How I’m Voting And You Can Too — February 2022 San Francisco Special Election
These views are mine, and mine alone. They do not represent the views of any organization I work for or am a member of. If you assume my spouse shares all these views, you are wrong and possibly very sexist.
About this guide
I began writing this guide when I realized some people I know weren’t voting because the ballot was too complicated. Now, I study the issues with dorky zeal and offer this guide to the public. Many of my friends trust my judgment and values and will just print or download my voter guide and use it as they vote.
My Picks:
State Assembly District 17
David Campos
Assessor-Recorder
Leave blank
Board of Education Recall
Alison Collins: No, do not Recall
Faauuga Moliga: No, do not Recall
Gabriela Lopez: No, do not Recall
I explain my reasoning for all of these choices below.
As always:
VOTE. Not voting is actually a vote for, “I don’t care, be corrupt, put money in your pockets and screw the people.” Make sure your friends will vote.
PREPARE. Make your voting plan. You won’t be able to make choices based on what’s written on the ballot. Bring a trusted guide or cheat sheet with you to the polls.
IGNORE the advertising. Paid political advertising will always be misleading, by design. Throw those mailers straight into the recycling bin. Ignore promoted posts on social media.
You will receive a stack of mailers right before election day. These will contain the worst lies — there will be no time for journalists to fact-check them.
Why listen to me?
I’ve been working in San Francisco schools since moving here in 1998 as an Americorps*VISTA volunteer with a non-profit at Galileo High School. I spent years as a substitute teacher and then developed expertise in arts education and became an instructor with the Integrated Learning Specialist Program. As executive director of the Arts Education Alliance of the Bay Area from 2015-2020, I became more active in advocacy in the SFUSD and have continued to follow school board meetings. I currently run the Where Art Lives program which partners with San Francisco schools to provide arts education around civic engagement and public art.
I’m including art I’ve made in this post as evidence that I have spent time thinking about this city and these issues. And I love this place.
Substitute Teacher Artist
acrylic and collaborative mixed media collage on canvas, 30" x 36", 2007
This painting represents several classes at Galileo Academy for Art and Technology working on some free form exquisite corpse style stories and drawings. Many of the students' writings and drawings have been collaged into this painting.
My Reasoning
State Assembly District 17
David Campos
This special election is happening because the mayor appointed David Chiu as City Attorney to replace Dennis Herrerra who the mayor appointed as the new director of the SF Public Utilities Commission to replace Harlan Kelly who was arrested by the FBI for fraud.
David Campos and Matt Haney have both been pretty terrific with smart, progressive policy decisions. Both will also craft compromises with political opponents. Neither have had the courage to criticize Nancy Pelosi when she trades stocks while in office.
Campos has been getting more of the endorsements that I trust. The strong endorsement for the San Francisco Tenants Union is particularly compelling and convinces me that he will be the strongest voice to protect housing and other essential human rights for everyone in California.
I also think it is fitting to that San Francisco be represented by a gay ‘dreamer’ immigrant with a long track record of great policy work.
Assessor-Recorder
Leave blank
The Assessor-Recorder position became open when Carmen Chu left the position in February 2021 to become the City Administrator after Naomi Kelly resigned when her husband, Harlan Kelly, was arrested for fraud.
London Breed appointed Joaquin Torres as Assessor-Recorder so now he’s running as an incumbent to run the agency that manages property taxes for San Francisco. I haven’t seen anything to suggest Torres has been bad at the job, but I’d rather have a choice. This whole game of shuffling political appointees around is part of a system of political patronage and favors that breeds corruption.
Board of Education Recall
The Passionate Teacher
acrylic on canvas, 18” x 24”, 2020
Teachers put their whole heart into the job and are the experts at how to best serve the students. Listen to teachers - they oppose the recall.
Alison Collins: No, do not Recall
Faauuga Moliga: No, do not Recall
Gabriela Lopez: No, do not Recall
I could go on for pages about why to vote no on this recall and all the issues that these commissioners have been criticized about. If there are other issues you’d like me to address, let me know and I can add updates.
This type of use of the recall should be rejected.
Recalls should be used for politicians who are corrupt - not because of policy disagreements. It’s worth voting “no” just to keep us from having constant do-over elections. These commissioners will be up for reelection in November when campaign finance rules will apply. As Matt Alexander points out, there are no spending limits for this election. Update: spending for the recall will likely top $2 Million, including donations from corporations including Visa and PG&E and from the California Association of Realtors.
This recall effort is part of a national conservative strategy.
Sure, they’ve gotten the support of some local parents who are frustrated by all the harm caused by the global pandemic, but the couple who instigated this recall seemingly moved to San Francisco to do so and the bulk of the funding is coming from David Sacks and Arthur Rock. This article, “Op-Ed: San Francisco Public School Parents Say Vote No on the Recall,” tries to connect some dots.
The SF Youth Commission Discusses the Budget
marker on paper, 12” x 18”, Jan. 4, 2021
The current Board of Education has prioritize youth voices during meetings and have taken student concerns and safety seriously.
This recall is an attack on public schools.
