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Matt Alexander

Contest: School Board
  • Office: School Board
  • Election Date: November 5, 2024
  • Candidate: Matt Alexander
  • Due Date: May 31, 2024
  • Printable Version

Thank you for seeking GrowSF's endorsement for the November 5, 2024 election! GrowSF believes in a growing, beautiful, vibrant, healthy, safe, and prosperous city delivered via common sense solutions and effective government. Our work includes running public opinion polls to understand what voters want, advocating for those changes, and ensuring that the SF government represents the people.

The GrowSF endorsement committee will review all completed questionnaires and seek consensus on which candidates best align with our vision for San Francisco.

This questionnaire will be published on growsf.org, and so we hope that you use this opportunity to communicate with voters.

Please complete this questionnaire by May 31, 2024 so we have enough time to adequately review and discuss your answers.

Note: This questionnaire will use the initialism “SFUSD” when referring to the San Francisco Unified School District.

Your Goals

We'd like to get some details about your high-level goals and how you intend to use your elected office to achieve them.

Why are you running for School Board?

I’m running for School Board to continue the work I’ve started, alongside my colleagues, to create the schools our students deserve. If re-elected, I’ll bring an important perspective as the only educator on the School Board. I started my teaching career at Balboa High School in 1996, and over the past three decades I’ve seen SFUSD’s many strengths, but I also watched the growth of some deep systemic problems, including fiscal and operational mismanagement, lofty rhetoric about equity and excellence but a lack of accountability for results, and a bureaucratic culture that’s been unresponsive to the needs of students, families, and school-based staff. My colleagues and I on the current School Board have taken concrete steps to begin addressing these issues and lay the foundation for a much stronger SFUSD.

What I bring to the Board:

  • Two decades of experience as a SFUSD teacher and principal, with deep educational expertise and a track record of success as an educator

  • Four years of experience on the School Board during the most challenging times in recent memory, including this year as Vice President

  • A grassroots community organizer and good listener who values the experiences and viewpoints of students, families, and school-based staff

  • A values-based leader whose views are rooted in the needs of people not ideology

  • A bold leader who is willing to hold people accountable and challenge the status quo when needed

  • A team player who works well with others and finds common ground across difference

  • A collaborator who has built relationships with City officials to bring in resources for SFUSD

What is your #1 policy goal?

How will you build the coalition and political capital to enact your #1 goal?

Will the power of the office of School Board be enough to achieve this goal?

What are your #2 and #3 policy goals?

Will the power of the office of School Board be enough to achieve these goals?

Three goals have guided my current work on the School Board and will continue to guide my work if I’m re-elected:

  1. Prioritize academic excellence for all students. Some of my accomplishments in this area include:

Now that we've set ambitious academic goals in literacy, math, and college/career access, my #1 policy goal is holding the Superintendent accountable to achieving those goals. This means conducting frequent public monitoring of progress and ensuring that the Superintendent has realistic strategic plans to build a system that centers students and the educators who serve them so all students can achieve the goals.

  1. Ensure that SFUSD has fiscal stability and fully staffed schools. Some of my accomplishments in this area include:

My colleagues and I have made it clear to the Superintendent that our progress toward fiscal stability needs to accelerate. My #2 policy goal is to accelerate improvements to our fiscal and operational systems and to complete the process of realigning our resources so we have balanced budgets that prioritize the classroom and ensure fully staffed schools for all students.

  1. Improve transparency and accountability. Some of my accomplishments in this area include:

My #3 policy goal is to continue to push for the cultural shifts required so that SFUSD becomes a transparent, accountable system that's responsive to the needs of students, families, and school-based staff.

What is an existing Board of Education policy you would like to reform?

Over the past several years, we’ve adopted a new approach to School Board governance guided by the Council of Great City Schools, and one of the useful insights of that process has been the recognition that SFUSD has too many policies, so it’s become functionally impossible to monitor them all. Even really good policies often do not get implemented. The lack of prioritization has led to a lack of accountability. We’ve begun the process of simplifying and clarifying Board of Education policies to better reflect our priorities, starting with our new academic goals and values-based guardrails, and we should continue on that path.

