Public Schools

The dreaded school letters

0

By Tim Redmond

The letters go out today assigning kids to SF public schools, and often there is wailing and gnashing of teeth when parents don’t get their very first choice. I agree, the system isn’t perfect, but my advice, as someone who went through it and though he’d been utterly screwed, is: relax. There are a lot of good schools in SF; you don’t have to be in Rooftop or Clarendon.

We visited all the supposedly top schools, applied for seven of them, and got none of our choices. Then on the second round, we discovered McKinley — and we couldn’t be happier.

So don’t freak if you don’t get Clarendon. I complain about the administration all the time (well, not so much now that Arlene Ackerman is gone), but the truth is, the district has come a long way, is improving, and there are lots of great places to send your kid.

So don’t panic.

A scary school poll

0

By Tim Redmond

Kim Knox at leftinsf has posted the minutes of the Community Advisory Committee looking for a new SF school superintendent. Mostly pretty predictable stuff — except for a poll commissioned by a business group that has some really scary results:

To the question, is SF Unified School District going in the right direction or the wrong track:
Right Direction-22%
Wrong Track-54%

To the question, how would you rate the quality of the education provided by SFUSD:
Good to Excellent-28%
Not So Good to Poor-54%

To the question, how well do you think SFUSD manage its funds:
Excellent 20%
Not So Good to Poor 53%

One leftinsf commenter, Nakayama, concluded:

What ignorance. Anybody keeping a close eye on our public schools in SF –whether parent, student or administrator–can readily see that the schools are much better now than they were five or 10 years ago.

Why the misconception?

Because very few San Franciscans have children, and they have no idea what is happening in our schools.

I agree with the first part — I have a kid in the public schools, I’m really happy about his school (McKinley) and I think the public schools have improved dramatically in the past few years. But I don’t think the misconception is entirely due to the fact that most people in SF don’t have kids.

Let’s remember: Of the two superintendents who have been in charge since the 1990s, one ran an administration riddled with corruption; the other, while a talented educator, was arrogant, vindictive and disdainful of the community. That sort of thing doesn’t help with the perception of the district.

The second problem is that the district has spent a lot of money on a public-relations office whose chief job in the past has been to protect and promote the superintendent — so not a lot of effort has gone into promoting the schools in general. That’s changing now, under Acting Superintendent Gwen Chan, who seems to be doing a great job so far — and with a little effort, SFUSD could (and should) organize a major advertising and public-relations campaign to promote the quality and importance of public education in the city. That would help a lot.

Because those numbers really suck. And we all have to work to change them.

More than clean

0

› amanda@sfbg.com

Cleaner streets, crack-free sidewalks, an urban landscape unmarred by graffiti and made greener by leafy trees: that was the improved "quality of life" espoused by Mayor Gavin Newsom in his State of the City speech Oct. 26, 2006. And he’s put resources into delivering that pretty picture, with increases to the Department of Public Works (DPW) budget and funds allocated for sidewalk revitalization and the citywide Clean Corridors campaign.

But the city’s top-down approach to realizing the mayor’s goals — and the apparent lack of consideration for the implications of those priorities among ordinary people — has created a backlash from affluent District 7 (where Sup. Sean Elsbernd is upset over the fines being doled out to property owners for cracked sidewalks) to the working-class Mission District (where an aggressive new street cleaning regime has been proposed).

"This is something that just dropped out of the blue, and I think it’s unacceptable," Mission resident Peter Turner said at a Jan. 31 public hearing on the proposal to clean many streets in his neighborhood every weekday. "The city has shown a vast amount of disrespect to the Mission."

Others think there are more pressing problems.

"What is quality of life?" asked Vicki Rega, who lives at 21st and Bryant streets and spoke to the Guardian on her way out of the hearing. "Some trash on your street or a dead kid on your sidewalk?"

The signs started appearing a few weeks ago, posted on trees and lamp poles in the Mission. The type is a tiny 10-point font, often difficult to read through the plastic wrap that holds the paper to the pole. Even if you can make out the words, it’s still pretty unclear that they announce a proposal to ramp up mechanical street cleaning — from as little as one day a week to as many as five.