Conservatives in America want to privatize public schools. This has looked like school vouchers for private schools and a push for more charter schools - all of which pull money out of the hands of elected officials and decrease accountability. Yes, charter schools could be a structure for allowing innovation, but they are more often a giant opportunity for corruption. You can read this Forbes article, “New Report: Charter Fraud And Waste Worse Than We Thought,” for some background and Matt Alexander's article, “Charter Schools: It’s Time to Join SFUSD,” for some more local context. *Also note that Michael Bloomberg, who Mayor Breed endorsed for president, has donated $750 Million to promote charter schools across the country.
The general ugliness that has been stirred up in local school politics is a win for the privatizers.
A successful recall would replace voter choice with mayoral appointments.
This isn’t like the election to recall Governor Newsom where we were also asked to choose a potential successor. If this recall is successful, Mayor Breed chooses the replacements and she hasn’t said who she would pick. This would mean that 4 of 7 commissioners would owe loyalty to the mayor (including Commissioner Jenny Lam who is her advisor) and could approve contracts and decide who becomes the next superintendent. I don’t think that’s a power we should give to a mayor who has seen so many indictments for corruption in her administration. Mission Local has tried to chart all of the corruption allegations.
The board of education is being blamed for things they lack control over.
The SF Board of Education has limited power. They can approve or reject policies, budgets, and contracts, but have no control over implementation. These commissioners are volunteers who are rewarded with a $6,000 per year stipend and online harassment and death threats. They rely on district staff who report to the superintendent to find out how programs are going. In May they requested an organization chart of district executives and didn’t receive it until October.
The real problem is lack of funding.
Why is the school district of one of the wealthiest cities in history so underfunded? There’s lots of reasons including state laws that somehow limit school funding which I don’t fully understand. And why does San Francisco spend only 30.6% of its property tax on schools while San Diego and San Mateo counties spend 62.5%?
And how come the school administration has gotten so top-heavy over the past decade? The number of “Chiefs” making $180-220K has gone from 3 to 12 positions and the number of “Executive Directors” and “Directors” making $130-190K has gone from 24-76 positions since 2010. This is why, when faced with a budget shortfall, the board of education wanted the district office to absorb the shortfall .
This is a slide from a May, 2021 presentation to the board.
This is a slide from Commissioner Alexander’s budget presentation.
The board has been villainized in major media outlets seeking clicks from a Fox News audience.
I attended a meeting in 2019 where there was a swarm of media covering the debate about the Washington High School mural. They all left before the board approved a resolution for equity in arts education. Now, all 4th-5th graders have access to an instrument if they choose it, not just the kids whose families can afford to rent those instruments. The symbolic debate about murals got headlines while the substantive action about arts funding was ignored.
This pattern has happened time and time again, especially in coverage by the SF Chronicle. A story that says, “Look at how ridiculous these social justice warriors in San Francisco are!” is more likely to go viral online than one that covers the day-to-day issues of a local school system.
In a more extreme example, when Siva Raj and Autumn Louijen launched this recall campaign they called into Glenn Beck’s show to, I guess, recruit support from the insurrectionist MAGA crowd.
Fighting racism is good, actually.
The current Board of Education is listening to students when they talk about experiencing overt and institutional racism. They were elected because they had developed constituencies among parents and teachers as they advocated for marginalized communities and stood up for students with disabilities.
Remember June of 2020 when we all committed ourselves to addressing all the racism in our society? All of our institutional racism gets magnified when it is allowed to continue in our schools. When we have room after room of white teachers with total authority over their mostly BIPOC students, it’s very difficult to avoid modeling systems of white supremacy. So yes, we should take every opportunity to make students from any background feel valued and safe in school. The process might be uncomfortable, so some of us are going to need to check our white fragility.
There are many times to have these debates and discussions - including during the regular election campaign this fall.
It’s good that SFUSD was cautious about COVID
A lot of parent frustration with the board has been about the schedule for reopening school campuses. A very outspoken group of parents were arguing for in-person schooling to happen in fall of 2020, well before vaccines were available. They circumvented existing local parent organizations such as the PTA, Parents for Public Schools, and Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth to create a new group called Decreasing the Distance (which later became SF Parent Coalition) to push for classes to happen in person.
At that point, the board was allocating money for ventilation improvements and air purifiers - but had to rely on the school administration to negotiate with the teacher and staff unions.
The whole debate about school openings got a bit twisted as arguments that the risk of spreading COVID in school would be worth it for the benefits schools provide morphed into a belief that COVID would somehow magically not spread in a school setting. San Francisco schools would not start opening their buildings until teachers got vaccinated in 2021, which helped our city escape the worst of the post-holiday surges that happened in the beginning of that year.
Meanwhile, the district took on the burden of conducting wellness checks and managing food distribution for all of the families they serve. This was expensive work which the city could have helped more with.
In the fall, it was Collins and Lopez who put together a plan for COVID safety at school sites and have continued to advocate for better ventilation in buildings, air purifiers in classrooms, testing, and vaccination. The district CFO didn’t apply for FEMA funds to pay for COVID tests until Commissioner Collins questioned her about it.
And so much more
I could go on talking about what the Board of Education has done right, times when they’ve lacked creativity, and various ways that the structure of the school district is not working.
Let me know if there are other issues I should address and I will try to answer your concerns.