Board Watch

On October 14, Parents for Public Schools of San Francisco hosted a Board of Education Candidate Forum alongside Dr. Pedro Noguera, Emery Stoops and Joyce Stoops, Dean of University of Southern California, Rossier School of Education. Parents for Public Schools of San Francisco hosted the event in the historic Womens Building in the Mission District. Parents for Public Schools of San Francisco is nonprofit organization. We are non-partisan in the election and are prohibited from endorsing any candidate. This article aims to provide information to the public about a prior event that was held.  

In attendance were the following candidates; Karen Fleshman, Alida Fisher, and Gabriela Lopez. Lainie Motamedi, Lisa Weissman-Ward, and Ann Hsu declined to attend due to scheduling conflicts and upon invitation, Parents for Public Schools of San Francisco did not receive a statement of their candidacy for the forum audience. The event was interviewed by Dr. Pedro Noguera and moderated by Executive Director of PPS-SF, Vanessa Marrero.  

We hoped to share with you the insights of all the candidates. However, only three of the six candidates attended. Overall, community members who were present felt their concerns and needs were addressed by the candidate forum.    

While the event was hosted in-person, there was also a live stream available to the public on YouTube. The 90-minute event included notable questions from the public that centered on how these candidates would implement meaningful and impactful change towards communities of color in the public education system.  

 There were many questions that focused on how candidates felt regarding black and brown students' educational fairness in the district and whether they felt that the racial biases held true. Fleshman said, “We have to go against that narrative and bring the community together to heal that divide and whether I win this election or not I will be working on that.” 

One of the panel questions centered on African American and Latinx students being disproportionately in school discipline data and consistently underperforming according to academic data.  

“When we are talking about discipline it is disproportionate and we do know that. As someone who sits at the board level, we need to identify why that is, we need to be very clear on what that is rooted in and how to support teachers in finding other ways to respond to helping their students.” said Lopez.  

Another topic that was presented to candidates were the performance of disabled students. Similarly, to African American and Latinx students, they are one of the lowest performing student groups according to academic data.   

Fisher added this, “Every student that has an IEP is first and foremost a general education student, every student who has an IEP belongs in every school study. Yet, what we find in our schools is a sense of lack of belonging, not only our students but our teachers, our special day class teachers, our service providers. Our general education and our special education teachers are asking for more support and much more training”.  

With the election here, it will be interesting to see who the community chooses who will take the lead in championing the voices of the diversity of students and parents across SFUSD.