A group of San Francisco parents fed up with the pace of school reopening is proposing to alter the way school board members are selected, from election by voters to appointment by City Hall officials.
The Campaign for Better San Francisco Public Schools announced Monday it will seek voter signatures to put a charter amendment seeking to reform the board’s selection process on the June 2022 ballot.
Patrick Wolff, who co-chairs the campaign, says San Francisco’s ballot can be overwhelming, and that voters can have a difficult time accessing the information they need to pick school board candidates.
“We believe this will create better accountability, so the Board of Education will be made up of the right people with the right priorities,” said Wolff, the father of two public school students. “Our ultimate hope is that through this process, our schools will be governed better and education outcomes will be improved for San Francisco public school students and families.”
The parents-led campaign pointed to a 2013 study by researchers at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C., which found that cities like Chicago and New York, where mayors oversee school districts, allocated more money for education, had smaller teacher-student ratios and produced better student outcomes compared to the average school district in their states.
New York and Chicago are also among the major urban centers that have reopened in-person classrooms during the pandemic. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot told The New York Times that reopening wouldn’t have happened without mayoral control of the schools.
Wolff asserted that the current seven-member school board in San Francisco prioritized renaming dozens of closed schools over addressing the student achievement gap, which has especially widened during remote learning for low-income students of color. After public outcry, the board announced last month it would pause the renaming plan to focus on restarting in-person classes.
Asked about the push by parents to make the selection of school board members subject to appointment, San Francisco Unified School District Board President Gabriela López declined to comment.
“At this time we are committed to focusing on returning to in-person learning, so I will be declining comment on this,” she said in a statement.