"The signs were very, very confusing," said Eric Noble, a Shotwell Street resident who was further insulted that postings weren’t made in Spanish and Chinese. "That’s really unconscionable in the Mission."

Beyond warning residents of the radical change to their daily lives, the signs invited them to two public hearings to discuss the issue, on Jan. 31 and Feb. 5. The first hearing drew about 150 residents and frustration that the only sign of officialdom present was DPW representative Chris McDaniels, who was sitting alone behind a vast empty desk, taking notes.

"Who is deciding this issue, and why aren’t they here to hear us?" Judith Berkowitz asked.

Attendees expressed anger at the process and annoyance that car-owning residents on dozens of city blocks east of Valencia Street and north of Cesar Chavez Street will face steep fines and be forced to scramble for new parking spots on a daily basis.

At the beginning of the meeting, the reasons for the change were introduced: illegal dumping in the area had doubled in one year, calls to the city’s trash hotline 28-CLEAN had increased 18 percent from 2005 to 2006, and the sweeper truck in the Mission had been collecting huge amounts of trash.

"It’s the sidewalks, not the streets," several speakers said. They pointed out that the trucks are more successful blowing trash around than sucking it up. Many offered numerous suggestions for how to better clean the streets: have more trash cans and volunteers, employ the homeless, coordinate with other city services, educate the merchants, bring back people with brooms and dustpans — but don’t just run trucks through the streets.

One Alabama Street resident said she’s committed to using public transportation to get to her job in Richmond, but like many others at the meeting, she pointed out that if cars need to be moved five days a week for street cleaning, why not move them all the way to work?

"It’s a disincentive for people to use public transit," she said.

And if they don’t get moved, does the city really mind?

"Is it really trash, or is it revenue?" Shotwell Street resident Eric Noble asked, citing the added opportunities for writing parking tickets. "If revenue enhancement is behind this project, you’re going to see it all over the city."

DPW spokesperson Christine Falvey denied money was the motive and said parking fine revenue goes to the Metropolitan Transit Authority, which has recently revealed an $11 million budget shortfall. Falvey also said changes in street cleaning schedules are usually prompted by complaints from residents, but in this case the proposal was sparked by recommendations from city staff who work in the area.

Street cleaning trucks have been in use since 1976 and currently clean about 90 percent of city streets, but according to Falvey, the DPW has never done an analysis of their efficiency and effectiveness. A consultant was recently hired to make that determination.

"Every time some city agency comes up with an improvement, it does more to inconvenience," David Jayne, a Potrero Avenue resident, told us. "I’m really worried this is another one-size-fits-all cure."

But Newsom has made clean streets a top priority for his reelection year.

"How do we dare to dream big — while not forgetting to fill potholes, clean our streets and parks, and address the small problems of urban life that make such a big difference to our quality of life?" Newsom asked in his State of the City speech.

And how do we do it without pissing off the neighbors?

"You’re not going to find anyone who says, ‘Yeah, I think the neighborhood should be dirtier,’ " Florida Street resident Scott Adams told us. "Things should be done to improve the hygiene of the streets."

But he and others who live on these streets and have watched them for years said they were prepared to push brooms and pick up trash if the city were willing to work on other qualities of life such as rising violence, slipping public schools, and the truly ill transportation system.

The DPW’s stated mission is "improving the quality of life in San Francisco." And that’s been a popular pastime of recent mayors. Frank Jordan had One Neat City Week and the Litter Strike Force. Willie Brown promoted his Spring Cleanings and Great Sweeps. Gavin Newsom touts a goal to make this the "cleanest and greenest city in the country."

So his proposed 2006–7 budget for the DPW’s Street Environmental Services hovers around $33 million, an 11 percent boost over last year. That’s more than the 7 percent increase the patrol unit of the San Francisco Police Department received, the 4 percent Muni Services and Operations received, the 1 percent that went to Child Support Services, and almost two times more than the rise for the housing and homeless budget line in the Human Services Agency.

Street Environmental Services is a fancy-pants term for picking up trash, spraying off pee, and painting over graffiti. The mayor’s most recent plan to achieve this is called Clean Corridors and was unveiled in November 2006 with a $1.67 million allocation from Newsom for targeting the filthy faces of 100 specific blocks throughout the city. (Although this project focuses on the same areas in the Mission, the increased street cleaning is a separate proposal.)

