack of family support for those students. Unstable family environments caused by housing and food insecurity along with lack of parental encouragement to focus on learning cause children to not be able to focus on or value learning.”
The question had asked how SFUSD can boost academic outcomes for the most marginalized students.
Unlike several people who spoke for and against her last night, I can’t claim to know what’s truly in Ann Hsu’s mind, although I’ve had enough contact with her to know that she hasn’t been shy about speaking it.
And as the editor of a nonprofit publication, I won’t weigh in on her fitness as a political candidate to run for an elected seat. That’s not my job.
But I can say that her comments, and the board’s decision to call a meeting — one that was sure to add plenty of heat to our foggy summer — ran counter to the momentum the board has been trying to build ever since the February recall ousted three of Hsu’s predecessors and sent a cage-rattling message: Get back to the business of making life better for the city’s public school students, who now total just under 50,000, with enrollment predicted to keep declining.
That message was received. Almost immediately after the recall, the board launched into self-reform, with goals of more focus and efficiency, better behavior, and most important, better student outcomes. No small task, and the urgency was underscored by the district’s latest data showing outcome gaps with Black and Latinx students on one side, and white and Asian students on the other.
Hsu’s smh-inducing comments did not help. Obviously.
Board president Jenny Lam probably wanted to convene last night’s meeting about as much as she wants public discussions on, say, which schools might have to be shuttered in a shrinking school district. But she was in a bind.
Not rebuking Hsu for insulting a broad swath of her own constituents seemed unconscionable, although a few public commenters last night vehemently defended Hsu.
Clearing the room
One was Diane Yap, who dug up the notorious Alison Collins anti-Asian tweets; Yap called the proceedings “performative antiracism” and said chronic absenteeism, not Hsu, was the problem, sparking so much uproar that Lam had to clear the room for 15 minutes.
When everyone reconvened, Lam, who is Asian American, scolded the crowd for “hateful” and “harmful” words but didn’t specify which words or who said them. It was a terrible way to show everyone — including kids who might be watching — “what needs to happen not only in this boardroom but in the classroom,” Lam said.
Later, before the vote, board vice president Kevine Boggess, who is Black, said of Hsu’s original comments, “You need to understand that harm was caused, and if you can’t understand that, you’re part of the problem, not the solution.”
To be clear, the evening wasn’t fully divisive. Some who spoke against the rebuke acknowledged that Hsu’s remarks were harmful or hurtful, but argued that her apology was enough. A few speakers on either side emphasized the need for dialogue and healing.
Hard swerve
But this meeting was also, inevitably, going to be a hard swerve away from the singular mission of the school board: helping kids. Which also needs to be the singular mission of the new superintendent, the teachers and their union leaders, and everyone else involved.
The last time I penned a commentary on the state of the school board, it was a year before the recall, and then-board president Gabriela López, carrying forth a grand political tradition, admitted that “mistakes were made” in trying to rename schools instead of reopening them in the midst of the pandemic. That was about the peak of contrition from that pre-recall version of the board.
Last night, Hsu had a couple of minutes to speak on her own behalf. She apologized to Black and brown families again. She noted that bias and racism against Asian Americans exists too. And then she joined her board colleagues in voting for her own admonishment.
It was not enough for some people — board member Mark Sanchez said he wanted to schedule a stronger vote of “no confidence” — and too much for others. But in today’s San Francisco, where these fights over official acts of stupidity (or worse) keep delaying and distracting from any number of crises we need to address, it’s hard to say if Hsu’s self-admonishment will be enough. If she doesn’t step down, voters will certainly have their say about her in November.
Board member Lainie Motamedi, who like Hsu was one of the mayor’s post-recall appointees, said last night before the vote that student outcomes won’t improve until adult behavior improves.
Here’s another way to look at it: Adults will continue to behave badly in this town, and everywhere else unfortunately. Ultimately how we judge ourselves — and how we improve our city — rests upon how the adults deal with it and get on with doing the hard work.