Do/Did you have children in SFUSD? If so, what have you learned about SFUSD that other parents would benefit from? If not, why not?

My children attended both SFUSD schools and charter schools (they’re twins who graduated from high school in 2020). I believe it’s important to have SFUSD parents on the School Board, but other perspectives and experiences are important as well. If re-elected, I’ll be the only educator on the School Board. My two decades of experience as a teacher and principal in SFUSD provide a unique and important perspective on the governance team.

Executive experience

Please describe your experience running or governing large organizations, managing teams (including hiring, firing, and performance management), driving cultural change and clear communication throughout all levels, effective financial management (budgets, reporting, audit, etc.), and any other relevant experience.

Please describe a time when you had an underperforming subordinate and how you handled the situation, including (and especially) how you were able to increase their performance.

Note: Please remember that this questionnaire will be public, so do not include any personally identifiable information.

Please describe a time when your organization faced an extreme challenge and how you got the organization through it.

When I first joined the School Board in January 2021, SFUSD schools had been closed to in-person instruction for nearly a year, we were facing a $125 million deficit with no plan to balance the budget, and staff were in the midst of adopting a new payroll system which turned out to be a complete debacle. I’m part of the governance team that re-opened SFUSD schools to in-person learning, hired a new superintendent, created a budget balancing plan, stabilized our payroll crisis, adopted ambitious new academic goals, reduced the size of the bloated central office, and passed the Student Success Fund ballot measure with nearly 80% of the vote to bring in $35-60 million annually to SFUSD.

In January 2024, my colleagues unanimously elected me as School Board Vice President, where I’ve had the honor of collaborating with President Lainie Motamedi in supervising and supporting SFUSD Superintendent Matt Wayne, overseeing the Student Outcomes Focused Governance process, and managing the governance aspects of the SFUSD Resource Alignment Initiative.

(Given that my management experience has been as a SFUSD Principal and on the SFUSD School Board, It’s not really possible for me to address the question about an underperforming subordinate without identifying information, but I’m happy to follow up on that topic in an appropriate forum.)

The Issues

Next, we will cover the issues that voters tell us they care about. We hope to gain a better understanding of your policy positions, and we hope that you use this opportunity to communicate with voters.

Budget

SFUSD faces an existential crisis in its budget deficit. In your view, what factors have led to this crisis?

SFUSD was deemed to be “no longer a going concern” and to be at risk of insolvency by the 2025-26 fiscal year unless it restructures and corrects its budget deficit. Please explain the current budget situation.

How does the role of the CDE’s Fiscal Advisor to SFUSD inform your perspective and priorities on the responsibilities of a Board of Ed commissioner?

Please summarize the recommended solutions in the SFUSD Fiscal Health Risk Analysis report, and tell us how you would prioritize them.

The SFUSD budget crisis is the result of more than a decade of fiscal and operational mismanagement. Since 2021, SFUSD has had fiscal experts assigned by the California Department of Education (CDE), and our staff have been working closely with them to address the crisis. The CDE recently moved SFUSD to a “negative” certification, indicating that progress must accelerate. At the May 7 School Board meeting, FCMAT CEO Mike Fine noted that the current School Board and Superintendent have taken important steps to address the crisis over the past two years, and that we’ve made significant improvements. He also said, “You are nowhere close to state receivership. Our collective commitment is to make sure you don’t get there.”