The essence of Clean Corridors is to get residents and business owners to feel more responsible for their property, using both education and fines for things such as cracked sidewalks and dirty facades.

The program also pays for 20 neighborhood ambassadors who each patrol designated areas, picking up trash, reporting graffiti and areas needing repair, issuing litter citations, and educating the public. They’re essentially litter cops.

"He wanted specific people responsible for areas," Falvey said of the mayor’s ambassador program. "He wants that person to own their block."

Yet some residents bristle at Newsom placing such a high priority on litter as the murder rate is spiking, Muni is failing, housing is becoming less affordable, and city hall is mired in dysfunction.

"The war in Iraq. The violence in the streets — that’s probably my number one concern. Public schools. Transportation," Noble said when we asked about his quality-of-life concerns.

"Quality of life means being able to meet the basic necessities of your life," Myrna Lim said. The Excelsior resident is so frustrated with the parking situation in her neighborhood she organized a protest Feb. 24 against any new fine increases. "If you’re on a very tight budget, $40 for a ticket is a lot. When people talk about San Francisco being a very expensive city, that’s part of it. It makes day-to-day living very difficult. Over what? Parking?"

Yet the Mission parking proposal has prompted some community organizing. E-mail sign-up lists were passed around the hearing room, and a healthy chat about the issue now exists at a Yahoo! group. Several residents who aren’t currently members of neighborhood organizations told us they’re thinking about joining or starting one.

"I was quite amazed to see all the people," Noble said of the first hearing and the conversation it sparked. "Maybe one thing that will come out of this is more neighborhood discussions."

The DPW has also been chastened and scheduled an evening meeting in March. "We’ve heard overwhelming support that something needs to be done but overwhelming response that it’s not mechanical street cleaning," Falvey said.

"The city should really be a conduit for people to organize themselves," she added. "For any kind of long-term, sustained effort, it’s got to come from the neighbors." *

Kids get Addicted to War

0

› amanda@sfbg.com

It’s a lucid time line of 230 years of American wars and conflicts. It’s a well-researched text, footnoted from sources as varied as international newspapers, Department of Defense documents, and transcripts of speeches from scores of world leaders. It’s been endorsed by such antiwar stalwarts as Susan Sarandon, Noam Chomsky, Helen Caldicott, Cindy Sheehan, and Howard Zinn, who called it "a witty and devastating portrait of US military history."

And it’s a comic book that’s going to be available for 10th-through-12th-grade students in San Francisco’s public schools. Four thousand copies of Addicted to War: Why the U.S. Can’t Kick Militarism, by Joel Andreas, have been purchased and donated to the San Francisco Unified School District using contributions gathered by local peace activist Pat Gerber.

Gerber came across the book at a rally about a year and a half ago and, inspired by the compelling display of such heavy content, presented it to the Board of Education’s Curriculum and Program Committee, where its use as a supplemental text was unanimously approved last fall. The book will be distributed to all high school social studies teachers for review, and those who opt in will be given copies to use as supplemental texts to their already approved curriculum.

Many peaceniks may be familiar with the 77-page comic book that was originally conceived in 1991 to highlight the real story behind the Gulf War. With spare wit and imagery, Andreas plainly outlines how combat is the very expensive fuel that feeds the economic and political fire of the United States.

In outlining this history, Andreas doesn’t gloss over the lesser-known and oft misunderstood conflicts in Haiti, the Philippines, Lebanon, and Grenada. He draws on multiple sources to portray America’s purported need to overthrow foreign governments and establish convenient dictators, including Saddam Hussein, in order to fill the pockets of the most powerful people and corporations in American history. Andreas also includes the blinded eyes of the mainstream media, whose spin and shortcomings keep this business rolling.

The current publisher, Frank Dorrel, came across the book in 1999. "This is the best thing I’ve ever read," the Air Force veteran told the Guardian. "I’ve got a whole library of US foreign policy, but this puts it all together in such an easy format. Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Michael Parenti — they’re all [authors of] great books, but they aren’t easy reads." When Dorrel first discovered the book, he contacted the original publisher to order 100 copies to give to all his friends.

