Since July, Sasha Gaona, chief of staff for District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder, has been working with parents, staff and city leadership on how to manage the chaos outside Marshall Elementary.
Parents and staff said they love Marshall’s programs, diversity, community and overall ethos: It is a K-5 English-Spanish immersion school that welcomes many newcomer immigrant students.
But the school, located a block from the 16th Street BART Plaza, has been dealt a tough hand, geographically. Six school staffers and six parents told Mission Local about their routine sights: Drug use, drug dealing, public intoxication, public urination, public defecation, littering, sex and nudity. All are in the school’s immediate environs.
“My daughter covers her mouth and nose,” said Karen Puc, the mother of a seven-year-old student, in Spanish. “Sometimes we play that we jump poop on the street,” she said. They make it a game, like hopscotch.
Students have come to laugh at how much feces they have to avoid on their way to class, concurred a teacher.
“Sometimes people are blocking the sidewalk and won’t move,” said Edelmira Velasquez, the mother of a five-year-old girl. “They’re peeing as we walk, and they don’t seem to care. It’s a little uncomfortable.”
But Marshall Elementary is not the only children’s site close to the 16th Street plazas. Mission Neighborhood Center runs an early education program at 1954 Mission St. The sidewalks outside the building were once similarly chaotic, but have become considerably calmer in recent months.
With that in mind, Gaona has requested more police foot patrols around the school — the Mission police station, at 17th and Valencia, is both a few blocks, and light-years, away — and community policing.
So far, Marshall parents have managed to get a police officer from Mission Station assigned to be on site most days during drop-off and pick-up hours.
According to a statement provided by the Department of Emergency Management, the city recently expanded community ambassador presence in the Mission.
The ambassadors provide safe passage escorts, positive engagements, basic interventions, de-escalation, drug activity deterrence, litter cleanup, wellness checks, and overdose reversals.
While none of those ambassadors appeared to be specifically assigned to Marshall, the department wrote that they are able to move around or stay fixed in one place, prioritizing “flexibility of resource type and location.”
There are at least 12 ambassadors and two supervisors on the streets of the Mission, the department continued, working schedules that “may change at the city’s discretion, based on shifting operational needs and street conditions.”
Still, everyone acknowledged that there’s work to do.
“There are mental health issues, there’s defecation, there’s drug usage everywhere. We have had people having sex here underneath the third grade classrooms,” said a school staffer, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.
“I’ve worked at different schools, and this is the first experience that I’ve had so close to drugs, or people doing drugs within school grounds.”
Over the last three years, 1,946 requests were filed using the city’s 311 report system for the streets bordering the school, according to city data. That’s roughly two per day.
Another female staffer at Marshall, who also asked to remain anonymous, said she’s been followed on her way to and from the school.
“I cried the whole first week I worked here, because I felt unsafe and I just didn’t know where to walk,” she said. She thought about leaving, but decided against it because she doesn’t want to leave the kids halfway through the school year.
“Maybe it’s a bit better from the time I arrived,“ said a teacher, who also asked to remain anonymous.
“But I still can’t say that I’m in a clean, peaceful environment with the right conditions to develop my work, and for the children, who are the most important, to be safe and ready to learn,” they said.
The teacher said that, on occasion, smoke has come through the windows facing 15th Street. It is not tobacco smoke, the teacher said, and staff struggle to answer questions from children about what it is.
“What can I tell these poor kids?” the teacher continued. “I tell them these are substances people consume that are bad for their health. They tell me, ‘Teacher, the smell bothers us.’”
The fact that nearly 90 percent of Marshall’s student population is Hispanic, and about 86 percent of them fall under socio-economical disadvantage, make the conditions around the school seem particularly unfair.
“It is completely unacceptable, the conditions that they have been operating in. We live in one of the wealthiest cities in the world, and our children can’t have access to good public safety,” said Gaona. “We legally can’t control city departments, but the power we do have is elevating our constituents’ concerns. I’m always happy to do that.”