Both the CDE and FCMAT have identified similar areas of concern. Below is a summary of four key problem areas, in priority order:

  1. Deficit Spending. The fundamental problem with SFUSD’s finances is that we’ve had a structural deficit, meaning that our long-term projected expenses exceed our revenues. In years when there’s been a deficit, we’ve used one-time resources to cover the gap, so our fund balance has remained positive. When I joined the School Board in 2021, we had a $125 million structural deficit—but by June 2023, we had eliminated this deficit and we adopted a budget with a $25 million structural surplus. However, we needed to address the fact that our educators have been underpaid, especially relative to our high housing costs, resulting in a severe teacher shortage—so last fall we made a critical investment in the recruitment and retention of high-quality educators by agreeing to over $100 million in raises. This investment required offsetting savings, and while we have a plan for achieving those savings, the CDE is not confident about the evidence SFUSD staff have provided for those savings, which resulted in CDE moving us to a “negative” certification (a risk of insolvency within three years). Accurately documenting these offsetting savings and providing the CDE with acceptable evidence of long-term balanced budgets without deficit spending needs to be our #1 fiscal health priority.

  2. Position Control. One of the reasons SFUSD cannot properly document budget savings is because we have a glaring weakness in what’s known as “position control”—a process to allow for tracking of budgeted, filled, and vacant positions. Even when positions have been eliminated, poor position control means that we cannot accurately document the budget savings. A related issue is the lack of a complete and accurate seniority list. These issues are critical because the vast majority of SFUSD’s budget is in personnel. Our staff have been working on fixing position control for quite a while, and it needs to be completed immediately.

  3. Fiscal Systems and Fiscal Reporting. One of the reasons position control is such a challenge is that SFUSD does not yet have functional, integrated, and accurate payroll/personnel and financial systems. This makes it difficult and time-consuming for staff to analyze and update budgets, effectively monitor cash flow, perform timely reconciliations and present updated, accurate financial data. Staff have to cross-reference many different systems and spreadsheets to access financial data, making the process cumbersome and leading to more potential errors. To address this challenge, on March 12, 2024, the School Board voted to adopt a new integrated Enterprise Resource Management system which is used successfully by over 500 school districts in California—but it will not be fully online until summer 2025, so in the meantime we must continue to improve how we use and coordinate our existing flawed systems.

  4. Aligning Budgets to Declining Enrollment. A major cause of the structural deficit is that as our enrollment has declined, SFUSD has not consistently reduced the number of staff at the same rate. To address this problem at the central office level, I worked with the Board of Supervisors to get the City’s Budget and Legislative Analyst to produce an independent report on SFUSD’s excessive central office spending compared to peer districts. This report showed that in 2020-21 we were spending 27% of our General Fund on central office expenditures, compared to 18% in our peer districts—or about $70 million a year in excess spending. Thanks to this analysis, we’ve already reduced central office spending to about 22% of the General Fund, and the Superintendent has committed to getting it below 20% for the 2024-25 fiscal year. At the school level, we’ve adopted a new budgeting approach to help ensure school budgets are in line with class size goals, and this fall we’ll make decisions about possible school mergers or closures to align staffing with enrollment. We must continue to hold staff accountable for results in this area.

The budget deficit will require hard and unpopular decisions, like closing schools, laying off teachers, reducing or changing available courses, and renegotiating the teachers’ union contract. Regardless of your stance on those specific issues, what credentials or work experience do you have in handling those sorts of challenges?

How do you approach making difficult decisions that you deem necessary even if unpopular? Please share a relevant example, if applicable.

I’ve already made hard and unpopular decisions while on the School Board. For example, I know that the track record of school closures in some other cities has been awful, and SFUSD’s own past school closures have been deeply flawed, with a disproportionate impact on the Black community and low-income students. But I also know that in 1996, the year I started teaching in SFUSD, we had 64,000 students, and this year we have 49,000. Fewer students means less state funding, so we have to decide if we want to keep spreading our resources thinly across over 100 campuses, or if it makes more sense to have fewer schools which are each better resourced. Merging two tiny elementary schools can allow us to have one school with a full-time social worker, literacy coach, teacher collaboration teams, and better facilities. I’ve become convinced that having fewer schools will mean we can ensure fully staffed schools, offer better working conditions for educators, and create better outcomes for students.

