The San Francisco school council, already involved in the debate about when and how to reopen schools, finds itself fragmented as it navigates a new controversy amid a series of crises.
The council, often unified in the past, is now divided over whether one of its members should resign following racist tweets about Asian Americans, even when facing multiple lawsuits, an outgoing superintendent, a recall effort, a huge budget deficit diving into kindergarten enrollments and families irritated by the slow reopening of classrooms.
The way forward is not clear.
On Monday, the tweet scandal involving Vice President Alison Collins – who posted the messages in 2016 before she was elected – has only grown. Almost the entire power structure in the city asked for his resignation, accompanied by more than 1,300 people who signed a petition urging her to resign.
The entire senior team in the district also condemned Collins, saying she did not take responsibility for her actions.
Council members Jenny Lam and Faauuga Moliga demanded Collins’ resignation, while President Gabriela López and board members Matt Alexander and Kevine Boggess criticized her tweets, but did not ask her to resign. Council member Mark Sanchez did not comment.
The council will meet on Tuesday for the first time since the controversy began.
The turmoil involves a school board that prides itself on putting racial equity at the forefront of its agenda, including covering a college mural that included images of enslaved people and dead Native Americans; changing 44 school names considered offensive and eliminating merit-based admissions at elite academic Lowell High School.
But now board members face accusations of racism from one of their own and have split over the right thing to do.
In his December 2016 tweet topic, Collins said that Asian Americans used “white supremacist thinking to assimilate and ‘progress'”. The series of messages, she said, was part of an effort to “combat anti-black racism in the Asian community” and “at my daughters’ predominantly Asian school”.
Later in the discussion, Collins highlighted Americans of Asian descent when reporting an incident she said occurred in the past. She wrote that her “black / mixed-race daughter heard boys harassing a Latino about ‘Trump, Mexicans and the KKK’. The boys were Asian American. … She spoke when none of the other employees did. The after school counselor was Asian. “
Collins responded on Saturday to the outrage at the tweets, saying his words were misinterpreted.
“I recognize that right now, right now, my words out of context may be causing more pain for those who are already suffering,” she wrote. “For the pain that my words may have caused, I’m sorry and I apologize without reservation.”
On Monday afternoon, more than three days after critics discovered 2016 tweets, the posts remained online.
Collins did not return requests for additional comments. Supporters said Collins has consistently pushed for racial justice and defended the Asian American community and that the campaign to get her to resign was orchestrated by those trying to revoke her and two other members of the council.
If she does not resign, voters can recall her, a process that has already started with the reopening of schools and other issues for her, as well as for López and Moliga, but which would take several months.
The city’s charter gives the mayor the authority to suspend a member of the school board for official misconduct, with a hearing by the Ethics Committee and a three-fourths vote of supervisors to remove them from office. It is not clear whether city officials are investigating this.
It is not clear whether Collins’ refusal to remove tweets or other actions would qualify as misconduct, since the original posts are from 2016 and before she took office.
Former school board member Rachel Norton, who served 12 years in office, said she does not remember a time of so much chaos and tension in the school district.
“My fear for the board, now that it is divided on this issue, is that it is a governance crisis now,” she said. “It is a very, very dangerous place for a school board that faces all the problems that it is facing.”
The council, Norton said, is isolated, with district officials essentially casting a vote of no confidence in the vice president and mayor, almost all supervisors, members of the state assembly and a host of other political and community leaders calling for his resignation.
In a strange twist, the Board of Supervisors is expected to take a final vote on Tuesday on a skyscraper development project that involves Collins’s real estate developer husband, which the board endorsed in his first vote.
It does not appear that the final vote – which would have a positive financial impact on a school board member that supervisors asked to resign – would represent any ethical or legal concern, said supervisor Aaron Peskin, who voted against the bill last week.
“But it’s weird,” said Peskin. “It’s definitely a small town, just in San Francisco.”
Also this week, the powerful San Francisco Democratic Party, which supports candidates and plays an important role in city politics, may demand that Collins resign after a vote on Wednesday, joining several other community organizations, including clubs LGBTQ by Alice B. Toklas and Chinese American Democrats.
Nancy Tung, one of the elected Democratic party leaders who drafted the resolution calling for Collins to resign, said the school council vice president did not recognize that his words were the problem.
“This is, ultimately, the most important thing to do, to understand that you have your own prejudices that you did not recognize,” she said.
Tung questioned the response of council member Alexander, who condemned the language in tweets and Collins’ failure to recognize the prejudice, but did not ask her to resign.
“He wants her to continue serving on the board and resolve this,” said Tung. “You don’t do that in public time.”
Alexander defended Collins on Monday, saying that while his tweets show racism against Asian Americans and she needs to show more humility, he wants her to remain on the board.
“Leadership is complex. It is more complex for a woman of color to address racial issues, ”he wrote on a blog. “But in the case of Alison, I believe she is a leader. And a good leader is able to listen to his critics when they make constructive criticisms. Hopefully, this will be the beginning of Alison’s journey as a leader in San Francisco. “
Boggess said he was not asking for his resignation because, “in the final analysis, I believe these decisions depend on voters.”
“I really think that real steps should be taken immediately by our Council to regain the confidence of members of the Asian American community in the Pacific Islands, who were harmed by the tweets, in ways that were not fulfilled through the Collins statement,” he said.
An online petition supporting Collins included 80 signatures, including parents and teachers, on Monday afternoon.
“Commissioner Alison Collins has been one of the few consistent anti-racist voices among politicians in this city,” according to the petition’s statement, adding that she supported Asian American and Pacific Island students as part of her participation work. shareholding. “Commissioner Collins’ opportunistic segmentation diverts national conversation about how to address anti-AAPI and anti-Black hatred.
The Collins tweet scandal and the split in the council come even when the district faces a number of challenges, including a lawsuit filed by City Attorney Dennis Herrera over the reopening of schools, with a first hearing on Monday, as well as litigation related to the school name changes and the threat of legal action on a change to the Lowell High School admission process.
Meanwhile, schools remain closed despite educators’ vaccinations, declining COVID-19 case rates and the devastating impact of distance learning and social isolation.
Meanwhile, the council still has to deal fully with the superintendent’s imminent departure in June and a budget deficit, even as families flee city schools. Autumn enrollment for district schools dropped to 13,917 students this year, down 551 from last year, with a 10% drop in kindergarten. A loss of enrollment could send schools financially unstable into a deeper hole in years to come.
It is unclear how many of the hundreds of students previously enrolled, some of whom have left this year to attend reopened private schools or other distance learning alternatives, will return in August.
“Families enrolled in schools this year with unprecedented uncertainty,” said Superintendent Vincent Matthews in a statement. “We want families to know that we are committed to offering face-to-face classes next fall.”
Jill Tucker is a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @jilltucker