On the surface – because it’s ultra-blue San Francisco – this seems like a surprising development:
San Francisco residents overwhelmingly approved of a vote Tuesday to recall three of the city’s school board members, election officials said.
Critics, including San Francisco Mayor London Breed, argued the members — school board President Gabriela López, Vice President Faauuga Moliga and Commissioner Alison Collins — pushed progressive politics rather than act in the best interest of children during the pandemic, and voters agreed, according to the San Francisco Department of Elections.
They agreed overwhelmingly, and the mayor – who is also on the left, but at least for the moment seems to have been more able to read the tea leaves of public opinion – gets to name their replacements until a new election next fall.
The message in Virginia and now in San Francisco is the same, even though those two places are not the same: if leftists go too far to harm children and their education, voters will revolt. The left and the Democrats rely heavily on the support of young women – many of whom are mothers – and such voters can be activated to vote against them if they perceive them as harming children.
Of course, the definition of what constitutes “harm” to children can differ from person to person, sometimes greatly, even among Democrat voters. San Francisco is a warning, however, that these sorts of decisions (especially during a pandemic) by a school board may cross a line:
Even the Democrat-led city government of San Francisco had enough with the board. It filed a lawsuit against both the SFUSD and its board in February 2021, accusing them of ” failing to come up with a reopening plan even as numerous other schools across the U.S. have reopened.” But SFUSD reopened only elementary schools last April and didn’t return to full-time in-person learning for all K-12 until fall 2021.
Board President López claimed the long delays didn’t cause any learning loss because children were “just having different learning experiences than the ones we currently measure,” and they learned more “about their families and cultures by staying home.” Her tone-deaf comments angered many parents, who have witnessed their kids’ academic and emotional struggles at home due to the school closures…
…In 2019, the board voted to cover a mural depicting slavery and Native Americans at George Washington High School, a decision that would cost taxpayers between $600,000 to $1 million. Fortunately, the mural will stay after a San Francisco Superior Court judge overturned the school board’s decision last year….
In January 2021, rather than focusing on reopening schools, the board voted to rename 44 schools, including Abraham Lincoln and George Washington High Schools. Even Democrat Mayor London Breed expressed her disbelief in a statement, saying, “I can’t understand why the school board is advancing a plan to rename all these schools when there isn’t a plan to have kids back in those physical schools.”
…Facing nationwide backlash over the renaming controversy, the school board voted to reverse its school renaming plan in April.
There is also anti-Asian bias. San Francisco is a city with demographics atypical of the US [emphasis mine]:
As of the 2010 census, the ethnic makeup and population of San Francisco included: 390,387 Whites (48.1%), 267,915 Asians (33.3%), 48,870 African Americans (6.1%), 4,024 Native Americans (0.5%), 3,359 Pacific Islanders (0.4%), 53,021 from other races (6.6%), and 37,659 from two or more races (4.7%). There were 121,744 Hispanics or Latinos of any race (15.1%).
And so when this occurred, a very sizeable percentage of the population was probably very upset, and rightly so [my emphasis]:
In the fall of 2020, the school board voted to eliminate the academic performance-based admission process to Lowell High school, one of the best high schools in the city.
It is important to note that Lowell’s admission process wasn’t 100 percent merit-based. Due to the San Francisco NAACP v. San Francisco Unified School District lawsuit and the 1983 Consent Decree settlement, there is a limit to the percentage of students from a particular ethnic group that can enroll at Lowell.
This cap means that, to get into Lowell, Chinese Americans have to score higher than any other ethnic group because Chinese American students represent a “disproportionate” share of students meeting the school’s requirements. Still, to justify canceling Lowell’s academic-based admission completely, board president Lopez claimed grades and test scores were “biased towards Whites and Asians,” even though non-white students make up 75 percent of Lowell’s student body. Collins tweeted that “‘merit’ is an inherently racist construct designed and centered on white supremacist framing.”
And those Asians are also white supremacists, as we’ve heard from leftists before:
…[P]eople uncovered some racially charged tweets by Collins from 2016, in which she blamed Asian-Americans for using “white supremacist thinking to assimilate and ‘get ahead.’” Several Asian-American voters told me that Collins’ racist tweets, her half-hearted apology, and her refusal to resign despite widespread criticism had motivated them to volunteer for the recall campaign.
No surprise there. Nor is this:
The three board members and their supporters claim the recall campaign was funded by right-wing big money. In truth, the recall campaign is a grassroots movement led by Asian Americans. Many of them are lifelong liberals, and some are first-generation immigrants who had never been politically active until last year.
The article goes on to describe some of their efforts. Because of pandemic restrictions, it took tremendous work to get the requisite number of signatures on recall petitions. But they were determined. Some of the leaders were immigrants from China, or the children of such immigrants (Asians of Chinese origin are by far the largest Asian group in San Francisco).
But most people – of any race, even in San Francisco – don’t want to see their children sacrificed on the non-holy altar of wokeness.
[NOTE: Actually, I see here that Collins’ tweets were even worse than that. Here’s a little sampler:
Prior to her election to the San Francisco Board of Education in 2018…[and] over the course of several tweets on December 4, 2016, Collins wrote:
“Many Asian [students] and [teachers] I know won’t engage in critical race convos unless they see how they’re impacted by white supremacy. … Many Asian Am. believe they benefit from the ‘model minority’ BS. In fact many Asian American [teachers], [students] and [parents] actively promote these myths. They use white supremacist thinking to assimilate and ‘get ahead’. Talk to many [Lowell High School] parents and you will hear praise of Tiger Moms and disparagement of Black/Brown ‘culture’. I even see it in my [Facebook] timeline with former [high school] peers. Their [timelines] are full of White Asian ppl. No recognition Black Lives Matter exists. 2 [weeks] ago, my mixed-race/Black daughter heard boys teasing a Latino about ‘Trump, Mexicans and the KKK.’ The boys were Asian-American. She spoke up when none of the other staff did. The after school counselor was Asian. Where are the vocal Asians speaking up against Trump? Don’t Asian Americans know they’re on his list as well? Do they think they won’t be deported? profiled? beaten? Being a house n****r [sic] is still being a n****r. You’re still considered ‘the help.'”
It’s hard to know where to begin to critique that. Let’s just say I find it interesting that Collins was elected to her position about two years after these tweets were published.]
