Alida Fisher
- Office: Board of Education
- Election Date: November 8, 2022
- Candidate: Alida Fisher
- Due Date: Friday, August 19, 2022
- Printable Version
Thank you for seeking GrowSF's endorsement for the 2022 Board of Education election! GrowSF believes in a growing, beautiful, vibrant, healthy, safe, and prosperous city via common sense solutions and effective government.
The GrowSF endorsement committee will review all completed questionnaires and seek consensus on which candidates best align with our vision for San Francisco and have the expertise to enact meaningful policy changes.
We ask that you please complete this questionnaire by Friday, August 19, 2022 so we have enough time to adequately review and discuss your answers.
Table of Contents
Vision
GrowSF believes in a growing, beautiful, vibrant, healthy, safe, and prosperous San Francisco. And we believe that great public schools are necessary for a great and prosperous society.
This section of our questionnaire seeks to help us gain an understanding of your alignment with our vision for San Francisco.
Short-form questions
Please mark the box that best aligns with your position. You may explain any position if you so desire, but this section is designed to be a quick overview of your view of the city's problems and what solutions you might propose.
Education
| In general, is it too hard, just right, or too easy to… | Too hard | Just right | Too easy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Attend a school of your choosing | X | ||
| Transport children to school | X | ||
| Hire good teachers | X | ||
| Fire bad teachers | X | ||
| Set public education curriculum | X | ||
| Access special needs instruction | X | ||
| Access advanced instruction | X | ||
| Adequately fund public instruction | X | ||
| Ensure adequate instruction is available to all students | X |
If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:
Tell us one thing you think needs to change about education in San Francisco that the average voter wouldn't know about.
SFUSD is a portfolio of more than 120 schools. The diversity from school to school is as rich as the diversity of our city.
Long-form questions
General
Please explain why San Francisco's Board of Education members Alison Collins, Gabriela López, and Faauuga Moliga were recalled.
The answer to this question depends on who you ask-and in San Francisco, there are as many different answers as there are voters.
I understand the frustrations that arose amidst the pandemic. I was Advocacy Chair of the Community Advisory Committee for Special Education during this time. I want to commend our staff for the Herculean shift that they made to move into distance learning so quickly. However, as a parent, I wanted to be much more included in the process than I was. Even as a member of an official advisory committee for the district, it was difficult to get answers to many questions about what was happening and to watch as inequities went unaddressed. It was difficult to watch idly as decisions were made that had such large impacts on my children and my family.
While school renaming is often referenced in relation to the recall, it's important to recognize that the renaming process started in 2016-before any of the recalled commissioners were even elected-as a response to the removal of confederate statues in other parts of the country. While the process of renaming schools was managed by a committee and not the board themselves, I appreciate that the process was put on hold so that it did not continue to cause a distraction from the work of reopening schools.
I was against the school board recall because:
- I was very worried that a recall would distract us from the urgent challenges ahead: working together to keep schools open while COVID surges continued to impact our community; bringing much-needed mental health supports into schools; and repairing the harm and learning loss brought on by the pandemic.
- Our district was on the brink of insolvency. The state's FCMAT (Fiscal Crisis & Management Assistance Team) was perilously close to recommending that SFUSD be placed in receivership due to our structural budget deficit, yet the district was slated to absorb the multi-million dollar cost of the recall.
- The three commissioners were up for reelection in November, mere months away, so why not wait until then instead of wasting all of the resources that were expended on a special election? Holding a special election felt like an end-run around our democratic process. I appreciate much of the work of Commissioners Collins, Lopez, and Moliga and am grateful for their service.
A lesson I hope we all learned from the recall is intent versus impact. When your words, statements, or actions have the impact of harming another person or community -regardless of your intentions -it is important to apologize and work to repair the harm. Also, lawsuits are not the path to building community and often do much harm under the guise of seeking justice.
Now it's time for us to find a path forward together. The pandemic was a very tough time for students and their families. Much healing needs to be done. We need to reset our focus on our priorities.
Now is the time to remind ourselves of the work that the school board must do: ensure that each and every student within SFUSD receives the high quality public education that they deserve.
