The Washington High School mural controversy is going from “paint it down” to “slow it down,” as it enters a phase familiar to many San Franciscans — a thorny legal battle based on a California environmental law that stymies construction and development.
A San Francisco county judge is scheduled to rule as soon as next week whether the mural’s defenders can press ahead with a lawsuit, which alleges the San Francisco school district’s governing board hasn’t followed correct procedure required by the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA.
(Update: On March 11, the judge ruled that the lawsuit could proceed.)
The legal and technical arguments are, in some respects, a cooling-off period. The fight last summer nearly boiled over, with opponents of the 1930s Depression-era mural waving signs at public hearings and shouting “Paint it down!” while the national media and internet trolls on all sides zeroed in — once again — on San Francisco in-fighting.
The mural’s 13 panels, which depict the life of George Washington, include scenes with enslaved African Americans on Washington’s plantation and white settlers, encouraged by Washington, heading west while stepping past a dead Native American on the ground.
Citing the trauma of students coming to school and seeing those images every day, opponents asked the school board to destroy the work. The board complied, voting at a June 2019 meeting to paint over the mural.
The board members left themselves a loophole, however, and two months later they used it, voting 4 to 3 to cover the mural with solid paneling instead, at an estimated cost up to $825,000. Given ever-rising costs of materials, and the legal fees they’re now obliged to spend, it’s likely to cost more.
It isn’t clear if a covering can be fashioned to hide but not damage the mural, which spans across the walls and ceiling of the high school’s lobby. They are frescoes — paint applied to wet plaster — which makes removal and transfer extremely difficult and expensive.
Nothing will happen until the process goes through a review mandated by CEQA. Even if Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo had tossed out the lawsuit, the district must proceed with its review, which could take months or years.
The fight now has a different backdrop. The school district recently announced an unexpected $32 million budget deficit, which could double next year, and $26 million in near-term cuts. Teachers have threatened to strike.
Where’s the cherry tree?
Painted by Russian-born artist Victor Arnautoff in 1936, the mural was meant as a critique from the left, a comment on the hypocrisy of American myth-making. (There is pointedly no reference in any of the panels to Washington chopping down the cherry tree.)
Hundreds of artists, historians, and many others have argued Arnautoff’s work should be used as a teaching tool. Bolstered by the post-Charlottesville removal of Confederate monuments across the South and San Francisco’s removal of a racist statue from Civic Center, opponents say Washington High students of color don’t need a daily in-your-face reminder of racism, genocide, and oppression. “Yes, they’ve learned how they were treated, but it’s like a loop,” Norm Mattox, a retired SF public school teacher, said after the vote in June. “It’s worse than Groundhog Day.”
School board president Stevon Cook, who is African American, admitted in August after brokering the “cover, don’t destroy” vote that he would catch flak from both sides. If you want to vote someone off the board, he told the capacity crowd, “direct it toward me and let this board get back to work.” (Cook is running for District 5 supervisor this fall.)
Mural supporters don’t consider it a compromise to cover the mural. They want it to remain uncovered, full stop. But Cook’s maneuver was helpful to the pro-mural side, said John Golinger, a veteran political campaigner who is preparing a November ballot measure to ask the public to preserve the mural. “It gave us breathing room to write a better measure and get our ducks in a row,” he told The Frisc this week.
The school district estimates the cost of covering the murals could reach $825,000. Meanwhile, it has announced an unexpected $32 million budget deficit and $26 million in cuts.
Before the 4–3 vote in August, Golinger and allies were aiming for this week’s election to float the measure. In November, Golinger said, the measure would ask the board to preserve the mural — a nonbinding request, but one that could turn up the political heat on the board, which will have three of seven seats open, including Cook’s.
The measure would have limited legal teeth, banning the school district from using public funds or employees to cover the mural, one of the tactics Golinger said he used for the successful 2014 campaign to limit building heights on the San Francisco waterfront.
No response to an ‘olive branch’
The Washington High alumni association, which has brought the lawsuit, recently offered a plan to avoid litigation. The association’s vice president Lope Yap Jr. said he sent it two weeks ago “as an olive branch” to district superintendent Vincent Matthews and all seven school board members but has not received a response.
School board members and district spokespeople did not respond to The Frisc’s requests for comment. An outside lawyer working for the district declined to answer questions.
In exchange for leaving the mural be and designating the school a historical landmark, the alumni have proposed a $500,000 endowment for preserving the mural; a scholarship fund for five seniors a year; an annual “teaching week” to discuss the mural; and educational plaques and materials to accompany the mural, which were supposed to be installed 50 years ago after the school’s Black Student Union protested the images.
At that time, the compromise included the commission of new work as a response to the Arnautoff mural. Local African-American artist Dewey Crumpler, then a San Francisco Art Institute student, painted those murals, which can be found down the hall from the Arnautoff work.
(Crumpler discussed that history, his arts education, and his support for the Arnautoff mural with The Frisc last year.)
At a recent forum to support the mural, Crumpler related a story from his youth as a parable for some people’s contempt for the mural. He recalled how, as a teenager, he heard the dissonant sounds of jazz saxophonist John Coltrane for the first time and smashed the record in frustration, but he soon found he couldn’t get the sound out of his head and came to appreciate the artist’s work. “I took seriously the confusion that it caused,” he said.
Editor’s note: Susan Brandt-Hawley, attorney for the George Washington High School Alumni Association, wrote to The Frisc to object to the word “stymie” to describe CEQA’s effect on development. Brandt-Hawley cited a 2017 California Senate committee report that found that CEQA requirements for projects specifically led by a state agency were “not a significant burden.”
The report did not quantify how many projects were forestalled or abandoned because of the threat of litigation. The report tried to survey cities, as well, but only 7% responded, which the report acknowledged was not enough data. A 2015 state legislative analyst report dug into city data, however, and said local CEQA cases are one driver of high housing costs in California.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, his predecessor Jerry Brown, and many others have called for CEQA reform. Last year the state targeted the act, allowing homeless shelters and supportive housing to bypass review in Los Angeles; lawmakers are now considering a statewide version.