As we approach this hard decision, we need to get the process right. The Board is holding the Superintendent accountable to our Guardrails, as well as Attorney General Bonta’s guidance, both of which require an authentic community engagement process and an equity impact assessment. We’ve already heard from the SFUSD community that we should ensure historically marginalized students are not adversely impacted, and that we should protect options such as K-8s and small high schools for students who need them. I will continue to follow the lead of students, families, and educators, as this process unfolds. I believe with community input and an equity lens, we can use our limited resources more effectively and create the schools our students deserve.

SFUSD facilities are in poor condition, with reports of some bathrooms being so dirty that students refuse to use them. What will you do to remedy this situation, especially given the budget constraints you will have to operate under?

SFUSD schools desperately need maintenance and major facilities improvements. When I joined the School Board in 2021, our facilities department had no master plan, basic requirements such as the Citizens’ Bond Oversight Committee were being neglected, and promises made to schools during the 2016 Bond were being ignored. My colleagues and I worked to get staff to produce a comprehensive Facilities Master Plan, including an objective assessment of facilities conditions, and we re-established the Citizens’ Bond Oversight Committee and required regular audits of the bond program. I helped rebuild trust with families by securing $40 million in previously promised bond funds for the renovation of Buena Vista Horace Mann School. Now it’s essential that we pass the new facilities bond that will be on the November 2024 ballot, so we can continue making progress toward the school facilities that our students deserve.

One reason for the budget deficit is declining enrollment. Approximately 30% of children attend private schools, and that percentage is growing. Each student not in SFUSD takes away nearly $15,000 in State funding. How will you make SFUSD more attractive to prospective students and parents?

It’s true that San Francisco has one of the highest percentages of private school enrollment in the state. But a recent analysis shows that SFUSD’s declining enrollment is mainly due to demographic trends, not competition with private schools (high schools may be an exception).

Regardless, SFUSD should do all it can to be more attractive to prospective students and parents. One of the most important things we can do is fix our broken enrollment system. My children are 21-year-old twins, but I’m still on the email list from their co-op preschool. Recently, the preschool newsletter included an article from a parent who commented, “My husband and I always joked that we would leave San Francisco by the time our eldest was ready for kindergarten. The [SFUSD] lottery system felt way too complicated and intimidating.” This parent’s feelings about SFUSD’s enrollment system are widely shared, including among parents who can’t afford to move or choose private schools.

Of course, we also need to ensure that all of our schools are safe learning environments where students are challenged and supported academically. If SFUSD schools are fully staffed, serve the whole child, and promote academic excellence, more families will want to enroll.

Finally, SFUSD’s enrollment will increase if more families live in San Francisco. One area where this is happening now is among asylum-seeking immigrants. Last year SFUSD had over 1500 new immigrant students, and this year we’ve already enrolled nearly 1600—the largest numbers by far in the past decade. We need to continue welcoming these newcomer families, in line with our values as a Sanctuary City, and we need to advocate with the City to provide more affordable housing for them and other working-class and low-income families, so they are not forced out due to the high cost of housing.

What is your perspective on SFUSD’s school closures and approach to pandemic recovery?

When I first ran for School Board in 2020, I was a proponent of returning schools to in-person learning as soon as possible, because as an educator I understood the negative impact of distance learning on our kids. When private schools returned for in-person learning in September 2020, I wrote an op-ed calling for public schools to return as well, supported by a public-private partnership to provide the resources so our students and staff could be safe. I was surprised and disappointed that when I joined the Board in January 2021, SFUSD still had no plan for a return to in-person learning. We got there later that spring, but the entire process took far too long and exposed the fiscal and operational mismanagement that plagued SFUSD. While there is still much work to be done, I’m confident that SFUSD is much better positioned to handle that kind of crisis today than we were in 2020.

Curriculum

What changes are coming to the SFUSD curriculum over the next few years?

