In four short years, an Astroturf group that exploited the COVID-19 pandemic to unseat three progressive members of the San Francisco School Board has parlayed its powerful and wealthy connections to present itself as the leading voice for public school families.

Created in September 2020, the San Francisco Parent Coalition was originally called Decreasing the Distance. Its animating force was — and still is —  Meredith Dodson, a management consultant married to a well-connected financial investor. Dodson’s husband, Stephen, is the son of Jerome Dodson, the legendary founder and chairman of Parnassus Investments, a San Francisco wealth management firm with a staggering $43 billion in assets. Stephen Dodson worked for his father before eventually starting his own investment firm, the Bretton Fund, with a far more modest $100 million in assets.

All this is to say that Merdith Dodson is hardly the typical San Francisco public school parent. More than half of San Francisco Unified students are eligible for free and reduced price meals. To qualify, the income limit for a family of three is $49,303. 

Despite her wealth, Meredith Dodson has positioned herself as the leader of a “grassroots organization,” advocating for the needs of parents and children in one of the most diverse school districts in the country. It helped that she enjoys financial support from some of the city’s most politically active billionaires, most notably former venture capitalist Michael Moritz and Mimi Haas, heiress to the Levi Strauss fortune and mother, and chief financier of  the city’s recently elected mayor. Moritz’s Crankstart Foundation and the Mimi and Peter Haas Fund are prominently featured on SF Parents’ list of champion supporters.

Until recently, Moritz was the chief funder of the conservative political group TogetherSF, while he and Haas have contributed to various right-wing causes including Neighbors for a Better San Francisco, the leading funder of the recalls of three members of the San Francisco School Board and progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin.

Neighbors donated $100,000 to San Francisco Parents Coalition and their 501(c)4 arm Parents Action in 2023, contributing to their combined $864,685 total revenue for the year. Neighbors was started by William Oberndorf, a conservative billionaire and long-time advocate for he likes to call school choice.” A typical tactic is to attack public school governance and teachers unions, the better to argue for vouchers to private and charter schools, which are independent.

Decreasing the Distance began its political life by leading the charge for reopening public schools during the COVID-19 pandemic, exploiting the exhaustion of parents juggling full-time jobs and parenthood during the early days of a public health catastrophe. It also preyed on parent fears that their kids would fall behind the learning curve as distance learning failed to measure up to in-person education. Cynically, Dodson never acknowledged that San Francisco’s historically underfunded public schools lacked the resources to make in-person learning safe during a pandemic that saw more than a million Americans die. Instead, it echoed the messaging of school privatizers like Oberndorf, blaming the teacher’s union and the progressive members of the School Board, arguing that they had the power to force children back into classrooms, but were instead wasting time on social justice initiatives.

In August 2021, Decreasing the Distance — and Dodson — received the star treatment from then-San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight, who has long been the unofficial voice of conservative San Francisco. Her laudatory piece, entitled, “San Francisco public school parents found their voices” downplayed Dodson’s involvement in Decreasing the Distance, presenting it as a grassroots organization. By November 2021, it would create a 501c4, a nonprofit allowing it to participate in political campaigns just in time to push for the recall of progressive School Board Trustees Alison Collins, Gabriela Lopez and Faauuga Moliga. Collins, Lopez and Moliga were ousted, in part, with the help of Dodson’s advocacy and money from Oberndorf’s Neighbors for a Better SF which spent $458,800 on the recall.

Since then, Meredith Dodson has wielded clout rare for a public school parent. The group was the sole recipient of a 5-year-grant from the city’s Department of Children, Youth and their Families, muscling out 14 other local organizations who depended on this funding for much of their revenue. Three of the recently elected school board candidates were graduates of school board candidate bootcamps. 

Dodson is using her newfound clout to reliably advocate for conservative causes. She joined the fight against San Francisco Unified’s ethnic studies curriculum despite its support from educators, and most importantly, students. For San Francisco’s billionaires, generous funders for conservative causes, their investment in the San Francisco Parents Coalition has delivered a handsome payoff.