On Jan. 26, Fielder sent an email to Mayor Daniel Lurie and multiple city heads in an attempt to effect change.
Steven Betz, the mayor’s assistant chief of public safety, replied, offering to be the point person problems around the school. Betz told Fielder that he was talking to other city departments to create a plan for Marshall Elementary.
Since Betz became involved, parents and teachers have noticed a few changes.
Betz held at least one meeting with school staff and the Marshall PTA, which has raised hopes that change is underway. Public Works reports that, over the last month, the agency started cleaning the area around the school before children arrive in the morning, instead of afterward.
The department has also been steam-cleaning the sidewalks around the school proactively instead of waiting for 311 requests.
And, while the adults get to work, children at Marshall Elementary have their own plans. On a recent visit to the school, the windows of one of the classrooms were covered with construction paper cutouts made for a recent class about Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech.
When asked about their own dreams, a few were predictable, like, “I want to go to Disneyland.”
A surprising number, however, reflected concerns about the streets around the school.
“For people not to throw garbage on the street,” read another. “For no more unhoused people and garbage on Mission Street,” read one. “For people to have a place to live.”
“ Parents and staff said they love Marshall’s programs, diversity…”
“…nearly 90 percent of Marshall’s student population is Hispanic, and about 86 percent of them fall under socio-economical disadvantage…”
Very confused about how people are defining diversity here.
It’s funny I agree, perhaps 90%Hispanic and 86% socio-economical meaning 86% undocumented? Either way wild statistics also perhaps undocumented men on dirt bikes were arrested for selling fentynal instead of being protected by laws the homeless wouldn’t stick around, its obvious the homeless are not sober and there’s only one source,
Yes Curious, and I thought that the SFUSD student allocation system was supposed to bus some of those Hispanic kids to schools in good areas. And bus White and Asian kids into the Mission.
That would be real diversity. So why isn’t it happening?
Yes but much less than the other large groups, white, black, and Asian. Languages, cuisines, architecture, fashion…..
There is an incredible amount of diversity within the latinx community.
“diversity within the latinx community”
There is no “latinx” community, it’s a LATINO or HISPANIC community
Parents at Marshall, video your walk to school and post it on you tube daily. Send the videos to Fox News and other conservative outlets until one of them latches on and starts to broadcast. This will embarrass city leaders enough to maybe do something.
See: instagram.com/missioncarnival
Supervisor Fielder, this lands squarely among your responsibilities. That this problem persists indicates to many of us, the abject failure of your political convictions. Having ambassadors guide children through unsettling, unsanitary, and criminal behavior doesn’t get it done. You need to address the issue and that is the people that are making safe passage difficult for children in that neighborhood. Police it, as much as I know that goes against your views. Police it, this is illegal activity, warn and take these people off to jail, or require them to be sheltered! Clean it up, clean it up for good, send a message. This is unacceptable in the very least. Our children deserve 100% more. They deserve to be able to walk to school in a safe neighborhood unobstructed without having to see any of the street traffic going on. Choose children over chaos. Put your politics aside and govern like a responsible supervisor. Choose Children over chaos! It’s humane, the right thing to do!And please call me if you have any questions about this, I would be happy to meet with you.
“You need to address the issue and that is the people that are making safe passage difficult for children in that neighborhood. Police it, as much as I know that goes against your views. Police it, this is illegal activity, warn and take these people off to jail, or require them to be sheltered!”
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Here’s why the system is impotent. First, there are not enough cells nor enough cops to literally “take these people off to jail.” Besides, there are just more and more. Today’s street people are not the same street people of five years ago. Those street people are dead.
Second, you cannot “require” them to be sheltered. You can’t require anything at all, in fact. The only reason society can require something from you, is that you have something to lose. You can suffer consequences. You can lose your job, your income, your family. That’s why you don’t do “bad things.” But what if you had already lost your job, your income, and your family? What could be “required” of you ? Nothing.
We need to harass and haze addicts so that they do not do fentanyl around the elementary school, BART station, Muni stop, local biz and residents’ homes.
