Eleven candidates are campaigning to lead the school district toward equilibrium as it faces numerous challenges in coming years
With four seats open and only one incumbent running in the November election, more than half of the seven-member San Francisco Board of Education could turn over next year. .
When I became school-board president in August, it was clear we needed to take more decisive action to address these challenges. I reached out to Mayor London Breed for support, and I’m grateful that she responded by creating The City’s School Stabilization Team, which will collaborate with the school board and SFUSD management.
I do not see the school board as a stepping stone to higher office. My only focus is SFUSD and our students, families and educators. The system also costs millions of dollars a year to operate, creates unpredictable school enrollments when certainty is necessary to budget, and fails to create the diverse schools San Francisco needs.
We must increase investments for ongoing repairs, ensuring we can respond to immediate needs and that all students and staff are in safe and functioning facilities, even if all campuses can’t be modernized right away. I represent the people who do the work in our classrooms and schools, as the first candidate endorsed by United Educators of San Francisco, as well as SEIU Local 1021 and IFPTE Local 21.
We need to reduce the administration’s costs and manage the district’s assets more effectively. We will need to invest in the longer-term growth of enrollment, investing in schools, upgrading our curriculum, raising performance of educators and working with our communities to implement change. How can SFUSD increase enrollment while also ensuring resources are spread evenly across school communities? Increasing enrollment will only happen when our public schools are as good as — if not better than — the competition: the other options that parents have to send their kids. Therefore, it is imperative that we build our curriculum, improve our schools, invest in our educators, maintain our facilities and keep our school district solvent.
Virginia CheungWhat is your top concern regarding the state of the school district, and how would you address it if elected? The future of our district hinges on balancing our budget without compromising the educational experience for students, parents and teachers. Unfortunately, SFUSD has suffered from poor fiscal oversight, leading to wasted funds and unfulfilled promises.
Because of the hardships my family faced, I committed my life to service. With 20 years of experience in education and public health, I’ve worked to support children from birth to adulthood. How can SFUSD increase enrollment, while also ensuring resources are spread evenly across school communities? To increase enrollment, SFUSD must create a culture of excellence that attracts and retains families and teachers. Centralizing operations, establishing position control, and providing regular staff development will ensure consistent quality across all schools. Every classroom should be fully enrolled, fully staffed, and supported by well-prepared teachers.
Do you support the passage of Proposition A, SFUSD’s $790 million school facilities bond? Why or why not? Yes. SFUSD facilities desperately need maintenance and improvements, and the health and safety of our students and communities is of utmost importance. If elected, I will make all financial documents and transactions public record so that we can begin to monitor and decipher how, when, where and by whom money is being spent. I will also reduce the bloated payroll. I owned and operated a school where I balanced the budget, hired and trained staff, managed payroll, and designed and developed curriculum for children age 3 and up. At my school, each pupil generated about $800 per year in net income to pay salaries for a staff of around 12 people.
I have an innate desire to serve our city, particularly our public schools, to ensure our children have a world-class education, which in turn will help pave the way toward making San Francisco a world-class city again. If elected, how would you make yourself available to school communities — including parents, students, educators and SFUSD staff — beyond Board of Education meetings? I don’t see how one can serve effectively on the Board of Education without engaging with parents, students and educators.
What qualities or experiences set you apart from other candidates? My parents emigrated from India with $200 in their pockets but never skimped on my education. I was afforded the opportunity to attend one of the Bay Area’s best public high schools, creating further opportunities. How can SFUSD increase enrollment while also ensuring resources are spread evenly across school communities? SFUSD can focus on improving its public credibility. The school-assignment system has failed to meaningfully diversify schools, and the lottery’s well-intentioned aim is not achieving its desired outcome.
Do you support the passage of Proposition A, SFUSD’s $790 million school facilities bond? Why or why not? Yes. As the head of national resident services for Mercy Housing’s 45,000 residents, I instituted a regular feedback survey of all our resident-services staff so the residents could rate staff support and share how we could improve. This is complemented by regular site visits to hear from staff and residents across 21 states. I am now leading an effort to regularly seek resident feedback across our sites so we can continually improve.
If elected, I will hold the superintendent accountable for addressing the fiscal crisis, which should include merging and consolidating some schools so that remaining schools can be fully staffed with teachers and support staff as well as sports, music and academic programs. Merging and consolidating some schools will right-size the district and allow more effective and efficient use of human resources to benefit the students both from an academic and safety perspective. We have tried small schools, and it has not resulted in better academic outcomes or secure learning environments.
The Prop. A campaign and superintendent stated that all prior Prop. A bond projects had been delivered on time and on budget, yet this has not been substantiated. It certainly was not true when I was CBOC chair, and when asked by CBOC to provide the data to substantiate this claim, no answer was given.
The superintendent’s Resource Alignment Initiative is going to be hard, but we can do hard things — especially when they’re right. As the first woman in my mother’s family to graduate from college, I was shocked at the culture of rampant sexual assault I encountered on campus. I became an activist and led student organizing to hold the administration accountable for student safety.
And, as the mom of a rising second grader in a Spanish-immersion school and a toddler, I see the potential in my kids and all of our SFUSD students. I’m ready to fight for them. The district has had success attracting families with specialized programs such as K-8 schools, language-immersion schools, public Montessori and Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts. Expanding popular programs will help draw students to, and keep them in, the district.
Many schools are in disrepair, with hazards putting workers and students at risk. Nearly all of our schools could benefit from much-needed modernization, including improved HVAC and safety precautions. If elected, how would you make yourself available to school communities — including parents, students, educators and SFUSD staff — beyond Board of Education meetings? Public comment at board meetings is one of the major ways the public interacts with the school board, which is unfortunate because it’s often not effective for either side.
John JersinWhat is your top concern regarding the state of the school district, and how would you address it if elected? The fiscal crisis is currently threatening to cause dozens of schools to close. Our district is on track to run out of money and cause a state takeover, which can take 10 years to recover from. Kids face a changing school environment, loss of friends, and learning disruption. At the same time, kids’ support services are underfunded and often missing.
They passed their values to me, and when my public-school teacher taught her third graders how to code, I loved it. By middle school, I was staying up late at night, writing computer games and sharing them with friends ... and then selling them. I realized I had started a company, and I stuck with that, too. A bit after college, I started another company, writing algorithms matching people to jobs.
We can invest in schools by adding pre-K to every elementary school. We can keep more students in the district by aligning pre-K with our other grades to allow students to stay at the same schools. And best of all, there are resources available to do things like this. The City has over $450 million available for early childhood education. The benefits are huge, and resources exist.
Maddy KrantzWhat is your top concern regarding the state of the school district, and how would you address it if elected? I think everything starts with communication. I am very new to this process and to all the issues we are facing at SFUSD, so I can’t pretend to be an expert, but it seems like we need to get a lot better at getting the best information from the school administration and talking to parents, students, teachers and community organizations.
If elected, how would you make yourself available to school communities — including parents, students, educators and SFUSD staff — beyond Board of Education meetings? If I’m elected to the San Francisco Board of Education, I will turn 20 during my first few months in that position next year. Making the most of that opportunity will be my top priority, and I will make myself completely available to anyone and everyone in The City who wants to speak with someone on the Board.
We have many people from The City and state that can help direct us to good practices that would make us tighten our belts in certain areas and get more in line with other California school districts doing things well. We are on a good trend with lowering the central-office expenses and could save millions more by continuing. We can follow through with the Resource Alignment Initiative and reduce school sites. Let’s keep doing the needed work.
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