The San Francisco School Board recall vote
Voters in San Francisco voted overwhelmingly to recall three members of the school board on Tuesday. The vote was so overwhelming that every single neighborhood in the city voted in favor of recalling two of the three members. Normally, such elections are extremely low key and get zero attention outside their local areas. The situation on Tuesday was different. The school board there was unique in how disconnected it was from its own constituents and how grossly dismissive the board chair was over concerns by parents about school closures. Schools in San Francisco had been closed for far longer than neighboring school districts and private schools within the city and voters had had enough of a school board that was, at best, completely indifferent about it.
What were the school board’s offenses? For starters, their top priority was not reopening schools. In fact, the board chair, who was one of the three recalled, was openly dismissive of concerns about schools not being open. As far as she was concerned, kids were not suffering from not being in school. They were just having a “different learning experience.” Yes, those were actually her words.
What was the school board’s priority? It was renaming schools. You might be thinking, how could a place like San Francisco have schools named for confederate leaders? The answer is it does not have any such schools. No, the schools the school board wanted to rename were named for noted white supremacists like Dianne Feinstein and Abraham Lincoln.
The arguably bigger offense was the school board voting to change admissions to the top high school in the city from being test-based to being a lottery. The argument was that not enough black and Hispanic students were being admitted. It is true that black and Hispanic kids have been underrepresented there despite making up a significant number of students. The problem was that the way the school board chose to address it was effectively a way to deny entry to Asian kids and that is what motivated many people to support the recall, whether they were parents of school aged kids or not. Adding fuel to the fire was that one of the three recalled school board members, Alison Collins, had made racist remarks about Asians in the past.
There have been controversies in other cities about top notch public high schools that underrepresent black and Hispanic students. I think that is definitely a legitimate problem. There are undoubtedly talented kids from those groups and they should be going to those schools. The question is how do we accomplish that? Leaving aside the politics of it, I do not like the idea of getting rid of academic standards and making admissions lottery-based. It is essentially treating admissions as a zero-sum game. The mindset behind it is one of scarcity, basically saying that if Asian (and white) kids do well then black and Hispanic kids cannot and vice-versa. I do not believe that at all and clearly a huge majority of people in the most liberal city in the country do not believe it either.
I am no expert on how we can improve testing scores and admissions to top schools among black and Hispanic kids, but there is no reason it cannot be done. Expanding access to test prep certainly seems fruitful, but I am sure there is more that can be done. Maybe the number of gifted and talented programs can be expanded and/or the number of top-notch schools can be expanded. I want everyone to be able to have a shot and there is no need to bring anyone down to accomplish that. Not only is the idea that admissions to such schools and programs is a zero-sum game wrong, but it is also a complete failure of imagination. It is one reason I have been very uneasy about seeing the frequent use of the word “equity” in some left-wing circles as of late, but that is for another blog post.
Needless to say, I am very glad the recall succeeded and I say that as someone who really does not like recalls. In general, I think recalls are bad because they let voters off the hook. Voters have information about candidates, whether they chose to pay attention to it or not. In the case of the San Francisco school board, however, what they did was so egregious and unconscionable that I feel I can break that rule. They openly dismissed their duty. They closed down schools far longer than virtually every school district in the country and did not even try to open them. Worse, they acted as if opening schools was not their job and that they needed to spend their time fighting white supremacy. They lost the right to be able to serve out their terms.
If you think I am exaggerating how detached they were, check out this tweet from Gabriela Lopez, the head of the school board who was recalled on Tuesday. Is she expressing any remorse or regret for her actions? No. She is claiming the recall effort was led and supported by white supremacists and that she is a victim fighting for racial justice. Who knew 75% of people in San Francisco were members of the KKK?
Someone who is that bat shit insane has no business being in any position of authority. Her actions and the actions of the other two recalled school board members were inexcusable and unforgivable. Whatever those three do going forward, they should never be in a position of power again.
The good news is that few school districts have had school boards remotely as awful as San Francisco. The mayor, who supported the recall, will be able to appoint three new members. I have no doubt they will be focused on keeping schools open and actually doing the job of managing the school district and not going off into fantasy land.
The left =! Democratic voters
While the three recalled school board members were almost in a league of their own in terms of awfulness, there are others like them out there. The three of them embodied so much of what is wrong with the left and why I dislike wokeness as much as I do. They were guilty of many offenses that have come to define some elements of the left.
They cared about performance over substance. Rather than opening schools and helping students learn and get their lives back, they opted for renaming schools. One of the saddest consequences of the lengthy school closures will almost certainly be an increase in racial disparities with black and Hispanic kids suffering disproportionately from it. A good chunk of the left has been, on the one hand, very vocal about fighting racism and, on the other hand, completely fine with closing down schools and dismissive of the negative impacts it had. Those are irreconcilable positions.
