San Francisco Board of Education Recall Voter Guide

Board of Education commissioners Alison Collins, Gabriela López, and Faauuga Moliga have undermined the public's trust in the public education system, failed to perform their jobs to a minimum standard of care, consistently failed to create a plan to reopen schools closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and engaged in bullying and other unprofessional behavior in order to silence the parents trying to hold them accountable.
GrowSF strongly supports the recall of Board of Education commissioners Alison Collins, Gabriela López, and Faauuga Moliga.
We recommend that you vote Yes on all three recalls.
Our Endorsements
Shall the Board of Education be recalled?
- ✅ Yes on Recall Alison Collins
- ✅ Yes on Recall Gabriela López
- ✅ Yes on Recall Faauuga Moliga
How the recall works
You will be presented three questions:
- Shall Board of Education Commissioner Alison Collins be recalled?
- Shall Board of Education Commissioner Gabriela López be recalled?
- Shall Board of Education Commissioner Faauuga Moliga be recalled?
Any commissioner who obtains a 50% + 1 majority of "Yes" votes will be removed from the Board of Education and their replacement will be appointed by Mayor London Breed. These appointees must run for reelection in the regularly-scheduled November 2022 election.
How to Vote
If you are not registered to vote, you can register online at registertovote.ca.gov. If you moved, don't forget to update your voter registration.
- You will receive a ballot in the mail by mid January, 2022. Find it, fill it out, and mail it back.
- Ballots must be mailed back by February 15
- You can also vote in person on February 15
- If you aren’t registered to vote or didn’t update your address by election day, no problem! California allows same day voter registration and voting — just show up at a polling location and fill out a “Provisional Ballot”
Explaining Our Endorsements
Shall the Board of Education be recalled?
Vote YES
In short: Board of Education Commissioners Collins, López, and Moliga have all exhibitedpoor judgement, lack of ability to perform their jobs, and a general contempt for parents and children. They have put their political aspirations ahead of the needs of school children and the district, and allowed the Teacher’s Union to have improperly excessive influence over school policy.
Pandemic response: During the Covid-19 pandemic, the Board of Education refused to hire a qualified consultant to make a reopening plan simply because he had previously worked for a charter school -- letting political ideology get in the way of our childrens’ needs. After rejecting him, they failed to find any replacement and we were left without a reopening plan until mid 2021. Our public schools were closed while private schools were open, and we were one of the last major school districts in the country to reopen. This further segregated our school district into haves and have-nots as parents with the means pulled their kids out of public school and into private schools. Nearly two years into the pandemic, public school classrooms still lack adequate air filtration systems.
Abuse: Commissioner Alison Collins posted racist anti-Asian comments on Twitter, and after a public outcry was stripped of her role as Vice President of the Board of Education. In response to this, rather than apologizing or resigning, she insteadsued the school district for $87 million dollars.
Renaming schools: Rather than tackle the big issues like the pandemic or the $100 million annual budget deficit, the school board instead wasted time and money on renaming the schools. Even Abraham Lincoln was canceled. During the debacle, Board President Gabriela López gave a stunning interview with The New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner, where the incompetence and rejection of expertise of the board was on full display:
Chotiner: You’re talking about the learning of history and its importance. Did the [renaming] committee want historians to testify? And why or why not?
López: So, it’s hard for me to answer that question without just pointing to [committee statements that] “they did not want to include historians.” I think that that’s not the process that they created. They included a diverse set of community members, people with a set of experiences that contribute to these discussions, people from different backgrounds who are also educated in their own rights.
✅ Yes on Recall Alison Collins
You should VOTE YES to recall Alison Collins.
✅ Yes on Recall Gabriela López
You should VOTE YES to recall Gabriela López.
✅ Yes on Recall Faauuga Moliga
You should VOTE YES to recall Faauuga Moliga.
Further Reading
Local advocacy group Families for San Francisco produced an excellent and exhaustive write-up of the board’s failings, using a decision-making framework consisting of performance problems, abuses of process and power, placing personal interest over the interest of the public, and poor conduct.
Additionally, GrowSF Director Steven Buss published “Four Reasons to Recall the School Board” and GrowSF Contributor Joel Engardio published “The Case for Recalling the San Francisco School Board” -- both of which are worth reading to understand the full breadth of the case against Commissioners Collins, López, and Moliga.
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2022 was a historic year in SF politics: GrowSF helped recall 3 incompetent school board members, recall an ineffective DA, and elect two common sense Supervisors, but our work is not done.
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