There is so much more that unites us as San Franciscans than divides us. We all want the best outcomes for SFUSD students. We all want to see each and every SFUSD student thrive in our schools. We want to see all students live up to their full potential and leave our district prepared for postsecondary success. We all want each and every student to benefit from the high quality SFUSD education that helps them reach their full potential.
In what ways are we succeeding in public education?
Our public schools are diverse, inclusive and thriving communities of learners. San Francisco educators are a dedicated group of professionals who have persevered through the pandemic, our toughest experience. We have a huge range of programming to support various learners. SFUSD staff work hard to develop programs that meet the needs of our students. We believe in collaboration to improve outcomes. We innovate our way to success. The community school model is being implemented to provide robust wraparound services to many students and families. Innovative solutions, such as the middle school redesign, are not only encouraged, but celebrated and expanded to ensure that all students have access to successful programming.
In what ways are we failing in public education?
Before COVID-19, our education system was underfunded. San Francisco's opportunity gap has been a persistent challenge; While San Francisco has the second highest concentration of billionaires in the United States, we also have the highest percentage of youth and young adults experiencing homelessness. At many schools within SFUSD, the performance gap between White, Asian, African American, Latinx, and Pacific Islander students is more than 50%. The pandemic has compounded our serious challenges.
We have a huge inequity of resources between schools. The resources and programs that help our students succeed are not consistently available from school to school; therefore we see disparate outcomes across our schools.
Why is SFUSD facing a budget crisis? Please explain the nature of this budget crisis.
SFUSD is in a structural deficit for reasons including declining enrollment and increasing costs. Education costs have been increasing faster than sources of income to offset them. Special education costs in particular have dramatically increased over the past five years. Approximately one third of our district's unrestricted general fund covers costs related to special education services. Local Control Funding Formula increases haven't kept pace with fixed costs such as increased pension obligations, to name a few.
Instruction and Curriculum
What is your understanding of the results of SFUSD changing the math curriculum in 2014? Should San Francisco reintroduce middle school algebra in public schools? Why or why not?
The middle school math sequence was redesigned in 2014 by SFUSD teachers to align with common core and to undo decades of inequities in math instruction. Historically, 8th grade algebra classrooms were racially segregated. I appreciate that algebraic concepts are introduced earlier. The focus of math instruction has shifted to complex instruction, growth mindset, meaningful discourse with the instructor and engagement with peers. All of these strategies have been proven to improve outcomes. Being part of a diverse learning environment helps our students develop strong problem solving and collaboration skills. Common core instruction has highlighted the need for more effective reading instruction and earlier reading interventions. Texts are more complex, and even math exercises are predominantly word problems. Therefore children not reading at grade level find difficulty in more subjects. In order to fully implement the math sequence and provide opportunities for all students to meet their potential, SFUSD must invest in training teachers to provide differentiated instruction. Providing thoughtful pathways for students to be able to take a wide variety of higher level math classes in high school, including Calculus and Statistics, helps sets our students up for success beyond high school. And, if we want to consider changes to curriculum such as re-introduce algebra into our middle schools, we need to make significant investments in our teacher coaching and credentialing programs. Right now, SFUSD doesn't have enough credentialed math teachers to offer 8th grade algebra, or the capacity in many middle school schedules.
Every student should have all the programs to help them reach their full potential. The challenge in our current budget and staffing crisis is, how do we find the resources to make this aspirational goal a reality?
SFUSD student performance is low, with many students being left unprepared for high school and college. How and why are we failing our students?
Before COVID-19, our education system was underfunded. Now, we are in crisis.
We need to meet our students' and teachers' basic social emotional needs before any learning can happen. Now more than ever, it's important to prioritize mental and physical health interventions. We need to work to re-engage students. That means hiring more social workers, nurses, school counselors, and school psychologists. Schools are collaborating with agencies and bringing resources into their public schools. I'd like to see more partnerships to support students and their families. Extending the community school model into additional SFUSD sites brings supports to the school, which helps address the needs of the student as a whole. This allows the student to more fully engage in learning. Family engagement is an important component of the community school model. Schools and families working together improves student outcomes.
We need a holistic review of our reading curriculum. Serious shifts are needed to improve student outcomes, and quickly. We need a structured literacy curriculum that includes a systemic and sequential structured literacy approach, including decodable texts.
What needs to change to improve SFUSD's poor student performance?