Progressives have tried nothing and are all out of ideas. I cannot see how any progressive candidate will ever carry the North Mission ever again. I certainly cannot make the case to convince them after this.
Are you trying to get people hurt or killed?
Amen. Thank you, Robert. Also, even if policing were a solution, supervisors are legislators: they’re like the city council in most cities. They have no executive powers. No ability to direct SFPD. So it’s literally not among Supervisor Fielder’s responsibilities.
Of course it is Fielder’s responsibility. This is her district.
You don’t see conditions like that in other districts.
Scottf, you think you’re helping but you’re just recapitulating the party line instead of engaging in novel thinking, excusifying nonresponsive politics in a working class and poor neighborhood.
The reason why 16th/Mission is now fentanyl central is because SFPD per Dorsey has shepherded fentanyl addicts from the TL, Mid Market and SOMA to the North Mission and contained them here, from the districts of supervisors who play ball with the Mayor to the districts of supervisors that do not play ball with the mayor politically.
We are in a position where progressives like Fielder are impossibly wedged, forced to pick between alienating their constituents by doing nothing and taking the addicts or to do what their opponents do and call for a crackdown. This is called being in over your head and refusing to ask for help, refusing to engage with constituents.
To their limited minds, there are no other options but the binary. It appears that you are a prisoner of the same limited tribal thinking.
I cannot see how, under these circumstances, a progressive will ever carry the North Mission in an election. So we get the Bernal crowd living the high life, running the district’s politics, while containing public squalor far from their gentrified aeries.
This is why progressives are on the brink of extinction politically while their nonprofits are facing the budget axe, further weakening the operation. The bright side is that a weakened nonprofit cartel offers an opening to residents to build a new progressive politics.
I do actually see conditions like that and worse in district 6, Mid-Market and Central/Western SoMa, which happens to be represented by the most pro-police supervisor.
scottf: The TL and Mid Market had ALWAYS been like this. SOME of these addicts were displaced to the North Mission where the progressives go full blown intersectional and blame everyone who has it better than an addict as being rich or privileged.
I’ve lived in the North Mission for 37 years. We’ve had our ups and downs for sure. But we’ve never been the Tenderloin South.
Don’t know about you but I’d worked on several successful progressive campaigns, measure, candidate and policy and served on more than a handful of appointed bodies, all of which involved putting my own feelings aside in pursuit of majorities in sync with my values.
When people who have not done any of that do nothing but parrot the nonprofit party line, a politics that has been rejected by the voters, then repeating the rancid snake oil does more harm than good.
I’m convinced that politics for so many is an exercise in psychotherapy, a form of primal scream, centering on them saying what they like and don’t like and calling it a day.
You tribal raging is not helping. You blocked me on twitter. You can’t block me here. You can’t block voters either. It is time for you all to put an end to the progressive play date and get comfortable outside of your comfort zone, where the voters are.
Daniel Lurie has extended an open door policy to the supes. We’ve implored Fielder to facilitate a working group with the mayor and the community to devise a plan to defend the school and our community.
Fielder has that access, we do not, yet she refuses to exercise her power in this instance.
Meanwhile, Fielder floated a subpoena to enforce an extortion racket that benefitted Roberto Hernandez, that’s a very heavy lift, but it is crickets for us.
This kind of corrupt abuse of the constituencies Fielder ran to represent, Latino families, immigrants and homeless families, is why it is highly unlikely that a progressive will ever carry the North Mission moving forward.
Choose Children over chaos!
Why don’t officials try dealing with the junkies like they would be dealt with if they tried this outside Grace Cathedral, SI, or Lowell? The problem would be solved in 1 day.
Because the people in those neighborhoods would raise hell. They wouldn’t put up with it for a minute. Why do we?
