A seemingly endless amount of drama, name-calling, lawsuits and outrage from parents and city officials have made the saga of San Francisco’s school board a riveting pandemic sideshow that is about to play out at the ballot box.
A special election on Tuesday will decide the fate of three school board members, all Democrats, in a vote that has divided the famously liberal city. It has also motivated many Chinese residents to vote for the first time, driven by controversial school board decisions and a batch of unearthed anti-Asian tweets.
The parents who launched the recall effort say it was born of frustration at the board’s misplaced priorities, mishandling of a budget crisis and failure to focus on the fundamental task of reopening public schools during the pandemic. Most of San Francisco’s 50,000 public school students did not see the inside of a classroom for over a year, from March 2020 until August 2021.
“It comes down to incompetence,” said Siva Raj, a father of two who helped spearhead the recall effort. “The message we want to send is, if you don’t do the job you are elected do — your primary responsibility is to educate our children — you’re fired.”