SFUSD student performance is low, with some of the widest achievement gaps among student populations in the state, with many students being left unprepared for high school and college. How and why are we failing our students?

What is the current state of advanced education at SFUSD?

What should SFUSD be doing to ensure more students have access to more advanced education, including classes above their grade level, accelerated courses, and advanced subjects including those currently only offered by outside institutions such as community colleges?

What is the current state of special or remedial education at SFUSD?

What should SFUSD be doing to ensure students who need special education (either due to disability or academic performance) have access and the support they need to thrive?

For a more in-depth response and an understanding of my views on educational issues, backed by research, please see Redesigning High Schools: 10 Features for Success, a publication I recently co-authored with State Board of Education President Linda Darling-Hammond.

As you note, SFUSD has struggled to close opportunity gaps among student populations. At the same time, we’ve struggled to challenge students when they’re ready to go beyond grade-level standards. And we’ve often under-served students with disabilities.

These are examples of school districts in California that are producing better, more equitable results. And here in SFUSD, there are teachers, and in a few cases entire schools, showing what’s possible when we have high expectations for all students, coupled with the supports needed to meet them.

For example, in mathematics, only 11% of Black SFUSD students and 18% of Latino students met or exceeded standards on the 2023 state tests. But at John Muir Elementary School, 45% of Black students and 42% of Latino students met or exceeded standards. Back in 2015, Muir’s test results looked almost exactly like SFUSD’s, but the district’s results have remained flat over the past 8 years, while Muir’s have increased dramatically.

What’s John Muir’s secret? The school has carefully and consistently implemented an approach to elementary mathematics called Teaching Through Problem Solving, which includes a rigorous curriculum as well as a sophisticated instructional approach, alongside a program for in-depth teacher professional development known as Lesson Study.

What Muir’s experience shows is that if we invest deeply in educators and build a culture of excellence, we can dramatically increase academic outcomes for all kids. That’s why I worked with the Board of Supervisors to secure $8 million in City funding to expand the John Muir project as a pilot at Malcolm X, Flynn, and Sanchez over the past two years. Now the approach is spreading to even more schools using the Student Success Fund. Even as we face budget challenges, we need to continue these kinds of targeted investments so we can expand what’s already working in SFUSD.

At a district-wide level, the School Board has adopted ambitious academic goals, along with guardrails reflecting our San Francisco values, to guide the Superintendent and staff in the systems change work needed to make SFUSD a place where exemplary academic performance is the norm. When the Board adopted our Goals and Guardrails in 2022, I helped craft the Curriculum and Instruction guardrail in a way that emphasizes how students should not just be given “the basics” but also challenged to meet standards of excellence: “The superintendent will not allow curriculum and instruction that is not rooted in excellence, challenging and engaging, student-centered, culturally responsive, or differentiated to meet the academic needs of all students.” SFUSD’s “Deeper Learning” pedagogical approach is consistent with these expectations, as is the new literacy curriculum we adopted—but we still have work to do in ensuring that teachers have the training, support, and collaboration needed to create these opportunities in every classroom.

For high schools, the Board adopted a student outcome goal based on California’s College and Career Readiness indicator, through which a student is considered “College/Career Ready” if they meet different combinations of criteria, including:

  • Passing AP exams

  • Taking college courses

  • Completing a Career Technical Education Pathway (including internships)

  • Completing UC/CSU requirements

These are all challenging learning opportunities, and now we need to enhance our high school offerings so that all students have access to them.

SFUSD needs to dramatically improve support for students with disabilities. When I served as principal at June Jordan School for Equity, we enrolled nearly 30% students with IEPs, and the careful attention we paid to the needs of students with disabilities, in an inclusive educational setting, resulted in higher-quality teaching and learning for everyone: We had college eligibility rates for our Black and Latino graduates which were double those of SFUSD as a whole. A key to our success was understanding that while there are some common aspects of the learning process, every human brain is different and develops in its own way. See Chapter 5 of Redesigning High Schools: 10 Features for Success for more on what this kind of teaching and learning looks like.