We need to significantly increase our investment in our schools! We have to start addressing the systemic and institutional barriers in public education, and the vast difference in resources from school to school. I would begin by implementing an equitable budget-our budget is a value statement, and for too long English learners, black and brown students, and students with learning disabilities have been disenfranchised and deprioritized. As an advocate for children with disabilities, I often run into the mentality of "encroachment." Some families fear that funding initiatives to support children with disabilities, English learners, or students of color will negatively impact other children by taking away resources from their child(ren)'s learning environment. I have found the opposite to be true.
By investing in professional development opportunities for educators, we provide them with the skillset to address the needs of a diverse classroom. When a student doesn't feel safe or supported, they are not open to learning. All school personnel should be trained in Universal Design for Learning, positive behavior interventions, and de-escalation strategies to fully support and engage our students and their very diverse needs.
Providing an educator with positive behavior intervention strategies helps that teacher manage his or her entire classroom, not just the students identified with challenges. This allows more time to be spent on instruction for all students. Research shows that diversity helps us become more thoughtful and innovative. It helps us become better problem solvers. And for those of us raising kids in San Francisco, it helps prepare our kids for the reality of our city.
What is your understanding of special needs education at SFUSD, and what could be done to improve it?
This is my area of specialty. As a special education advocate and mother of four students with disabilities and learning differences, I could write a full essay here.
First of all, special education is grossly underfunded at both the state and federal levels. The District's special education budget increased by 35 percent between 2016-17 and 2020-21. However, State and federal special education funding increased by only six percent during that time. This means that a very large portion of our unrestricted general fund is used to meet the legal obligations associated with Individualized Education Programs, or IEPs.
Secondly, 75% of students receiving special education services spend at least half of their day in general education classrooms. That means that every classroom in every school is affected by our ability to provide appropriate resources for students with IEPs. When the needs of students with disabilities aren't met, it impacts all students. All teachers -particularly general education teachers -must have the capacity and skillset to support all learners in each and every classroom. Every teacher should understand how to implement Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in the classroom. Ability awareness and de-escalation trainings should be mandatory. We should have more school psychologists, and related service providers at all schools. We should reduce caseloads so that special educators have time to collaborate with their general education peers.
Paraeducators are the backbone of our school support networks. There is a huge inequity in the pay and number of hours we offer paraeducators -they are underpaid and undervalued! This must also be addressed, as paras are instrumental to the success of not only students, but their fellow educators. My son could not access his education without the support of his 1:1 para. If we want to demonstrate how important paraeducators are to the success of our students, we must increase their work hours and pay scale.
Also-many advocates within the disability community prefer to use the term "disabled" rather than "special needs." I must recognize that I've used this term in the past, and am working hard to correct myself and do better as I learn more. This blog post by Rebecca Cokley explains better than I could. I encourage everyone to check it out:
https://rebecca-cokley.medium.com/why-special-needs-is-1959e2a6b0e
What is your understanding of advanced education at SFUSD, and what could be done to improve it? Advanced education takes many forms in SFUSD. Advanced Placement and Honors classes are offered at many of our high schools. Enrichments and acceleration programs are available throughout the district. Middle schools offer electives and most schools offer robust afterschool programming. The common theme throughout the answers to this questionnaire is that the resources and programs that help our students succeed are not consistently available from school to school.
Every high school should offer the same impressive list of AP and Honors classes as Lowell, more CTE pathways should be available throughout the district. More clubs, extracurricular activities, and sports (all levels) should be available at all grades. All high schools should have robust visual and performing arts programs like Ruth Asawa SOTA. As John F. Kennedy said, a rising tide lifts all boats. Let's change the narrative and focus from watering down our schools to lifting all students to reach their full potential. And let's make sure we have the funds from our city, state and federal government, to do so!
What are these programs lacking which the Board of Education could rectify?
The Board of Education has two main responsibilities:
- Pass the district's budget
- Manage their employee, the Superintendent
Budgets are value statements. The board must ensure that the superintendent has the same priorities, and implement a budget that funds the priorities. The best way for the board to make corrections is to be clear in the priorities and align the budget to those priorities.
Policy
Now that we know where you align and differ from our vision for San Francisco, we'd like to get some details about how you intend to use your elected office to achieve your goals.
Why are you running for Board of Education?
