Election Day Nears For San Francisco School Board Members Facing Recall
SAN FRANCISCO (KPIX 5) – The campaign is ramping up in the final days before Tuesday's special election where three members of the San Francisco school board could be ousted.
Voters have one more week to decide whether or not to recall board president Gabriela Lopez along with board members Alison Collins and Faauuga Moliga. The recall was triggered after supporters gathered more than 80,000 signatures for each board member.
Parents supporting the recall cited multiple reasons, including the board's inability to reopen classes to in-person learning sooner in the pandemic, efforts to rename 44 schools during closure, and a decision to eliminate Lowell High School's merit based admissions.
"They were struggling. My son was having a hard time in Zoom classes. He was depressed," Kit Lam told KPIX 5.
Lam, a parent of two public school students, said he never worked on a recall campaign until this one. He also cited Collins' $87 million failed lawsuit against the school district alleging free speech violations, along with controversial comments about Asians as reasons behind the recall.
"What she said insulted the entire Chinese community," said Lam.
Other parents defend the board's decisions.
"I don't believe in the recall. I feel like it's a waste of money. If we voted for each commissioner then they shouldn't be voted out," said Anna Molina.
Collins and Lopez did not respond to multiple KPIX 5 requests for interviews.
Board member Faauuga Moliga did, defending his decisions, but not Collins and Lopez.
"What people don't give us credit for is participating in this low COVID rate that the city of San Francisco has been praised for. A lot of that also is credited because of how we've been able to manage the school district during the pandemic," Moliga told KPIX 5.
Moliga said he has focused his efforts on addressing the district's $125 million budget deficit, partly due to the declining student enrollment during the pandemic, and said the renaming of schools put on the agenda was not in his control.
The board member ultimately voted in favor of renaming and changing Lowell's admissions process.
"When agenda items are coming to the board we are asked to discuss them and vote on them. These are two items I did not bring to the school board," said Moliga.
If any of the board members is recalled, then Mayor London Breed will appoint the replacements until a November election for those seats.