SFUSD has much work to be done to build a system that centers students and the educators who serve them so all students can achieve challenging academic goals. If re-elected, I’ll be the only educator on the School Board, and my expertise in this area will be important to have on the governance team.

SFUSD will be reintroducing 8th grade algebra over the next couple school years. Do you support this change?

Yes, I’ve always supported all SFUSD students having access to algebra in 8th grade, both the content of algebra as well as UC/CSU approved credit. I know there are some who oppose 8th grade algebra due to legitimate concerns about tracking. I share these concerns, but I don’t think the answer is to limit access to algebra. There are examples of schools and districts that have implemented 8th grade algebra equitably, and we can too.

How should SFUSD balance instructional minutes for core curriculum subjects with access to electives?

As a former high school principal, I have opinions on this topic that are informed by educational experience, but this is an operational question not a governance or policy question. I don’t think it’s appropriate for School Board members to be attempting to micro-manage issues like this, because it undermines our Superintendent and school-based staff. The School Board’s academic goals and values-based guardrails provide high-level guidance, and within those boundaries, staff should be able to make the educational decisions that they think are best, and be held accountable for results.

Many of SFUSD’s language pathways have difficulty hiring and retaining qualified educators and classrooms are under-enrolled as early as grade 4, how would you address this?

What is your position on supporting lottery-based access to language immersion programs for some versus access to second language instruction for all as part of general education instruction?

All SFUSD students should have the opportunity to become bilingual or enhance their bilingualism during their time in our public schools. It’s important for immigrant students to have access to high-quality instruction in English and, where possible, their native language as well.

As your questions suggest, there are some real challenges with our current programs in this area. I worked with my colleagues on the Board to provide our educators with the largest raise in history, which should help with the recruitment and retention of qualified educators—but more targeted strategies are needed to find good bilingual teachers. During our discussion of school mergers, there will be consideration of merging some language programs so that we can continue to offer them with full classrooms—but it will be important to ensure access in all parts of the city. Many of the details in this area are operational questions that should not be School Board decisions but rather the responsibility of the Superintendent; we need to hold the Superintendent accountable for effective programming rather than micro-managing.

Bullying & violence

Last school year SFUSD was beset by reports of rampant bullying and both in-school and after-school violence. Has the School Board done enough to fix and prevent these issues? And what more should be done, if anything?

What failures in administration allowed such violence to happen in our schools?

What is your opinion about the new “Say Something Anonymous System”? Are other interventions warranted, as well?

Cyberbullying remains a problem. What is SFUSD doing to stop it, and what else should they be doing?

Bullying and violence among young people is an increasing problem across California and the nation, and SFUSD is no exception. In a 2022 survey of California high school principals, 42% indicated that incidents of intolerance on campus had increased since before the COVID-19 pandemic, and only 5% said such behavior had decreased. More than three quarters of principals (78%) reported students making hostile or demeaning remarks toward their LGBTQ classmates, 66% reported racially hostile statements toward Black students, 50% reported racially hostile statements toward Latino/a students, and 41% reported racially hostile statements toward Asian American/ Pacific Islander students.

Educators and brain researchers alike know that for students to meet their full learning potential, they must be in an environment that’s both physically and psychologically safe. If we want SFUSD students to meet our challenging academic goals, it’s essential that we do a better job of promoting a safe, inclusive school climate. See Chapter 2 of Redesigning High Schools: 10 Features for Success for more on my views of how these issues ought to be addressed in schools.

On the Board of Education, I helped draft our guardrail on “Serving the Whole Child,” which emphasizes the importance of this work by saying that SFUSD must support “the cognitive and academic development, social and emotional development, identity development, physical and mental well-being, and ethical and moral development of students.” The details of how to operationalize this guardrail, including addressing failures that allowed incidents to occur in our schools, is the responsibility of the Superintendent; the School Board needs to hold the Superintendent accountable for improving our school safety rather than micro-managing.