As a special education advocate, former foster parent and mother of four African American children, the issues of social justice, equity, and inclusion are very personal to me. I have been an active member in school site and district level governance for more than 16 years. I've been a PTA and SSC member and leader at eight schools. However, it was my experience working to get services for my own children that transformed me from an active parent into a parent activist.
I have chaired the Community Advisory Committee for Special Education (CAC) and am a member of the African American Parent Advisory Committee (AAPAC), the Charter School Oversight Committee, the LCAP Task Force, and the Equity Studies Task Force. I am a founding member of the Joint Advisory Alignment Committee, in which the leadership teams from the parent advisory committees (CAC, AAPAC, District English Learners Advisory Committee, Parent Advisory Council, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Parent Advisory Council, and leaders from Early Ed, Indian and Migrant Education, and Foster Youth Services) work together to elevate and amplify our common goals: inclusion and support all students.
I am a collaborative partner who works to improve outcomes for our most vulnerable students and, in some cases, hold the district accountable when we're not not providing the support our students need. I spend my days fighting alongside families to help students succeed in school.
Every day, I see how our schools marginalize people who think and learn differently. Education is a civil right-we can do better! Now more than ever, we need someone on our board who understands special education and the impact it has throughout our district.
I am an outside-the-box thinker who brings creative thinking to difficult problems. I've spent the past ten years attending Board of Education meetings and committee meetings, participating in committees and working groups, and presenting to the Board. Now it's time to take my work to the next level: Instead of commenting on the policies and practices, I am ready to develop budgets that prioritize programs that improve outcomes for all students and help everyone reach their potential.
What is your #1 policy goal?
Priority #1, hands down, must be to support and retain SFUSD staff. We must fix the payroll and benefits systems; fill staff vacancies; and invest in professional development.
All educators and staff deserve to be paid! They deserve restitution for any expenses related to SFUSD errors. All central office resources should be focused on this issue. It should be an item on every board meeting agenda until all issues are resolved. Short term, we should be leveraging every city agency and partner who could provide support and expertise in this area.
We need to prioritize filling our vacancies in order to retain our teachers. We are sorely understaffed. We cannot expect teachers to continue to work multiple jobs. When my oldest daughter (who graduated in 2018) attended elementary school, there were paraeducators in every kindergarten classroom. Year after year, we have reduced the number of support personnel at schools.
This is accelerating our teacher retention challenges; our teachers are asking for more resources in their schools. Particularly after returning from distance learning, we need additional social workers, school psychologists, nurses, literacy coaches and more!
How will you build the coalition and political capital to enact your #1 goal?
The political capital already exists to enact this goal-every teacher, every parent, and just about everyone else in San Francisco agrees that our teachers deserve to be paid. We have strong partnerships throughout the city to make this happen. We have already collaborated with the tech industry to bring innovative systems and solutions into our schools. The will and the precedent exists -now we need the focus and drive.
We have grant funding from the state to support the Community Schools model as well as a charter amendment on the ballot in November that will direct more ERAF funding to our schools. We are moving in the right direction.
Will the power of the office of Board of Education Commissioner be enough to achieve this goal?
No-our HR Department has been short staffed for years. The resources needed to complete this project are far beyond SFUSD's current capacity. We have many hardworking people addressing this issue, to be sure. And they could use a lot of help from our city partners to address the issues with our payroll and benefits systems.
What are your #2 and #3 policy goals?
My next priority goals are:
- Create a budget that's a reflection of our values: increase decision making accountability and transparency; ensure our budget reflects the needs of our students
- Bring our reading curriculum and how we teach reading into the 21st century
We are spending a lot of money to implement our current reading curriculum, yet less than half of SFUSD students are proficient readers; what instructional practices do we need to shift to ensure that all students are proficient and joyful readers by third grade? If we had the effective resources to teach all children to read in the general education classroom, including structured literacy programs, we would prevent many referrals to special education and we wouldn't need as many Tier 2 literacy supports. How amazing would it be to have these highly trained personnel available to support social emotional learning and other areas of need as well?