How many emails have we sent collectively to Jackie fielders office….? Not a peep in response. We go to the mission police department monthly meetings… and the ask us “know anyone who wants to apply?” The building immediately adjacent to Marshall elementary was razed in order to put up supportive housing for formerly homeless people. Oh, remember the cabins? Was supposed to help with getting the homeless off the surrounding streets. The fact is… local officials just don’t care… if there’s a buck to be made off the backs of homeless drug addicts … they will do it. Another sad fact that the affordable housing that is supposed to go up in the Walgreens space isn’t even funded yet. All the while people celebrate D9 supervisor for decrying the loss of a cat on 16th street. Ridiculous. If she were truly concerned about doing something for Latino folks in the neighborhood— she should work with the police department to clear the streets of drug users and prostitutes in the area- however it appears she is more concerned with virtue signaling with an unworkable progressive agenda.
DPW front liners refuse to pick up crap,
I work out here every day with my dog, Skippy.
Around 5 years now and you get to know lots of the City’s crews and their various type of trash containers and the policies real or de facto about poop.
Facts
The one-man (I’ve never seen a woman doing this) patrols tell me that they call in piles of crap and aren’t required to pick the stuff up themselves.
“It smells up your can.”
One told me that yesterday.
Let me suggest that DPW start providing their street workers with kitty litter to at least mark and absorb the stuff even if they are not going to pick it up.
Give em litter.
go Niners !!
h.
Such a shame they didn’t build the Monster in the Mission — there could have been hundreds of housing units (70% market, 30% subsidized) with ground floor retail activating the Bart plaza. Instead we get a decade (and counting) of derelict buildings which led us to the street conditions we see today
Amen! Missed a golden opportunity!
It wouldn’t have been built by now anyway. The same developer was involved with Parkmerced where thousands of units have been approved for over a decade with no groundbreaking. The first phase of the Maravilla is under construction now along the north side of 16th Street between Mission and Capp. It will be activated with new residents sooner because we defeated the Monster and won the Maravilla.
I don’t know the developed but the location of 16th and Mission is far more desirable than Parkmerced for market rate housing – and therefore construction financing.
You defeated the building and you are now to blame for the street conditions that now exist around the BART plaza.
We fought for affordable housing for families during the Plaza 16 Coalition but the nonprofits baited and switched on the community for drug and psych treatment between the fentanyl mercado and Marshall.
I’d rather see low income families housed there than luxe condos myself.
The real question is would you rather see market rate housing or drug addict housing. Construction of “affordable” housing is a dream that is not real except in the very very rare circumstance.
Affordable housing for homeless families could have been built with the money that is being used to build the drug treatment center.
Residents of the four affordable housing buildings have expressed their disgust at street conditions and are potentially good allies for existing residents.
There are hundreds of long-approved market-rate units in the Mission not getting financing either, including within a few blocks of here. For example, 221 units at the corner of 16th & Florida between two adjacent developments, 2435 16th St (approved 2018) and 321 Florida (approved 2021).
Backing up, even if the Monster HAD been built, the theory that it would fix street conditions is questionable. Ask market-rate tenants in the fortress at 15th & Mission how well that’s working out. The mere presence of wealthy people nearby isn’t a magic solution to public health problems generated by poverty and displacement.
So Mission Local FINALLY gets around to covering this after 18 months of community agitating.
Mission Local failed to cover the community’s appeal of the subdivision, instead repeating the nonprofit line.
We need less “journalistic” covering for a weak politician with no clue as to how to represent actual human beings in the district, while going to the mat to perfect an extortion operation by doing the heavy lift of floating a subpoena, buying City Attorney David Chiu into a criminal conspiracy to violate the Hobbs Act.
Why can’t Fielder treat the Marshall community like she treated Roberto Hernandez the beneficiary of D9 supe extortion? How can we get Fielder to turn the extortion operation to exact honest government and city services for our community?
And why is Mission Local blinded in this regard? This is not serving our community anything but shit. Time for ML to exercise some journalistic independence here.