Teachers

State regulators have ordered SFUSD to balance its budget by laying off some teachers. What experience do you have with union negotiations, labor disputes, and corporate finance?

Given SFUSD’s budget crisis, how will you ensure that we are able to attract and retain the best teachers?

A substantial body of research suggests that one of the most important school determinants of student achievement is the quality of teachers. Like most school districts across California, SFUSD is facing a severe teacher shortage, which has a huge negative impact on student learning. Our high rate of vacancies mean that, even as we reduce positions due to declining enrollment, it’s unlikely we’ll need to lay off very many staff. But I have supported and will support layoffs when needed.

To address the teacher shortage and attract and retain qualified educators for our kids, last fall the School Board made a critical investment by agreeing to the largest raise for teachers and paraeducators in SFUSD history. Now we’re working to provide the CDE with sufficient evidence that our plan for how to pay for those raises with offsetting savings will result in long-term balanced budgets.

I’m proud that I worked with UESF and members of the Board of Supervisors to co-author Prop G, the Student Success Fund, which is now bringing in $23-60 million annually to support our schools. We’ll need more collaborative efforts like that in the future to ensure that SFUSD has the revenue needed to ensure we can hire and keep the best possible educators.

School assignment system

Please summarize the changes needed for the SFUSD school assignment system. How do you see it working best for preK through high school?

Indicate how you will ensure the changes to the assignment system proceed with minimal problems.

In your opinion, how should any changes to the system balance equity concerns with convenience and the needs of children and parents?

How will you measure if these changes are beneficial for students and parents?

SFUSD spends millions of dollars a year on an enrollment system that offers an illusion of choice while actually creating high levels of anxiety for students and families. The system also creates unpredictable school enrollments, which makes it challenging for schools to do budgeting and for district staff to allocate resources effectively.

The Board of Education voted in 2018 to change the elementary assignment system and then in 2020 voted to move to a zone-based system. The new system still has not been implemented.

It’s time to stop kicking the can down the road and actually fix our broken assignment system. I believe that our new system should include not only elementary, but also middle and high schools. Families deserve a predictable enrollment system that assigns students to schools reasonably close to where they live and offers alternative options for students who need them—with a minimum of anxiety and stress.

It’s also worth considering the fiscal impacts. SFUSD has a department called the Educational Placement Center that manages our complex enrollment system and helps families navigate it. This department, which doesn’t exist in most school districts, costs us over $3 million a year. It’s not clear how that investment is leading to improved student outcomes.

Finally, the current system was originally adopted with the stated purpose of desegregating schools, which it has not accomplished. A simpler and more transparent system would be cheaper, less stressful, and more likely to produce the diverse schools most San Franciscans want.

General information

In your view, why were San Francisco Board of Education members Alison Collins, Gabriela López, and Faauuga Moliga recalled?

Did you vote for or against the recalls of Board of Education members Alison Collins, Gabriela López, and Faauuga Moliga?

I opposed the February 2022 recall because it was backed by over $2 million from big-money interests. Working-class and low-income families make up the majority of SFUSD enrollment, and they don’t have that kind of political influence. When politics is dominated by the wealthy, it’s bad for democracy.

At the same time, I understand and respect that many SFUSD parents supported the recall for good reasons having nothing to do with big money. For example, Alison Collins filed an $87 million lawsuit against SFUSD, and me personally, along with my colleagues. It’s also true that in the months after the recall, thanks to Commissioner Lam’s leadership in a very challenging time, the school board stabilized itself, hired a new superintendent, and embarked on Student Outcomes Focused Governance—all of which laid the foundation for the progress we’re now beginning to see in SFUSD.