Before COVID-19, our education system was underfunded and impacted. Now, our students are facing serious challenges. Our educators have just faced one of the hardest years ever to be in the field. We need to meet our students' and teachers' basic social emotional needs before any learning can happen. Now more than ever, it's important to prioritize the mental and physical
health of students and teachers. We need to work to re-engage students. That means hiring more social workers, nurses, school counselors, and school psychologists. Will the power of the office of Board of Education Commissioner be enough to achieve these goals?
No-we need to increase our investment in public education, particularly special education. Much of my work for the past decade has centered around increasing public education funding. I am actively working with District and City leaders to increase state funding.
I have been advocating with parent and District leaders for increased education funding for years! Budgets are value statements: we need to fund what we value. My past and current advocacy includes:
- Allocating ERAF (Educational Revenue Augmentation Fund) money to schools, not the City's general fund.
- Lobbying the state legislature for funding formula increases (LCFF).
- Lobbying the state legislature and Department of Finance to reverse proposed changes to special education funding structure and instead allocate more than $100M to special education teacher recruitment, training, and retention programs.
What is an existing policy you would like to reform?
AB114 as a funding mechanism for mental health support for students. Up until 2010, mental health services for students with disabilities in California were funded through county mental health agencies (via AB 3632). Close to 80,000 students throughout the state received services through county agencies. In 2011, AB114 replaced AB3632 and the responsibility for mental health services was transferred to school districts. In 2016 the state auditor released a report stating that, due to the implementation of AB114, many districts removed services from students' individualized education programs and there is no straightforward mechanism to track costs and/or expenses. Therefore, a detailed analysis of the overall impact to SFUSD and our students is nearly impossible. But many anecdotal and personal stories share the same theme: removing behavioral supports and mental health services from IEPs has been detrimental to not just students receiving services, but educators and families as well. The impact of one student's disruptive behavior due to inappropriate or nonexistent support can be far-reaching.
While there is much work being done at schools to support our students, the reality at our schools is that they are understaffed and need many more mental health resources. When a school has to choose between a nurse and a social worker, that's a problem. And as we've found during the pandemic, social emotional needs of students have increased significantly.
What is an "out there" change that you would make to state/local government policy, if you could? (For example: changing how elections work, creating a Bay Area regional government, etc.)
FULLY FUNDING PUBLIC EDUCATION!!!
Personal
Tell us a bit about yourself!
Do you have any children who are currently enrolled in an SFUSD school(s)? Which school(s)?
Yes! I'm currently in my 17th year as an SFUSD parent. I have an 8th grader at Denman Middle School, a junior at Mission High School, and two graduates (class of 2018 and 2022).
How long have you lived in San Francisco? What brought you here and what keeps you here?
My husband and I moved to San Francisco in 2000 as part of the tech boom. Initially, we thought we'd spend a few fun years in the city before moving back to Ohio to start our family. We fell in love with the rich cultural diversity, amazing food, and inclusiveness of San Francisco.
When my husband and I decided to become foster parents, and eventually adoptive parents, staying in San Francisco made sense because we were among so many blended families. When we visited other parts of the country, we would get a lot of questions (very often from well-intentioned people) that made our children feel out of place; here in SF, our family has always felt like the norm.
What do you love most about California and/or San Francisco?
I love our diversity and creativity! We are the original tech hub. People are drawn to San Francisco for the innovative spirit that is pervasive throughout our culture.
What do you dislike the most about California and/or San Francisco?
Politics, not just here in San Francisco but throughout the country, have felt divisive and toxic for many years. There is much more that unites us; we agree on so many more issues than not, particularly related to our children. Everyone wants strong public schools! Everyone agrees that all children should have access to a high quality public education.
Tell us about your current involvement in the community (e.g., volunteer groups, neighborhood associations, civic and professional organizations, etc.)
I am:
- Executive Director of CASE, the Community Alliance for Special Education
- Parent Mentor, Support for Families of Children with Disabilities (a parent training center here in San Francisco)
- Member, Oceanview-Merced Heights-Ingleside Community Collaborative (OMI CC) and Invest Black
- President, SF District 11 Democratic Club, President
- Member, Alice B. Toklas, Harvey Milk, and SF Latinx Democratic Clubs
- Active in my religious community, St. Paul's Episcopal Church of Oakland
Thank you
Thank you for giving us your time and answering our questionnaire. We look forward to reading your answers and considering your candidacy!
If you see any errors on this page, please let us know at contact@growsf.org.