Facing intense pressure on several fronts, including the reopening of schools and a recent decision to suspend merit-based admissions at Lowell High School, the San Francisco school council president has signaled that its members are halting controversial efforts to rename 44 district schools. .
In an opinion article published on Sunday on SFChronicle.com and in Monday’s print editions of The Chronicle, Gabriela López acknowledged errors in the process that resulted in a possible lawsuit and revoked efforts targeting several board members, including López.
“There have been many disturbing public debates as we work to reopen our schools,” she wrote. “The renaming of the school was one of them. It was a process started in 2018 with a schedule that did not anticipate a pandemic. I acknowledge and take responsibility for errors that were made in the renaming process. “
López said that working to reopen schools will be the council’s “only focus” and that the appointments committee meetings will be canceled in the meantime. She said the council plans to make the process more “deliberative”, involving local historians.
“In the meantime, this is the last time I will publicly comment on the renaming until schools are reopened,” she wrote. “We will not dedicate valuable time to our board’s agendas to discuss more about this, as we need to prioritize reopening.”
Other board members declined to comment.
On February 10, San Francisco’s attorney Paul D. Scott sent a letter of demand addressed to López, alleging a violation of the Brown Act, California’s open meeting law. He argued that the council did not adequately notify the public that it was making the final decision to rename school locations and warned in advance only that it would decide on a list of “potential” schools to be renamed.
He said that families and the public did not have due process and that the matter should be dealt with in each school. The letter gave the board 30 days to reverse the decision or legal action would be taken. On Tuesday, the council held a special seven-hour closed meeting that presumably addressed the legal challenge and the issue of renaming.
In response to the opinion article, Scott said he is happy that the board has “evidently seen the reason”, but he wants “written specifications” before deciding whether to proceed with any legal action.
“Changes of this magnitude should not be imposed from above in our local communities,” he said. “Parents, students, teachers, alumni and others linked to each school are the real stakeholders. They must be trusted to make good judgments for their particular school and have their point of view respected. “
On January 27, the school council voted 6-1 to rename 44 schools because they bear the names of historical figures related to racism and oppression, from Dianne Feinstein Elementary to Jefferson Elementary and Abraham Lincoln High School.
Critics of the name change cited mistakes made by the nominated committee to recommend schools to be renamed based on connections with slavery, oppression, racism and colonization. In several cases, committee members relied on Wikipedia to decide whether a name met the criteria.
In the case of Alamo Elementary, the committee cited the Battle of the Alamo and its connection to Mexican land grabbing during the Texas Revolution. But in reality, the school is more likely to be named after the Spanish word for poplar, based on the tree that identified a travelers’ resting place in the city, which is now Praça do Álamo.
“I am delighted to hear that the school board understood how flawed the process was,” said Terence Abad, executive director of the alumni association at Lowell High School, which was also on the renaming list. “Like most people, I think the renaming process is important and I appreciate doing it in an orderly and appropriate way.”
Abad noted that, due to the renaming process, additional research showed that Lowell was probably not named after James Lowell, the poet, but only Lowell, perhaps based in Lowell, Massachusetts, given a letter from the district superintendent in 1894 referring to the new name of the school only as “Lowell High School”.
The decision drew national attention and was criticized by leaders and parents for being inadequate at the time when families struggle during the pandemic. In October, Mayor London Breed rejected the renaming plan.
Meanwhile, pressure has been mounting on school staff to reopen classrooms, which have been closed for almost a year. At a news conference on Wednesday, Lopez and San Francisco’s Unified Superintendent, Vincent Matthews, said officials are trying to resume face-to-face learning as quickly as possible, but have refused to guess when the first students will be able to return. The district recently said the goal is to have six weeks of partial live instruction before the school year ends on June 2.
The San Francisco city attorney sued the school district, claiming that employees failed to create a specific reopening plan as required by state law and violated the state constitution and equal rights laws by failing to provide face-to-face education, although they may do it.
The controversy helped fuel a signature campaign, which began on Friday, to oust three board members. To date, more than 1,200 residents of the city have signed a petition to oust President López, Vice President Alison Collins and Commissioner Faauuga Moliga.
The effort will require 70,000 signatures for each of the three members to place the recall on the ballot. Organizers Autumn Looijen and Siva Raj, parents of five children, said they wanted to “take politics out of education”.
Lizzie Johnson, editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, contributed to this report.
Kellie Hwang and Jill Tucker are writers for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected], [email protected] Twitter: @KellieHwang, @jilltucker