Last October, grassroots organizations, families, and educators thwarted then-Mayor London Breed’s push to permanently shutter 13 public schools. School closures are a conservative tool used as further “evidence” that public-schools are “failing,” a justification for charter schools, vouchers and the eventual privatization of public education. How did San Francisco, often misleadingly described as a bastion of progressivism, arrive at this moment?

A concerted effort by moneyed conservatives to tarnish the city’s public school system, especially its governing body, was behind this effort. Sullying the San Francisco Board of Education with charges of incompetence furthers their agenda, one that drains public schools of resources and denies the community a voice in how its children are educated. 

It is an often-used strategy employed against public school districts around the country, particularly those with left-leaning boards.

The right-wingers found their moment during the devastating COVID-19 pandemic. The “reopen schools” movement emerged early, well before vaccines became available, a callous decision given that the virus would take more than a million American lives. 

“Reopening” became the bludgeon used against the San Francisco Board of Education, eventually leading to the recall of three of its members: President Gabriela López, Vice President Alison Collins and Commissioner Faauuga Moliga. López, who is Latina, Collins, who is Black, and Moliga, the only Pacific Islander ever elected to public office in San Francisco, had been consistent advocates for the students of color who comprise more than 80% of the public school population.

San Francisco joined the pile on. In December 2020, the Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution, co-authored by the San Francisco Parent Coalition (formerly known as “Decreasing the Distance"), demanding that the board agree to in-person instruction. Vaccines for educators, parents, grandparents or those with pre-existing conditions, would not become available for months.

Although the San Francisco Parent Coalition purported to be a grassroots group, it is not. In fact, it has strong ties to the Astroturf Network, especially Neighbors for a Better San Francisco. Neighbors’ founder, longtime Republican mega donor William Oberndorf, is a long-time advocate for “school choice.” Not only does Oberndorf have 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.

The Parent Coalition also received donations from billionaire venture capitalist Michael Moritz through his Crankstart Foundation. Moritz has been a generous donor to conservative Democrat candidates and causes in San Francisco. In addition, the Coalition is the chapter of a national organization, the National Parents Union, which is funded by the Walton Family Foundation, long-time proponents of school vouchers.

Maurice T. Cunningham, author of Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization, writes that “privatizers like the Waltons and their partners are using the Covid crisis as an opportunity to attack and undermine public education. For obvious reasons they can’t become the public face of that activity, so they underwrite. . . NPU (National Parents Union) to masquerade as parent representatives.”

At the time of the Board of Supervisors’ vote, the city lacked a feasible plan for keeping students and educators safe. Not only was a vaccine unavailable, the district lacked the necessary equipment to properly ventilate classrooms. In response to the supervisors’ vote, Kim Tavaglione, executive director of the San Francisco Labor Council, issued a scathing rebuke: “I think it is despicable that any politician is criticizing educators and faculty of school districts for the schools not opening. They sit in their ivory towers being safe while criticizing others for caring about their safety. It’s unfair and not true. All workers should have the absolute right to bargain their own safety,”

Two months later, City Attorney Dennis Herrera, at the behest of Mayor Breed, brought a lawsuit against the San Francisco School Board, the School District, and then-Superintendent Vincent Matthews for failing to reopen. The lawsuit quoted Emily Oster, an economist without a medical background. Oster furthered the false claim that schools were not a significant source of COVID-19 spread. Notably, her “research” is funded by leading right-wing groups and individuals including those with strong ties to the charter-school movement.

López, Collins, and Moliga were recalled in February 2022, victims of a campaign that not only tarred them as incompetent, but also claims that they were under the thrall of San Francisco’s teachers’ union. A pro-recall political action committee, Concerned Parents Supporting the Recall of Collins, López and Moliga, raised more than $1 million. Donors included Oberndorf’s Neighbors for a Better San Francisco, which spent $458,800 in donations, making it the largest single contributor.

A newly constituted Board of Education acted quickly to appease conservatives. It relinquished its traditional oversight over school district operations, adopting the Student-Outcomes Focused Governance model. The model has been used as another weapon for school privatization. According to Moira Kaleida, national director of Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools,  “The ultimate goal of the Student Outcomes Focused Governance (SOFG) model is to dismantle public education through realignment and transformation (school closures and privatization).” The model is a program of the Council of the Great City Schools, which is funded by the pro-charter school foundation the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The mayhem and budget mismanagement that ensued has been used to forward a narrative that schools needed to close.

School closures would devastate communities where they provide critical support to struggling students and their families. “In a lot of these neighborhoods, schools are the last institutions standing. Grocery stores, parks, churches may be gone, and schools become the community’s backbone,” said Noli Brazil, a professor at the University of California at Davis. Real estate developers are notorious for policies that push Black families out of neighborhoods, easing the path toward gentrification. School closures, which disproportionately target Black and Brown schools, are a vehicle for this pushout. The people buying the luxury housing the developers are building are much more likely to be able to afford private schools than the working class families they are displacing.

School closures also reduce the quality of the education for those that remain. Classroom sizes balloon, leading to poorer academic outcomes and long-term harm. According to Education Week, “Students who attend a school that closes during their K-12 career have lower test scores along with worse attendance and behavior in the short term. In the long term, they’re less likely than their peers to complete college and have a job, and their earnings tend to be lower.”

Moreover, school closures rarely fail to save significant money. A 2011 report by the Pew Charitable Trusts examined school closures in Chicago, Detroit, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C. finding that “no district has reaped anything like a windfall.”  According to the Advancement Project, “School closures often lead to further decreased enrollment when neighborhoods are left only with charter options, which only further exacerbates any budget shortfalls.”  

After a pause, Superintendent Maria Su is again  beating the drum for a renewed discussion of school closures, regardless that they save little money. San Francisco’s neighborhoods should not have to endure the blight and chaos caused by school building closures. And every child in San Francisco deserves a world-class school in their neighborhood.