San Francisco voters strike a blow for common sense in education

In a closely watched recall election, San Francisco voters decisively ousted three school board members who had spent the pandemic engaging in woke theater while the city’s schools remained shuttered. 

Instead of focusing its efforts on developing a reopening plan, the board has been preoccupied with woke culture war issues . . . rechristening 44 schools named after prominent Americans, including presidents Abraham Lincoln and George Washington [and proposing] to spend close to $1 million to paint over a historic, 80-year-old mural at a local school that depicts the life of Washington . . . [There was] national ridicule last February after a two-hour debate over whether a gay white dad was diverse enough to join an all-female volunteer parent committee. All the while, the district’s budget deficit ballooned to about $125 million last year, leading California education officials to threaten a state takeover.

The three were targeted in an effort launched by single parents and local tech professionals Siva Raj and Autumn Looijen. Raj and Looijen have said that they were moved to act out of sheer frustration, as the city’s schools stayed remote for almost the whole of last year—even as the school board waded into a series of culture clashes. While Collins, Lopez, and Moliga sought to depict the recall as an insidious right-wing plot (in San Francisco!), the consensus that the school board had beclowned the city proved to be a unifying theme in the deep-blue city.