In the regular November 2022 elections, with local campaign finance rules in place, the three winning candidates collectively spent less than $150,000. And thanks to that decision of the voters, I have the honor of working with three fantastic colleagues, Commissioners Weismann-Ward, Motamedi, and Fisher. Moving forward, I hope we can all work together to avoid recalls and ensure that school board elections are not big money affairs but rather models of grassroots democracy.

Who are your mentors? Are there current or former Board of Education commissioners you believe have been most effective, and why?

In what ways are we succeeding in public education?

In what ways are we failing in public education?

One of my most influential mentors on educational issues is State Board of Education President Linda Darling-Hammond. I was proud to be able to collaborate with her recently to co-author Redesigning High Schools: 10 Features for Success, which provides a detailed review of research-based strategies to improve public schools.

How can the school district use its land to help deliver housing for teachers, school staff, and San Francisco families?

We all know San Francisco faces a housing crisis, which has been caused by decades of public policies at the federal, state, and local levels that do not prioritize working-class and low-income people. SFUSD is the second largest landowner in the city, so we have a special responsibility to use our land as a resource in helping to address this crisis. Projects such as Shirley Chisholm Village with 100% affordable educator and staff housing are an important part of this process. The Board recently voted to move forward with two other potential sites for educator housing at 95 Gough St and the “pumpkin patch” at 1620 7th Avenue. We also need to consider building housing for working-class SFUSD families who cannot afford the city’s excessive market rents and who can’t access the limited supply of existing affordable housing. Finally, we should advocate with the City for more resources, including housing subsidies, to ensure that our educators and families can stay at home in San Francisco.

Personal

Tell us a bit about yourself!

Did you attend SFUSD or public primary schools in other cities? How do our schools differ from when you were a student?

How long have you lived in San Francisco? What brought you here and what keeps you here?

What do you love most about San Francisco?

What do you dislike the most about San Francisco?

Tell us about your current involvement in the community (e.g., volunteer groups, neighborhood associations, civic and professional organizations, etc.).

I grew up in Maryland in the 1970s and 80s, and moved to San Francisco in the mid-90s, drawn by this city’s reputation as a place that offered welcome to all. I’ve been blessed to find community here, to make this city my home and raise my twin sons here.

But over this time, I’ve also seen how we’ve allowed inequality to dramatically increase, as much of the Black community has been pushed out of the city, working families and immigrants face ever more pressure to survive here, educators cannot afford to stay and work here, and many middle-class families do not see a future for their children in San Francisco. These trends run counter to our San Francisco values. I have hope that we can work together to ensure San Francisco once again becomes a beacon of hope for the nation and world.

While many of our city’s challenges are outside the control of SFUSD, strong public schools can play an important role in making San Francisco the place we want it to be. I spent two decades as a teacher and principal in SFUSD, and I ran for School Board in 2020 because I knew SFUSD was not meeting its potential due to some deep systemic problems. My colleagues and I on the current School Board have taken concrete steps to begin addressing these issues and lay the foundation for a much stronger SFUSD—and I’m running for re-election because I want to see that work through.

Since leaving my role as a SFUSD principal in 2018, I’ve worked as a community organizer at Faith in Action Bay Area, where I was previously a volunteer leader for nearly 20 years. We’re a network of more than 150 congregations and schools in San Francisco and San Mateo counties. We’re a multi-faith and multi-racial organization, and our mission is to develop community leaders to build teams with the necessary people power to transform the injustices in our communities. At Faith in Action, I’ve supported citywide campaigns to protect SFUSD families from eviction, to get immigrants released from ICE detention, and to secure housing subsidies for low-income seniors at risk of losing their homes. This year, my colleagues and I have been working with a group of homeless immigrant families who are advocating with City officials to ensure that no child has to sleep on the streets. Through this work, I have the privilege of being in relationship with many low-income and non-English speaking SFUSD families who are often overlooked in the public discourse around our schools. I know from experience that if we listen to these families and do what’s necessary so our most marginalized students can achieve excellence, our entire city will benefit and we'll truly be able to realize our San Francisco values.

Thank you

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