Phil Kim, appointed in 2024 to the San Francisco School Board by former Mayor London Breed, is now running to retain his seat. He has a peculiar background for one seeking to advocate for public education. Kim is a former employee of KIPP, short for Knowledge is Power, the largest network of charter schools in North America. He spent 11 years rising up through the ranks of KIPP before being tapped by Breed. Kim was hired by San Francisco Unified to lead the process to close campuses across the city. The project proved to be enormously unpopular with public school parents so much so that Breed, in one of her last acts as mayor, called for the closures to be halted.

A so-called down ballot race has not attracted the attention it so richly deserves. Kim’s connection to the charter school movement and the Astroturf Network should give San Francisco voters pause. Charter schools, like those operated by KIPP, seek to evade the democratic oversight required of all public schools. At the same time, they receive money diverted from struggling school districts like San Francisco Unified. KIPP operates 279 K-12 schools, 28 regional support organizations and a nonprofit foundation. Exact revenue is hard to obtain. However, figures from KIPP Texas show that between 2003 and 2024 it received $464 million in yearly revenue, much of it from local school districts. 

Unsurprisingly, Kim has received support from enthusiastic “school choice” supporters including Neighbors for a Better San Francisco, which has vowed to spend $1 million to maintain a conservative majority on the School Board. Central to its plan is keeping Kim on the board where he currently serves as president. Another ardent Kim backer is GrowSF, a political action group started by Steven Bacio, a tech worker connected to the YIMBY movement, and Sachin Agarwal, a tech entrepreneur connected to Garry Tan. The centimillionaire chief executive of tech incubator Y Combinator, Tan once sat on the GrowSF board.

In his current campaign, Kim has received money from wealthy conservatives connected to KIPP and the school choice movement. Of the $29,487 he raised as of January 30th, $1,500 came from three chapters of Govern for California, a right-wing PAC, whose donors have strong ties to KIPP. Among them are Carrie Walton Penner, KIPP director and granddaughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton, and John Fisher, KIPP’s board chair and the son of Gap cofounder Donald Fisher.

Kim, who failed in three previous runs for School Board, has been promoted by some of the city’s most moneyed — and as a result, most powerful — political players. Why? Because he has loyally carried out their conservative agenda when it comes to public education.

Neighbors for a Better San Francisco was created by William Oberndorf, a Marin County billionaire long connected to the school choice movement. A conservative mega donor with a long history of bankrolling right-wing candidates and causes, he replaced Betsy DeVos as the chairperson of the American Federation for Children in 2016 after Trump appointed DeVos as Secretary of Education. Like the Fishers and the Waltons, school choice has been among the conservative causes that they have used their enormous fortunes to support.

Oberndorf was the leading donor to the 2022 recall of three progressive members of the San Francisco School Board. Neighbors for a Better San Francisco spent $458,000 via a political action committee on the School Board recall, with Oberndorf, the largest contributor, donating $49,000 directly to the recall.

Attacking public schools by claiming that they are poorly governed has been a long-standing strategy of the school choice movement. So are school closures, which do not lead to significant savings, a project Kim was hired to lead in San Francisco.

Kim left KIPP six months before he was appointed to the School Board, but has continued to further the interests of his former employer. Last October, he voted to renew KIPP’s contracts for operating four San Francisco schools, agreements that will allow it to keep operating city schools for another 5 years.

KIPP’s San Francisco Bay Academy was originally housed in the same buildings as Benjamin Franklin Middle School, shuttered in 2005 before Breed insisted on a halt to school closures. KIPP schools currently share space with Gateway HIgh School, and Malcolm X Academy, both included on a 2024 list of schools being considered for closure. While San Francisco public schools struggle, KIPP’s appear to be thriving, in no small part because of Phil Kim and wealthy donors.

Education experts call school choice another step toward privatizing public schools. Charter schools often move into buildings left vacant by public schools. That phenomenon serves as a metaphor for the direction that Phil Kim and his wealthy donors wish to pursue. The end result is a system that will no longer be accountable to the public, most importantly to the families of the children it serves.