San Francisco school board members recalled for putting political agendas above education

One of the most liberal cities in America recalled three school board members this week for prioritizing “wokeness” over educating children.

The election resulted in the removal of school board President Gabriela López, Vice President Faauuga Moliga, and Commissioner Alison Collins from the San Francisco Unified School District Board. Their vacancies are to be filled by Mayor London Breed, who said in November she supported the recall and “the parents’ call for change.”

The parents “were fighting for what matters most — their children,” Breed said after the recall. 

“The voters of this city have delivered a clear message that the school board must focus on the essentials of delivering a well-run school system above all else,” the mayor said. “San Francisco is a city that believes in the value of big ideas, but those ideas must be built on the foundation of a government that does the essentials well.”

The recall effort began in January of last year when residents complained that the school district was doing a poor job of managing priorities, including the proposal to change school names that the board deemed racist and sexist in nature. 

When the school dropped the renaming plan, parents continued to voice frustrations about the board’s preoccupation with “symbolic actions” rather than reopening schools during the pandemic.

The problems facing the district are not a lack of resources but misplaced priorities, according to parent and recall petition organizer Rob Kutner. “It’s a nightmare. I don’t know anyone who supports the actions of the school board,” Kutner explained to Fox & Friends in a recent interview. 

Though Mayor Breed supported the recall as a Democrat, other Democrats opposed it, including Alison Collins, the commissioner who lost her seat in the recall. She claimed “right-wingers, Big Tech, and Trump supporters” were to blame. 

Collins was already embroiled in controversy after a series of racist tweets were brought to light. Collins, who is black, claimed Asian Americans had used “white supremacist thinking to assimilate and get ahead.” The backlash led to a demotion, in which she was stripped of her Vice-President title and removed from all committees. After the demotion, she asserted that the tweets were taken out of context, refused to delete them, and went on to sue the district and her colleagues for $87 million. The lawsuit was eventually dismissed.

Collins, Lopez, and Moliga have continually defended themselves, claiming that they were doing exactly what they were elected to do. Moliga said he believes all arguments against him are “false” and citizens were “unjustified” in their attempts to recall him. However, anti-recall fundraising efforts yielded a paltry $86,000 – or about 4.5% of the pro-recall groups’ nearly $2 million.

Mayor Breed will fill the three seats with interim members until another election takes place in November. She has continually praised the recall efforts of parents while maintaining a harsh stance against the board for being “distracted by political agendas.”

Former schoolteacher and Fox News contributor Leo Terrell said of the recall: “When you damage, when you hurt children, even in the most progressive city, San Francisco, the parents have had enough. … And these school board members play wokeism: renaming schools, changing the names of schools and keeping these children home. The damage has been done. They lost quality time in school because of politicians who want to play politics at the expense of school children.”