The conditions are intentional. The city fosters uses 16th and Mission as a dumping ground, especially now that the mayor has kicked the addicts out of Union Square. Emily Cohen of Homeless Services, Hillary Ronen, and now Jackie Fielder shut down any complaints by shaming anyone who objects to open drug use or feces on the street. They opened a halfway house for “transitional youth,” installed the “tiny homes,” and approved permits for 300-plus units of low income housing. The Gubbio Project is a blight on the neighborhood. The “harm reduction” people hand out needles and pipes in broad daylight – no counseling needed. The city is looking for a place to accept another sobering center, so don’t expect conditions to improve any time soon. The area always was sketchy, but fentanyl brought a whole new set of problems.
Years ago, I had an interview at Marshall elementary school, and just after I stepped off the 14th Mission 2 Trans people, were fighting,and one hit the other over the head with a 40 ounce,it splash all over me.No time, to go home and change,so I explained what happened,and the principals said:”Welcome to the Mission” As I was leaving the school, I noticed on Capp st. a man was cooking his dope and was about to shoot up. I went back into the school, and told the principal, that he should hold recess,and then call the police to deal with the matter.
Did you get the job?
Nope! Even though Marshall was close to my home, I could walk to work, and I was friends with the principal, I was placed in a new hell-Viz Valley Middle School.
I will never understand why it’s considered progressive to let drug addicts prevent Hispanic elementary school children from learning. It’s obviously morally correct to aggressively enforce drug, littering, and loitering laws near schools in the same way that we aggressively enforce traffic laws near them. We shouldn’t be talking about “street ambassadors” for these offenders, this is serious enough to warrant immediate arrest. If someone wants to kill themselves with drugs they should not be allowed to do it near a school.
The last person, that tried to address a man selling drugs outside the main library was shoot with a shot gun and killed,and this was only 6 months ago.
“I will never understand why it’s considered progressive to let drug addicts prevent Hispanic elementary school children from learning.”
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Because the only ways to fix that are so horrible that nobody dares contemplate them.
I don’t think that’s true. Fixing homelessness or drug addiction in general is extremely difficult without doing morally dubious things.
Stopping people from engaging in extreme antisocial behavior within a few blocks of a school is much more limited and is just a matter of enforcing existing laws in those areas. There’s a reason that this is tolerated near the school poor brown kids go to and not others.
The real question is why indigenous Latina supervisor Fielder who ran on her ethnicities is refusing to engage with the community to end this and her political base are demeaning those who demand she act as rich and privileged.
Jackie is ineffective and incompetent. When you call to defund the police, right or wrong, when you get elected, they aren’t going to work for you. You don’t see conditions like this in Jackie’s home town of Long Beach
Love fielder….she’s done such an amazing job for the mission. Always present, see here everywhere. And comes for a long line of outstanding d9 sups…ronen, campos. Make SF great again 😍
Interesting, I never see her at either 16th and Mission or the other hot mess-24th and Mission.
Fielder does not have the self confidence to engage with people who disagree with her, even slightly. Fielder reads the slightest deviation from the prog party line as fascism.
Contrast this to Mamdani who asked Trump voters for their feelings on these matters at the outset of his campaign. Fielder would rather swim in a river of snot than operate outside of her narrow comfort zone.
And our community is paying the price for her shortcomings as an elected official, a progressive elected official.
Oh my, how far have we come. Choosing street chaos, criminal activity, drunkenness, fighting, feces over a young children, attempting to go to to and from school. Shameful! I would never allow my children or grandchildren to traverse those kind of circumstances on their way to school. Never. I have no way of understanding how this can be tolerated in any civilization.
Hold on with the sarcasm – she did send an email.
Done what for D9? Literally… tell me. Shes only passed one piece of watered down legislation thus far.
^ a reminder that this is sarcasm.
Fielder has been 100% absent, and embraces street conditions.
Her strengths been on rogue cats and public banks.
CLEAN UP THE MISSION ALREADY
The 16th/Mission corridor is the most disgusting part of SF! I love it!
Scott Wiener is saying “genocide” now, what is the problem exactly? /s
That he’s cheaply pandering to the brainwashed gaza-kaffia-clueless crowd.