Participants of San Francisco Parent Action’s Board of Education Bootcamp Fellowship at their graduation from the program.
Courtesy: San Francisco Parent Action
Three difficult years as parents of San Francisco Unified public school students has motivated each of us to consider running for office and taking part in a candidate training program with a local public school advocacy organization, San Francisco Parent Action.
Beyond the last three years of Covid closures, a slow re-opening, bungled budgets, poor governance, and even a failed lawsuit from a sitting commissioner, past San Francisco Unified boards developed a track record of taking performative action rather than focusing on student outcomes and good governance. The school board is a citywide race that many in the political world see as a steppingstone to running for district supervisor in the city, and for years, the political ambitions of school board commissioners resulted in prioritizing politics over the needs of students, teachers and our communities. The pandemic shutdown brought the dysfunction and malfeasance of the board to all families served by the district.
That’s where we come in. We’re a small group of parents driven by a variety of personal motivations and the shared belief that all students deserve the best from San Francisco Unified. The district needs to do better, needs to be better, and parent involvement is a huge piece of that.
Gerald has two children in a San Francisco elementary school. But he had no prior background in education beyond time on the school’s PTA and school site council (and, sure, many years as a student). He hasn’t been involved in politics and doesn’t even have politicians in his social circles.
Like many other parents in San Francisco, he became far more politically engaged with the school board during the pandemic shutdown of schools. He assumed professionals were running the system and whoever was on the school board was providing oversight. But he found they allowed little time for addressing how schools were working for students and that time and resources were mostly spent pushing against the interests of the children — not just refusing to reopen, but even shutting down proposals for pods, outdoor classrooms or procedures to make reopening safer.
Ericka has two children as well. She has been involved in the district on the micro and macro levels, actively serving on parent-teacher/parent-teacher-student organizations and English learner advisory and school site committees at her children’s schools, and as a parent attending board meetings, local control and accountability plan, or LCAP, meetings and more. Like many parents, she spoke up when programs for gifted students were dismantled, when algebra disappeared from middle schools, and when students weren’t supported when reporting racist and/or sexist events on campus. As a school construction professional, she understands the complexities of balancing the myriad needs a school district provides. The pandemic shined a bright light on how critical schools are to our communities.
We both recently completed San Francisco Parent Action’s Board of Education Bootcamp Fellowship, a five-session training program that brought parents together to dive into how public education works in San Francisco and to explore running for the school board.
The boot camp began with looks at board accountability, district funding, measures of student achievement, and district performance — and that was just in the first session. Subsequent sessions tackled the roles and day-to-day operations of board of education commissioners, effective governance and leadership, and an idea of what is required to run a successful campaign.
The school board election in San Francisco is a down-ballot, low-turnout, low-information election. This is also the case in other jurisdictions, such as Temecula and Chino, where school board candidates on the opposite side of the ideological spectrum also acted out their politics without concern for the well being of their students.
Across all districts, organizing a constituency and providing information brings better awareness to and representation of our community. There are so many areas to improve and make the board accountable for communication, outreach, early reading, grade level achievement, responsible budgeting, teacher pay, after care, facilities maintenance and more.
Previous San Francisco Unified boards were famously interested in things other than delivering quality education, and it’s because of parent and community organization and political awakening that this is changing. SF Parent Action and other groups are helping inform and develop parent leaders at all levels to keep the focus on the children. We want our district to educate, support and prepare all our students for life without adding burdens on families or teachers.
Let’s get back to basics. Let’s center students. Let’s elevate the voices left unheard. Let’s step up.
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Gerald Kanapathy and Ericka Moreno are two San Francisco Unified public school parents who recently completed the inaugural SF Parent Action (www.sfparentaction.org) Board of Education Bootcamp Fellowship program.
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