The Astroturf Network made its intentions known early. In August, GrowSF announced it would spend as much as six figures on its favored candidates for the San Francisco Board of Education: Phil Kim, tech worker Autumn Brown Garibay, and finance executive Tim Tung. Months earlier, Neighbors for a Better San Francisco said it would spend as much as $1 million to maintain the board’s conservative majority.

To date, $147,000 has been spent on the School Board race and much of it finding its way into the campaign coffers of Kim, Garibay and Tung. Garibay has received nearly $37,000 in direct contributions, many from the city’s wealthiest individuals. GrowSF has spent $52,000 on her behalf through its widely-distributed voter guide. Garibay has served on the leadership council of the billionaire-funded astroturf group the San Francisco Parent Coalition. She was among the most strident critics of the February 2026 teachers strike in which the city’s public school educators demanded a reasonable pay increase. 

Kim has received a little more than $27,000 in direct contributions as well as an endorsement included in the GrowSF guide worth considerably more.

Tim Tung’s sister is Nancy Tung, the embattled chair of the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee (DCCC). Earlier this month, she was pressured to resign when the DCCC endorsed Astroturf Network candidate Manny Yekutiel who was facing a sexual assault charge. Tung has received nearly $17,000 in direct contributions as well as an endorsement in the GrowSF guide valued at $103,000. 

By comparison, former School Board Commissioner Sandra Lee Fewer spent $50,000 when she ran for San Francisco Board of Education in 2008. At the time, her campaign was considered to have been lavishly funded when compared to that of a typical School Board candidate.

All three have received donations from various chapters of right-wing funded group Govern for California. The political action committee was established to take on organized labor. It has used questionable tactics such as creating regional groups, which donate separately, to evade spending limits imposed by the state.

Well before the November 2026 election, the San Francisco Parents Coalition, funded in large part by Neighbors for a Better San Francisco, endorsed Kim and Garibay. Started by William Oberndorf, a billionaire Republican mega-donor, Neighbors for a Better San Francisco spent nearly a half-million on the successful 2022 recall of three progressive members of the San Francisco School Board. Much of that money came from Oberndorf, who was Neighbors’ largest donor.

The recall aligned with Oberndorf’s pet project, promoting “school choice,” which describes a right-wing movement that allows parents to use vouchers, funded by tax payer dollars to send their children to private schools. Oberndorf worked with Betsy DeVos, President Donald Trump’s education secretary, to co-found and run the American Federation for Children, an organization that lobbies for vouchers as well as the expansion of charter schools which receive public money, but are not subject to  oversight. Education experts call “school choice” a step toward the privatization of public education. Progressive school boards have been an obstacle in this scheme, and are often painted as incompetent as a strategy to remove them from office. 

Kim was all but certain to gain the support of Oberndorf and his allies. Kim is a former employee of KIPP, short for Knowledge is Power Program, the largest network of charter schools in the country. He spent 11 years at KIPP before he was hired by San Francisco Unified in 2024 to close city schools, a project that proved so unpopular it was halted by then-Mayor London Breed. Later that year, he was tapped by Breed to serve on the School Board, replacing one of the three progressive school board members who were recalled 4 years ago.

Kim and Garibay have been endorsed by the San Francisco Parents Action political action committee. The PAC’s top donor is billionaire Michelle Boyers, a board member of Teach for America, a pro-charter school group funded by the Walton family of the WalMart fortune.

San Francisco Parents Action is the 501c4 extension of the 501c3 Parents Coalition, led by Meredith Dodson, a management consultant. Parents Action has received at least $100,000 Neighbors for a Better San Francisco. Other contributors are billionaire tech investor Michael Moritz, through his Crankstart Foundation, and Mayor Daniel Lurie’s mother Mimi Haas, another billionaire who donated through her Mimi and Peter Haas Fund. Crankstart and the Haas foundations are listed as champion supporters on the group’s website. Dodson was a vocal opponent of the district’s ethnic studies curriculum despite its support from educators and, more importantly, students.

While school districts in New York and Los Angeles have responded to parent-organizing against technological overreach, including the use of artificial intelligence in classrooms, the newly conservative San Francisco School Board has rebuffed similar efforts. Recently, Superintendent Maria Su recently extolled the benefits of AI in classrooms at the recent Salesforce conference held in San Francisco.

Perhaps in its most notable decision, the board, led by Kim, voted to end the district’s lottery, an admissions system that attempted to create racially balanced schools. The abolishing of the lottery system has been a long-standing demand of GrowSF. Commissioner Alida Fisher, one of two dissenting votes, said of the decision: “Frankly, we are screwing over families in certain parts of the city by doing that, and we know that.” 

School Boards are often a stepping stone for higher offices. For a relatively small sum, when compared to their vast wealth, the Astroturf Network is grooming future leaders who will be beholden to them and their conservative agenda – including but not limited to the potential for future school closures, school vouchers and charter schools.