Survey: Most SF Families Living in Chinatown Communal Housing Don't Want Their Kids Back in School

Hundreds of parents who live in communal housing in San Francisco are organizing with a singular message: Keep our kids out of school.

The Chinatown Community Development Center, which owns and operates communal housing in the city, measured that fear directly: Of 294 families living in such housing who answered a recent survey, representing roughly 400 SFUSD students, 70% oppose in-person learning for their kids, and only 30% are in support.

Most of those families surveyed lived in Chinatown, and many identify as Chinese or Chinese American, said the Chinatown CDC. The organization surveyed its tenants who have at least one child under 18 living in their household, by phone the week before SFUSD's fall semester started.

Those who support in-person learning largely said they were worried about unemployment benefits expiring in September, and need to send their children back to school so the adults can work.

On the other hand, those who oppose bringing their kids back to school are especially concerned that children under 12 are not yet vaccinated, and are worried that schools aren’t providing enough ventilation. They also voiced concern over COVID transmission on public transit and asked whether school buses could help mitigate that concern.

But despite the opposition to in-person learning, many of these families don't have much of a choice.

The new data comes after more than a year of public drumbeating to reopen schools during the pandemic voiced by the city’s most vocal parents — with “decrease the distance!” becoming their signature rallying cry — leading into the San Francisco Unified School District opening its doors to kids in August.

But just one week before that fateful day, on Aug. 10, a swarm of equally furious parents stormed SFUSD’s monthly (virtual) meeting. Their request? The exact opposite the public had heard for months. These parents wanted their kids to stay home.

More than 2,000 of them — mostly Chinese and Chinese American — signed a petition asking SFUSD to offer more options for their kids to safely evade the increasingly spreading delta variant.

“We are concerned that the start of in-person learning in Fall will lead to greater infection rates, not only in the children themselves, but also for vulnerable family members,” their letter read. “We do not wish to force distance learning upon everyone, but believe it is imperative to provide it to those families who need it.”

That effort comes as no surprise to Jen Chan, resident services manager at the Chinatown CDC, who works with families who live in the organization's single-room occupancy housing, many of whom are Chinese and Chinese American. She says living conditions may be one reason those families would prefer to keep their kids at home, especially in single-room occupancy housing.

SROs are communal spaces where families often live in a single room, sharing kitchens and bathrooms with tenants on the same floor — families who may be especially concerned about being unable to quarantine should the worst happen.

“There's a lot of fear,” Chan said. And that fear may be particular to the Chinese community due to hard-lived experience, she said.

“A lot of our families were immigrants, right? They have heard of the outbreaks of SARS, the outbreak of COVID in their home countries in Hong Kong and in China. And they understand and have been impacted by people getting sick in their family. Deaths in their family,” she said.

The notion that scores of parents want their kids to stay at home may be a surprise to those reading news headlines for the last year.

Local news has for months amplified the voices of more organized groups like Decreasing the Distance. Some of those more amplified voices are calling for schools to reopen sooner rather than later, and are even recalling San Francisco school board members based on the idea that they single-handedly kept kids home.

And their message has largely dominated the conversation about schools.

But when it came time to finally let kids back in classrooms, the 450 online spots for distance learning provided by the district were quickly gobbled up. The school district has admitted 700 students who applied by July 30 to be in their online learning program, said SFUSD spokesperson Laura Dudnick.

But that isn’t the sum total of the students wanting to stay home.

To accommodate that growing number, SFUSD opened its applications for one of two independent learning programs with a deadline of Aug. 27.

But, Dudnick added, “we strongly encourage students who are able to participate in in-person learning to do so, as it is the best option for the vast majority of students.”

And the number of families who want distance learning may be far higher than the official ones known to SFUSD. Chan told KQED some who desire distance learning haven’t applied for fear of losing priority in their desired schools, and many think distance learning isn’t even an option.

But it’s one they’d take if they had the chance.

Pushing for more open spots, local parents and parents of kids in SRO hotels are organizing for their own interests, demanding more distance learning options. KQED has seen screenshots of their group discussions on WeChat — the social media platform of choice for many in the Chinese community — with more than 800 people clamoring for distance learning options.

In a second letter, sent Aug. 24, the families laid out their requests: rapid testing available for students of SRO families, SFUSD staff who can be point people to work with SRO families to ensure safety precautions are catered to their specific situations, more choices in remote learning, more language access for school emails to parents and, most of all, more input.

"All decisions must be made with SRO families, by them, and resolutions of their concerns," the letter reads. "Families demand to be engaged so that they can provide meaningful input and direct policies."

Board of Education President Gabriela López says she's working on a resolution with fellow board members to call on the district to address the SRO families' specific asks.

"We have been hearing from and connecting with many families in order to address these serious concerns," López said.

SFUSD Board of Education commissioner Jenny Lam also has been meeting with these SRO families.

"We've been hearing from families for many months as we've been planning the full return," Lam said. "The timing is, while we were returning to in-person [learning], the delta variant was also surging through the city and throughout the state. We are seeing that stabilization now of the delta variant and the positive cases, but certainly empathize and understand the concerns from families."

