Overview:
San Francisco school board candidates met for the first public forum of this election cycle. They agreed that ethnic studies is here to stay.
San Francisco’s school board president, Phil Kim, said he’s received several calls this year to reduce, or remove entirely, the requirement that high schoolers take one year of ethnic studies, which has been targeted in recent years by those who say its lessons are divisive.
The course is a history class that particularly focuses on the experiences of marginalized racial and ethnic groups in the United States, and is a graduation requirement. The school district considered suspending the class last year, before opting to keep it but switch to an alternative curriculum. Since then, ethnic studies has been the basis of a lawsuit against the district by the Lowell High School alumni.
But Kim said he’s proud of ethnic studies, and every one of the eight candidates in the school board race echoed his sentiments at a Friday evening election forum, the first public forum of the cycle.
“I’m deeply proud to be a district that has paved way for this course in the country and in this state,” Kim said. All the candidates indicated that ethnic studies is here to stay and said they would keep it as a two-semester requirement.
Laurance Lee, a candidate and organizer in the 2022 school board recalls, took ethnic studies when he was a San Francisco Unified School District student. Reina Tello, a community organizer and one of the teachers union picks, said she fell in love with education again while taking the class at City College of San Francisco.
The two moderators, both from Chinese for Affirmative Action, the nonprofit hosting the forum, also mentioned that some people want to ban discussion of Palestine when asking whether the candidates would protect ethnic studies.
Autumn Brown Garibay, who works for the tech firm Sprouts Social and is endorsed by GrowSF, was the only candidate who acknowledged that part of the question — she thanked the moderators for “mentioning how to protect folks who are Palestinian.”
“I’m a huge fan of our ethnic studies courses,” added Alida Fisher, an incumbent school board member. She called San Francisco a “hotbed” for the course, which was founded here in the 1960s. “I will fight to keep that year-long requirement because I think that our students learn so much and become much better prepared citizens to live in our very diverse city of San Francisco.”
The eight candidates came together at Gordon J. Lau Elementary School for a forum hosted by Chinese for Affirmative Action, a local civil rights group. It was an amicable first encounter — many of the candidates nodded along to each other’s answers.
The eight in attendance were:
- Autumn Brown Garibay, who works in client relationships at Sprouts Social, Inc. and public school parent;
- Virginia Cheung, who works at the law nonprofit Open Door Legal and is a public school parent who ran unsuccessfully in June despite some $109,000 from the teachers union;
- Alida Fisher, an incumbent school board member, executive director at the Community Alliance for Special Education, and public school parent;
- Ryan Hazelton, the executive director of Mariposa Kids, a nonprofit for young kids;
- Phil Kim, the incumbent school board president and a deputy director at the San Francisco Agency for Human Rights, who was appointed to the body in 2024 and won his first election in June with the help of $239,000 from GrowSF and the San Francisco Parents Coalition;
- Laurance Lee, one of the organizers in the 2022 recall of three school board members, who has run unsuccessfully for the board in the past;
- Reina Tello, a grassroots organizer at PODER, whose main focus is environmental and economic justice, and a public school parent;
- Tim Tung, a public finance and research analyst, public school parent, and the brother of Assistant District Attorney Nancy Tung, the chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party.
Questions ran the gamut from staffing to bilingual education.
Would candidates support dipping into the school district’s reserves? The district has $139 million in official reserves, plus several hundred million more in leftover funds from underspending that the district says should only be used for one-time expenses.
Reserves were a hot topic in this year’s four-day teacher strike. Superintendent Maria Su said at the time that using reserves or one-time funds to meet the union’s pay demands was “not an option.” Reserves are usually intended to pay for unexpected gaps in budgets or the future.
Some said they would put money toward various programs, including supporting teachers and English learners. Cheung said she did not understand why the district had several hundred million in leftover funds “when we have classrooms that don’t have teachers, especially in the most formative years of transitional kindergarten and kindergarten.”
But others wouldn’t dip into the reserves. Kim said that SFUSD’s previous financial challenges stemmed from using reserves to pay for annual expenses. Kim pointed to spending one-time funds on developing school district land as a later source of funding.
While “the district has substantial dollar amounts in reserves,” Tung said, “it’s also important that the district maintains savings, a healthy balance to guard against a down period when it doesn’t have as much revenue.”
Hazelton was the first to mention reserves: He brought the topic up when asked whether candidates would protect language classes. Hazelton said the district should invest in these programs using reserves.
The question stemmed from an audience member: A parent said their child was still on the waitlist for all the Chinese immersion schools they had applied to. The family is now looking outside of SFUSD, which faces a chronic problem of parents choosing private school: The district has some 14,000 empty seats and is losing state funding.
Many candidates recognized the high demand for language classes, but Fisher said too few teachers means waitlists are long.
Tello said she’d like to see an expansion of language classes for all grade levels, so that students can continue learning the same language throughout their time at SFUSD. Garibay also pointed to the California Department of Education’s goal of having 40 percent of students in bilingual programs. But she said SFUSD can’t expand its language offerings because it doesn’t have enough interested teachers.
The forum ended with a lightning round, where each candidate could answer yes or no using paddles. Some were unanimous: All candidates said they supported cell phone restrictions and the two-semester ethnic studies requirement, both eliciting cheers. Some were more divided, with Garibay, Fisher, Kim and Tung saying they supported school closures and Cheung, Hazelton, Lee and Tello saying they did not.
But one question silenced the room: “Do you think SFUSD is currently providing high-quality education to all of its students across the district?”
Every candidate answered no.