"They didn’t even have 10," he said. "It was out of print."

Dorrel was disappointed with the news and thought an updated text was overdue. With the use of a private investigator, he tracked down Andreas, who happened to live in the Los Angeles area just a few miles from Dorrel.

Andreas agreed it was time for a new edition. Addicted to War now includes Kosovo, Sept. 11, Afghanistan, and the current quagmire in Iraq. Over the years, 300,000 copies have been distributed in English, Spanish, and Japanese. Many of those copies have been distributed to teachers and students through the Books for Schools program, but San Francisco Unified is the first entire district to approve use of the book. Dorrel encourages others to follow suit by deeply discounting the $10 price for school districts to as little as $2.50 a book plus shipping. He seems unconcerned with making a profit and said, "It’s all done to get out the information."

For San Francisco, he discounted the price even further, and the costs were met by donations from local peace activists. No taxpayer or school district funds were involved in the purchase, and Gerber and Dorrel are still accepting donations to defray some costs. (Contributions may be sent to Frank Dorrel, PO Box 3261, Culver City, CA 90231-3261.)

The district teachers’ union, United Educators of San Francisco, expressed unanimous approval of the book, and it sailed through the board’s bureaucracy. But it is not without its critics.

Sean Hannity of Fox News slammed the book for, among other things, illustrations of President George W. Bush wearing a gas mask and a baby holding a machine gun. Hannity invited Sup. Gerardo Sandoval to his Jan. 12 show, introducing him as "the man who doesn’t think we need a military" in a distorted reference to something Sandoval said in a previous appearance.

This time Hannity asked Sandoval, "Do you support this as propaganda in our schools?"

To which Sandoval responded, "It’s not propaganda. But I do support having alternative viewpoints, especially for young people about to become of military age…. I think it provides a balanced approach to history. Some of the actions that the US has taken abroad in our 200-year history have been less than honorable."

To which an aghast Hannity countered, "It encourages high schoolers to kick the war habit. It is so unbalanced and one-sided…. You’re entitled to your left-wing ‘we don’t need a military’ views … but leave our children in school alone."

Strangely, images of the book shown during the Fox segment bear little resemblance to those in the actual text. The news channel flashed to a picture of a thick, hardbound book with a dust jacket of the cover illustration, though as far as Dorrel and Gerber know, it has never been published in hardcover and never with a dust jacket. Gerber thinks the cover image and some internal cartoons were printed from the Web site www.addictedtowar.com and faked into a book that the news channel didn’t have a copy of and had not actually read.

The SFUSD was invited by Fox News to speak on behalf of the book but declined. "We decided we didn’t want to debate in that forum," district spokesperson Gentle Blythe told the Guardian.

Blythe said the district has been contacted mostly by people in support of the work and the only criticism has come from its coverage in the conservative media. She stressed that the use of the book is optional, at the discretion of each teacher, and the Office of Teaching and Learning is researching other texts that offer another perspective but has not settled on anything yet.

"If a teacher agrees with the content, they love the book," Dorrel said. "This is really the history. We’ve been going around in the name of liberty, and it’s not that. It’s a business. It’s really bad when war is your business."

Dorrel said that since he’s been distributing the book, which has all his contact information on the first page, he’s only received a couple of nasty phone calls. "The phone rings every day. Every day there are e-mails, and mostly I just get praise because they’ve never seen anything like this. *

Jealous!

0

by Amanda Witherell

I was in seventh grade when the Gulf War started and I remember watching news coverage of the bombs over Baghdad from the back row of my history class and having no clue what it meant. Welcome to the vast and sometimes disturbing plateau that is American public education.

Which is why I’m jealous of all the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth graders at San Francisco’s public schools who will have Addicted to War as a supplemental text in their history classes.

