The entire senior staff in the San Francisco school district on Sunday reported racist tweets by a school board member against Americans of Asian origin, saying she did not take responsibility for them.
In an open letter to district officials and the school board obtained by The Chronicle, all 19 top administrators in the district’s central office – including deputy superintendents and department heads – condemned the tweet board that Vice President Alison Collins posted in 2016 .
Senior leadership members work directly for the superintendent, but their employment contracts are approved by the school board. The contracts of all 19 administrators await a vote by the board, scheduled for Tuesday in a closed session.
Top officials said they are “united” in the responsibility of sharing the “grave concerns” of many colleagues and members of the community.
Administrators said they agreed with board members Jenny Lam and Faauuga Moliga, as well as former board members and city officials, that the tweets “perpetuate gross and harmful stereotypes and leave no room for potential nuances or misunderstandings”.
The district team’s letter was the latest in a series of condemnations by officials related to Collins’ tweets. On Saturday, the city’s top elected officials, including the mayor, state legislators and almost all supervisors, asked for his resignation, as did Lam and Moliga. Several community groups also asked her to resign.
The controversy over tweets came as the district hurried to bring some of its students back to classrooms from mid-April. The district – already hit by a reopening process and a second by a contentious decision to rename 44 schools – is now facing a possible third lawsuit over the council’s decision to withdraw Lowell High School from merit-based admissions.
As of Sunday afternoon, Collins, elected in 2018, had not resigned and the 2016 tweets were still posted online.
She did not return requests for comment on the letter on Sunday.
At the tweet discussion on December 4, 2016, Collins said that Asian Americans used “white supremacist thinking to assimilate and ‘progress’”. Collins explained in the topic that he was looking to “combat anti-black racism in the Asian community” and “in the Am school, predominantly Asian, of my daughters. “
The posts also contained racial epithets, including a reference comparing Asian Americans to “domestic natives”.
Collins expressed regret in an online post on Saturday morning at the pain his words caused. She refused to identify her tweets as racist and repeatedly insisted that they were taken out of context.
Several officials, including the mayor and Lam, said Collins was not responsible for his words. Lam called it “no apology”.
Superintendent Vince Matthews declined to respond specifically to the tweets, but sent a note to district officials on Saturday, saying, “We have to come together and speak when we see or hear racist actions or behavior perpetrated against any member of our community.”
Council President Gabriela López defended Collins on Saturday, saying she appreciated her colleague’s apology.
A statement posted on social media on Sunday asked Collins’ supporters to sign their support, saying she has been “one of the few consistent anti-racist voices among politicians in this city”.
“Commissioner Collins’ opportunistic segmentation distracts the national conversation about how to address anti-API and anti-Black hatred,” said the anonymous authors.
On Sunday night, the page showed that 61 people signed the declaration, including parents and teachers from the district.
In contrast, the district’s top administrators, however, said they were disappointed that Collins “did not seem willing to take significant responsibility for his actions.”
They appealed to the school board to join them in condemning “racist and offensive language”.
School board members Matt Alexander, Kevine Boggess and Mark Sanchez have not responded to requests for comment since tweets resurfaced on Thursday.
“As civil servants, we work for the Education Council through the superintendent, but we serve students and families in San Francisco,” said the 19 administrators. “While we believe that it would not be appropriate to ask for the resignation of an elected official who is part of the governing body of our district, our silence should not be interpreted as complicity or approval. We condemn Vice President Collins’ statements in the strongest possible terms. “
Jill Tucker is a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @jilltucker