While Lam characterized these concerns as a recent development, the desire to maintain distance learning has been bubbling up for months, Chan from Chinatown CDC said.

Even as far back as April, Lang Xie, another Chinatown SRO resident, shared similar concerns with KQED — even before the delta variant reared its head.

Xie lives in an SRO with her husband and 10-year-old daughter, Vicky, who attends Gordon J. Lau Elementary School. Both Xie and her husband are fully vaccinated but said they feel uncomfortable sending Vicky back to school.

“In my opinion, it is still kind of concerning. Even though we are vaccinated, the risk of being infected is still there. If there is nothing important, we would avoid going outside as much as possible,” she said.

Like others who live in SRO hotels, sharing a single room means they have no space to quarantine from one another, a concern Xie shares, despite some city resources open to them.

Because of those fears, Vicky learned from home during the spring semester, only returning to Gordon J. Lau Elementary School in the fall — but only because the family felt they had no other options.

Vicky was far from alone.

Of roughly 750 students at Gordon J. Lau Elementary School, only 13 returned during the first week of school last April when in-person learning started again.

The school is more than 80% Asian, and many students are Chinese, with the school sitting squarely in Chinatown, right along Stockton Street.

SFUSD, then, had long seen signs that many Chinese families weren’t ready to return to school, even before the delta variant rose. And San Francisco isn’t unique in that regard.

KQED asked Commissioner Lam if, were she speaking directly to Tan, she would say that sending his children back to school is safe?

"I would say yes, it is," Lam said. "I would encourage Mr. Tan that absolutely we have the proper protocols and guidelines in place."

Lam is a parent herself, with two SFUSD high schoolers already returning to school. Lam said for learning's sake — and emotional well-being — learning in person is the best option for children.

By the fall semester, Tan did let his daughter return to school because, he said, he has no feasible choice, and because SFUSD had too few slots for distance learning. He also thinks SFUSD has too high of a requirement to prove your kid can be kept out of school — namely, one of two programs available asks kids who are “medically fragile” to apply.

When Tan finally let his daughter return to Yick Wo Elementary for the fall semester, however, they got a phone call on the third day: Class would be canceled.

A kid in his daughter’s class tested positive for COVID.

There have been 71 reported positive cases in pre-K through fifth grade elementary schools in SFUSD, and 16 reported positive cases in pre-K through eighth grade schools, according to SFUSD's COVID dashboard.

Community-minded solutions

Back at Gordon J. Lau Elementary School in April, Principal Gloria Choy sat near a sobbing child dressed in a Spider-Man costume.

She said the families who were fearful to return during that spring semester, and to more broadly return, weren’t just afraid of COVID, but of the violence against the Asian community, too.

One of Choy’s school families was attacked riding a Muni bus from Market Street to pick up a free Wi-Fi hot spot from Gordon J. Lau in March. “This person was eyeing them the whole time. And when she got on the bus, the person yanked her backpack and her purse,” Choy said. The would-be thief got frustrated when bystanders tried to help. He “got upset, and just punched her in the face. So my [school] parents, they’re afraid,” Choy said.

And families fear that violence may continue even as the pandemic subsides and children return to school in droves.

About 50% of SFUSD elementary school families traditionally commute by car, 25% walk, 10% take public transit and 10% take yellow school buses, according to district data. But Choy’s school has a much higher proportion of kids busing from outside the neighborhood. About half of Gordon J. Lau families live on the other side of the city, Choy says. They all take Muni in.

Stop AAPI Hate’s most recent national count saw 9,081 hate incidents reported to the organization from March 19, 2020, through June 2021. Of those hate incidents, 10% were reported by kids age 17 and younger. This number likely undercounts the rate of hate incidents against kids, the organization says.

The Stop AAPI Hate Youth Campaign conducted in the summer of 2020 found that 77% of AAPI youth surveyed were angry over anti-Asian hate in the U.S., with 60% expressing disappointment over racism, and 30% of AAPI youth expressing fear.

Stop AAPI Hate also released a report on racism’s effects on Asian youth, alongside a long list of recommendations for policymakers and school districts.

Among them: asking school officials to denounce hate, integrating ethnic studies and anti-racism curricula into coursework, establishing anonymous reporting systems for bullying, holding trainings with teachers and faculty on anti-Asian hate and discrimination, and boosting multilingual outreach to parents and families with culturally responsive mental health resources.

In San Francisco, a few of these recommendations are already underway: In March the San Francisco Board of Education made ethnic studies a graduation requirement, and they have disseminated an extensive and ever-growing document to educators with resources on emotionally processing and combating hate against the AAPI community.

Vincent Matthews, SFUSD’s superintendent, addressed that fear back in a March school board meeting, and has done so repeatedly since.

“The pandemic has brought a lot of pain and suffering for many, and with it conspiracy theories scapegoating the Asian community for the COVID-19 pandemic,” Matthews said in March. “We have to stand together against violence perpetrated against any member of our community, and right now there is an increase in violence against our Asian brothers and sisters. It is unacceptable and we must recommit ourselves to creating safe communities for each and every person. Your child’s physical and emotional safety is our priority whether we are in distance learning or in person."