Pink-paint hate

0

It was a little after 6 o’clock on the morning of Sept. 21 when Naomi Okada arrived to start her day at Lowell High School. The Japanese language teacher is often at work early, and after a short wait a custodian let her into the building. Okada made her way down the quiet, empty halls of the school and up a stairwell to the second floor, where she unlocked the door of the World Language Department office. She dropped her things by her desk, one among more than a dozen belonging to the language teachers who share space in the large office. As she entered the nearby kitchen to brew a pot of coffee, John Raya’s desk, in the corner by the door, caught her attention.
“I noticed there was paint all over his computer,” Okada told the Guardian. “My first impression was that it looked like a bucket of paint was poured over it.” Thick streams of pink liquid dripped from the monitor onto the keyboard and were splattered on the wall behind the desk and the chair in front of it.
She thought this might have been an accident, but since Raya was also an early riser and usually came in about a half hour after her, she decided to go look for him. She walked quickly down the hallway, past Spirit Week posters painted the same shade of pink, to Raya’s classroom. It was still locked. Moments later she ran into him in the hallway, and together they went back to the office.
Okada hadn’t yet passed close enough to the desk to see a note propped on the keyboard. It was Raya who would first read what it said:
“Big mouth fag!!!!! You start too much trouble in this department!!!! Mind your fucking business and go back to New York!!!!! Or Cuba or wherever the fuck you come from!!!!!”
“I was stunned,” Raya told us. “It didn’t hit me in the beginning. It was just bizarre. It didn’t make sense. And then the reality hit.”
Raya thinks the pink paint was chosen because he is gay and the words because he’s been speaking up about problems he sees in the language department in which he has taught French and Spanish for almost 20 years.
Soon the school’s interim principal, Amy Hansen, and assistant principal Peter Van Court would have the room closed off and guarded by security. John Scully, the police officer assigned to the school, would arrive to gather evidence that might identify who committed the hate crime.
And all of that would take just a few hours. The destroyed keyboard and desk chair would be removed and replaced. The paint would be wiped up, leaving spare vestiges of pink in the seams of the computer monitor and on the chalk tray behind it. By lunchtime it would seem as though this had never happened — and most of the school would still be unaware that it had.
Later, Inspector Milanda Moore of the San Francisco Police Department’s hate crimes unit would be assigned to the case, and Raya would ask her why a crime lab was not brought in. “She said that was Mr. Scully’s call,” Raya said.
“We didn’t really have a lot of evidence,” Scully told us. “I guess it’s a computer office classroom,” he said, misidentifying the room. “A lot of people touch computers. It would be hard to get a good fingerprint. I didn’t see the point.” He said rooms that see a lot of use and are heavily trafficked by kids are hard to fingerprint.
This, however, isn’t one of those rooms. It’s an office to which only faculty and administration have keys and access, and students are strictly forbidden from entering without supervision. And when Okada arrived for work early that morning, the door was locked, the lock was functioning fine, and there was no sign of a forced entry.
That’s led Raya and others at Lowell to a truly disturbing conclusion: the hate crime was committed, they suggest, not by a disgruntled student or misguided prankster but by a member of the faculty or an administrator.
If that’s true, then Lowell — the city’s premier public high school, a place that wins awards for its teaching and is lauded for its tolerant attitudes — has a staff member who has resorted to the sort of racist, homophobic act that’s rarely seen in San Francisco workplaces these days. And he or she still hasn’t been caught.
In fact, one of the oddest elements of this entire episode — and the fact that makes it more than a passing story of poor behavior — is the way the school administration has seemed to go out of its way to keep the whole thing under wraps. Students were never formally told what happened. Faculty were discouraged from discussing it. The student paper, the Lowell, was scolded for daring to print a story about it. Other than a student-organized response, there was no attempt to use the incident as a learning experience.
Some school officials are unhappy that the administration kept this so quiet. “I think that’s totally inappropriate,” Sarah Lipson, vice president of the Board of Education, told us. “We’ve tried so hard to be transparent. If you have no idea where this is coming from, you have to err on the side of transparency.”
And when we started to look into the crime, we discovered that it wasn’t an isolated event. The language department at Lowell is such a mess that a specialist in nonviolent communication has been hired to mediate. “It’s a very hot, polarized situation,” said Lynda Smith, a consultant with Bay Area Nonviolent Communication who works with couples and groups and teaches classes at San Quentin. “In my experience, the tension and the lack of trust in this department is one of the more extreme situations that I’ve encountered.”
