Three school board members recalled in San Francisco.

[RandySF]

Link to tweet

?s=20&t=1OyHL-a6d9KKTH1zqmawow

Christine Pelosi
@sfpelosi

With 3 SF School Board Members likely recalled, we need adult supervision at SFUSD. Hoping their replacements will be caring educators who put our children first, hire a quality superintendent and prioritize safe in-person public education. Our patience is thin.

[jalan48]

1. Wow.

[Fiendish Thingy]

2. Tech billionaires triumph in overthrowing school board. Sad to see a Pelosi supporting it. Nt

[Hekate]

3. I didn't see where she was in favor of it, just a statement that it is happening...

As far as I am concerned, the Pelosi family name has a lot of credibility, so if there is something where she actually offers an opinion pro or con, I will take that into consideration.

I don’t live in her district, but this recall crap is straight-up astroturf in way too many cases.

[Fiendish Thingy]

11. Her statement, at the bottom of the OP, clearly supports the recall

The founders of the recall are big backers of charter schools.

https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/school-board-recall-signals-strange-bedfellows-of-san-francisco-politics/

[RandySF]

4. The one I voted to recall posted an anti-Asian message on social media.

[Dorian Gray]

8. The City sued them

This wasn't a tech billionaire thing. Their focus during the pandemic was wrong.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/san-francisco-recalls-three-school-board-members/

[Fiendish Thingy]

10. It was a tech billionaire thing:

Meet Arthur Rock, the billionaire backer of the recall:

https://missionlocal.org/2022/02/arthur-rock-billionaire-donor-to-sf-school-board-recall-has-put-money-into-charter-schools-and-school-board-elections-for-decades/

Populist outrage meets millionaire money:

https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/school-board-recall-signals-strange-bedfellows-of-san-francisco-politics/

The voters of SF got played by some rich folks who want to privatize education.

[Dorian Gray]

15. Do you have kids in the San Francisco public school system?

I have friends who did. They left it and moved to private schools. And they’re quite progressive. Why did they leave? Bc the schools were closed all year.

The board focused on things working parents didn’t want.

Maybe tech billionaires were trying to rid us of these 3 board members. But 70% of the voters agreed with them. Because their focus foe the last two years was unpopular with the majority of their constituents. If it wasn’t, the recall would have failed.

Renaming schools that were named after Lincoln and Washington is not a priority for most parents. Certainly not when contending with a pandemic.

That’s just facts.

[Fiendish Thingy]

17. It's nice that your friends could afford a private school

What happens when the new board approves vouchers for private and charter schools, gutting the funding for public schools?

Working class families will be left with substandard for-profit charter schools as their only option, which is exactly the plan intended by the recall organizers.

If you liked the prison industrial complex, you’ll love the charter school-industrial complex.

The board members who were recalled were up for re-election in November anyway.

[Dorian Gray]

18. It's very lucky.

Unfortunately a lot of kids weren’t able to and didn’t have in person learning last year. Which is one reason why 70% of people voted to recall. Most parents wanted their kids in school.

The substandard charter schools suck. I wish the Board of Ed ensured a strong public school presence rather than losing focus on things almost nobody in the district wanted.

[Nevilledog]

5. This was about closures for Covid and wasting time renaming properties.

https://ballotpedia.org/San_Francisco_Unified_School_District_recall,_California_(2021-2022)

Recall elections against three of the seven members of the San Francisco Unified School District Board of Education in California were on the ballot on February 15, 2022. Petitions to recall board members Gabriela López, Alison Collins, and Faauuga Moliga were certified in October 2021.[1] If the board members are recalled, San Francisco Mayor London Breed will appoint replacements.[2]

Recall supporters said they were frustrated that schools in the district remained closed for nearly a year in reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic. They also said they were upset that the board had spent time voting to rename 44 buildings in the district rather than focusing on opening schools.[3] López announced on February 21, 2021, that the board was putting the building renaming on hold in order to focus on re-opening schools.[4] At a board meeting on April 6, 2021, members unanimously voted to rescind the approval of the renaming process. At the same meeting, they voted to return students to full-time in-person instruction at the start of the 2021-2022 school year.[5]

All three board members named in the recall petitions were first elected to the board on November 6, 2018. They received the most votes in an at-large election, defeating 16 other candidates.[6] The other four members of the board were not eligible for recall at the same time as López, Collins, and Moliga as they had not served in their current terms for six months. They were elected or re-elected to the board on November 3, 2020.[3

*snip*


Recallers were mad schools were closed.

[Dorian Gray]

9. Yes

I know that there were a ton of arguments last year about whether schools should be open or not. I always fell on the side of yes. It's too important for our kids. NYC managed to mostly open our public schools while san fran stayed closed most of the year.

If I were a parent in that district, I would have been LIVID at the renaming of 50 or so schools being a priority rather than getting kids back safely.

According to the mayor, London Breed: "Breed said in a statement that voters "delivered a clear message that the school board must focus on the essentials of delivering a well-run school system above all else. San Francisco is a city that believes in the value of big ideas, but those ideas must be built on the foundation of a government that does the essentials well." https://www.cbsnews.com/news/san-francisco-recalls-three-school-board-members/

(And I think that time has proven that opening schools was mostly safe. IN retrospect their decisions look worse.)

[Fiendish Thingy]

12. That was a smoke screen for a campaign funded by charter school supporters

https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/school-board-recall-signals-strange-bedfellows-of-san-francisco-politics/

[NBachers]

6. I voted no; I want to thwart the public-school opponents who funded the signature gatherer locusts.

They've become quite skilled at mis-naming propositions and giving out bogus information to make you think it's a worthy thing to sign up for.

A paragraph from the San Francisco League of Pissed Off Voters:

If this recall succeeds, it will vindicate the "democracy disruption" playbook of Billionaire Venture Capitalists who, unable to win elections with actual candidates due to San Francisco's progressive voting blocs, can instead spend their unlimited money on a recall and get their sympathetic mayor to appoint someone they like better, no election necessary!

https://www.theleaguesf.org/

Similar information at Bay Guardian:

or starters, it’s a recall just a few months before a regular election. All three board members named in the recall would have to face the voters in November, 2022 anyway; if you don’t like them, run against them.

Recalls ought to be reserved for situations where an elected official has committed clear misconduct in office and has at least two years left on their term. This is an undemocratic waste of money.

Plus, the biggest financial backers of this recall have a larger agenda than whether some public schools should have their names changed, or what rules teachers and students should follow in a global pandemic. Billionaire Arthur Rock, who has no kids, put almost $400,000 into one of the recall committees. He’s a big fan of charter schools—that is, of school privatization. The California Association of Realtors, which has never shown any interest in supporting public education (for example, by modifying or repealing Prop. 13) put up $90,000.

https://www.sfbg.com/2022/01/20/endorsements-for-the-february-2022-election/

I guess I should've posted all this BEFORE the election, not after it.

[RandySF]

7. I voted no on two of the three.

The third made some anti-Asian comments.

[Fiendish Thingy]

13. Now watch the money behind the campaigns for their replacements. Nt

[Hekate]

14. Here's an SF Chronicle article plus a comment by a new DUer who has some insight...

It sounds like a complete mess and a righteous recall

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142871277

[dalton99a]

16. +1. Alison Collins is a despicable hypocrite.

Her racist pronouncements were partially responsible for the violence perpetrated against Asian-Americans in S.F.