The pushing of symbolism and performance over substance is a problem on many fronts. I am a broken record on zoning and will continue to be one. San Francisco is not the only place where the left prioritizes performance over substance, but it is arguably the biggest offender. I have no doubt many of the people who voted for the recall are staunch liberals who care about inequality. They put up yard signs supporting Black Lives Matter. They claim to care very much about fighting racism and supporting refugees. That’s all nice and well, but will they allow more housing to be built to help accomplish those goals? I am not holding my breath on that.
In a piece I wrote almost a year ago, I was scathing in my criticism of the left for their failings on racism, particularly with respect to housing. I encourage everyone to read it if you have not already or to read it again if you have. I even mentioned the San Francisco school board, funny enough. Of all the pieces I have written, it is one of the top three I am most proud of.
I have written many, many times before about the problem of activists being treated by Democrats as representing the groups they claim to speak for. The San Francisco school board was basically what happens when you put such activists in charge of things. They are almost always people with very far out views and very different priorities from everyone else, including the groups they claim to represent. For example, Gabriela Lopez is Hispanic and Alison Collins is black and yet both led the charge to keep schools closed. Which kids were harmed the most by that? Black and Hispanic kids. Activists. Do. Not. Speak. For. Voters. Every single Democratic candidate for every single office should write that on a chalkboard over and over again until they can’t lift their arms.
It has been a very disconcerting plot twist over the last two years seeing some on the left decide that public education is overrated. Pre-pandemic, I would have thought those pushing for remote schooling were libertarian, government-hating ideologues determined to get rid of public schools. The lord sure works in mysterious ways.
With respect to implications for elections in November, the vote on Tuesday will almost certainly have none if only because the school board there was so uniquely horrible. That said, it is clear that much of the agenda pushed for by the activist left is toxic to everyone else. If left-wingers are getting recalled in San Francisco, they have absolutely no prayer anywhere else. If Democrats are to take away any lessons from the recall, it is once again that activists should not be treated as representing anyone but themselves.
Democrats have been unfairly painted as radicals no thanks to activists (and a few elected officials) and that almost certainly cost them in 2020. It is a given that Republicans will try to portray them that way. That sucks, but that is how politics works. If Democrats want to avoid being seen as crazy radicals, then they have to stop treating activists as if they represent voters. That is true not just on issues related to race and crime, but also for issues like climate change, immigration and health care.
Though it is necessary, it is not sufficient to simply not endorse far-left positions. Democrats have to be proactive in repudiating them. They have to make clear to activists that they do not speak for voters and that they will be ignored. That message has to be made clear to voters as well. If Democrats do that, they will quickly discover that activists are a bunch of paper tigers. At worst, they will be subject to some mean tweets and railed against by loudmouths on MSNBC. I think that is a small price to pay for winning elections and governing. If anything, being railed against by activists will probably help Democrats by giving them free, positive media coverage and implicitly sending signals to voters that they are not crazy.
Democratic elected officials have generally been good at avoiding things like embracing defunding the police. However, they have fallen short in other areas. There were many candidates for president in 2020 who made themselves unelectable by trying to appeal to activists. Even on issues like education, some mainstream Democrats have embraced causes like getting rid of gifted and talented programs and have tried to eliminate honors programs and lower admissions standards in several states and cities despite those efforts being radioactively unpopular among their own voters. That is not a tenable position and Democrats had best abandon it posthaste. The idea of testing and academic standards being racist may be popular among some left-wing fringe groups and scholars, but that is the extent of the support for it.
While the school board episode is a reminder of some problems Democrats have, it is also a reminder of one big positive thing they have going for them, which is that Democratic voters are sane. Even in San Francisco, there are finite limits to how much crap from the activist world people will tolerate. The recall did not happen because of right-wingers. It happened because Democratic voters were fed up with activists who live in their own fantasy world taking a wrecking ball to schools.
Democratic voters have shown time and again that they are not crazy. Republican voters may have gone off the rails, but Democratic voters are very much living in reality. They want results and pragmatism, not performative theater and radicalism. Like everyone else, they want good jobs, functioning schools and public safety. They do not want to throw everyone in jail and allow police to be above accountability, but they also want to feel safe in the streets. They have been understanding of pandemic restrictions, but they want to get back to normal. They are not radicals dreaming of burning everything down.
It is up to Democratic candidates for all offices to realize that and act on it. Their own voters are sending them a message and have been consistently doing it for two years now. Moderate changes are welcome. Ripping everything to shreds is not. Those candidates who go way out into left-field and spend their time kowtowing to activists are the ones who are out of touch. Democrats like Joe Biden and Eric Adams are who Democratic voters want, not The Squad. Democratic candidates ignore that at their own peril.