The situation is raising some deep-seated questions about the way one of the nation’s top public high schools is managed.
Lowell is the kind of academic institution that inspires faith in the public school system. Last May, Newsweek ranked it 26 out of 1,200 top public schools in the country. Each year nearly 3,000 of San Francisco’s intellectually elite eighth graders vie for the 600 open slots, facing academic standards more rigid than those of any other high school in the city. The list of alumni is thick with Rhodes scholars and Nobel Prize winners, Beltway press secretaries and Ivy League college presidents.
The rigorous learning environment means “the students are so academically driven they rarely have time to look up from their books,” said Barbara Blinick, a social studies teacher and faculty sponsor of the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA). She thinks that’s what makes Lowell “one of the safest campuses in the city.”
“We fight over seats in the library,” student Beatriz Datangel said. “Last year someone got in trouble for throwing a cupcake.”
And Lowell has a reputation for being a safe and accepting place for queer students. “They’re not attacked, they’re not beaten up,” Blinick said.
“I have never been in or heard of a high school with as gay-positive an environment as Lowell has,” English teacher Jennifer Moffitt said. “That isn’t to say Lowell is perfect by any means, but it’s unusually open here. We have several openly gay faculty members as well as students.”
“Last year’s prom king and queen were both guys,” English teacher Bryan Ritter added. “And they both fought over the tiara.”
Which is why the hate crime committed against Raya was so shocking.
“I can’t believe that someone would target him,” Ritter said. “He’s such a nice guy. I don’t tolerate homophobia, and I can’t express how appalled I am that it’s happened in my own school.”
Ritter, like a majority of the faculty, first heard about the incident from Hansen the day after it happened.
Hansen told us she said “this was a horrible act, that it was an assault on all of us and we need to keep our ears open and be listening, because if students know and if students were involved, if you listen, kids talk.”
But if the incident was indeed an assault on “all of us,” the students were not included in that community. No public announcement was made to the student body. The monthly “Message from the Principal,” released just three days after the hate crime was discovered, painted a bright, sunny picture of a day in the busy life of Lowell, with Spirit Week in full swing and faculty steeped in annual curriculum development. There was no mention of the incident of hatred directed against a veteran faculty member.
“It seems to me it’s been downplayed from the very beginning,” said David Lipman, a Spanish teacher. “We were told at the beginning not to say anything to the students. So we didn’t say anything.”
“Somehow,” Lipman told us, “I’m just afraid that it’s not in the district’s interest to find out who did it. And it seems like no one will ever hear about it again.”
The school’s award-winning student paper, the Lowell, wasn’t comfortable with that approach. “The students hadn’t heard about it — that’s why we covered it in the paper,” said Ritter, who’s also faculty sponsor for the monthly publication.
Raya was very willing to talk about the crime with reporter Cynthia Chau, who didn’t have a difficult time getting details of what happened or leads as to why from him. Responses from the principal were not as forthcoming.
“She did talk to us, and she answered all of our questions,” said a reporter who assisted Chau with the front-page story. “Except for when it got to Raya’s allegations that were more controversial — when he said she hadn’t done enough to respond to the hate crime, about her showing favoritism, and that he had had a discussion with her about that. She said, ‘No comment, that’s between Mr. Raya and myself.’<\!q>”
After the story hit the hallways, Hansen scheduled a meeting with the journalism classes that publish the paper to discuss their moral obligations as reporters. Though Hansen had issues with a number of their articles, including the one on Raya, the overall impression the classes came away with was that she disapproved of them covering controversy.
“Her recommendation was that we shouldn’t report stories that may have a negative effect,” reporter Jason Siu said. “That doesn’t really work. As journalists, we should report the truth. If it’s happening on the Lowell campus, we should report it.”
John Raya has the quiet presence of the kid who sits in the back of the classroom minding his own business. The only edge in his otherwise soft voice is a Brooklyn accent, which dissolves when he speaks French or Spanish, the two languages he teaches at Lowell. It’s hard to believe he could incite enough animosity to drive someone to commit a hate crime against him.
But at Lowell he’s become the most vocal leader of an expanding group of teachers unhappy about the management of the language department.
Since June, Raya has been writing letters to various administrators and the Board of Education about what he perceives as inequities in the way classes are assigned to teachers and how students are selected for them. He’s been calling for more openness in decision-making processes, for a formal policy on who teaches which classes, and even for the department head, Dorothy Ong, to relinquish her position.
“Everyone in the department was getting copies of these letters,” Lipman said. “There were a lot of them. They were mainly in the weeks preceding the incident. They were about policy, fairness, equity — very professionally done. Your jaw dropped open because they pierced right to the heart. They were like when a senator is calling for the president to step down.”
High schools are often places where petty drama takes the stage as high art, where locker room cliques are nascent coffee klatches and conflict and competition are extracurricular activities. But behind the academic politics are sometimes real issues.
When Amy Hansen left Oakland’s Skyline High School to stand in as interim principal at Lowell for the 2006–<\d>07 school year, Raya was one of the first people to come by her office, a few days before school commenced in August. He wanted to talk about the World Language Department’s “long-standing history of conflict,” she said. “He raised concerns about how the department was run, he felt that he was not being treated fairly, and he raised a number of issues which I took seriously.”
At Lowell the 600 or so incoming students are asked to rank three options from the nine languages the school offers. Like many high schools in the country, Spanish is in high demand, second only to Chinese; more than half of Lowell’s students are Chinese American. Over the years, more sections of these popular classes have been added incrementally, but a concerted effort has also been made to skim off some kids into other, less popular languages, such as Korean, German, and Italian.
Herein lies the rift, which some view as philosophical — but which in practice leaves one person playing God. Every year about 100 unlucky students end up with the second or third language they picked. This balances the class sizes and lets the less-popular languages survive, but critics of the system think it undermines student choice — for the benefit of the adults who teach them. This year three Spanish classes and a French class were replaced with additional sections of German, Korean, and Advanced Placement Chinese in order to bolster the numbers.
According to Raya and his contingent, this was inexplicable, and so much tension existed in the department, they suspected the only reason it was done was to favor teachers who might otherwise be let go if the programs were cut.
“We voted as a department years ago — the languages that don’t support themselves, we’re going to let them die off,” Spanish teacher John Ryland said. Tagalog, Russian, and Greek had all seen the ax.
Part of the problem is that teaching at Lowell is a popular gig no one wants to lose. “There’s always the fear that a diminishing number of students taking certain classes leads to a change in who gets to teach classes and teach at Lowell,” social studies teacher Ken Tray told us.
It’s particularly rough in the language department, where changing preferences can mean the end of a job. “Other departments don’t have competition or concern that there will be enough kids signing up to teach their classes,” Tray said.
Ong, who decides which language classes to save (and who should teach them), denied there was any favoritism. “If you look at the whole picture, what is lost here? Nobody lost their job,” she said. “People can say I favor the lesser languages. I protect all languages as department head.”
Then there’s the AP issue.
Nearly 100 percent of Lowell students graduate, nearly all continue on to college, and the school’s basic requirements are geared toward getting them into at least the University of California system. Unlike many other schools, Lowell doesn’t limit the number of Advanced Placement, or college-level, classes a student can take, and many kids use them to heavily spice their transcripts and entice college admissions counselors.
For teachers, the advanced curriculum of AP classes is a chance to be challenged along with the kids. “Among teachers, there’s no shortage of desire to teach AP,” said Bryan Ritter, who teaches AP English.
And the school is happy to provide as many AP classes as it can. According to San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) policy, for every 20 AP exams that are taken by students, the district will fund one additional AP class. So 100 students testing means additional funding for one new teacher. “At Lowell we make a bundle off of that,” said Terry Abad, president of the Lowell Alumni Association.
The money is deposited in the school’s general fund, but rather than hire additional AP teachers, Lowell’s administrators ask staff members to teach multiple sections of AP classes. By doubling and tripling the number of AP classes one teacher instructs, the school frees up thousands of dollars to pay for other school services.
“From a financial perspective, if teachers weren’t teaching AP, we wouldn’t be able to fund school,” Abad said. “Without AP money Lowell would be a disaster.”
But another disaster is in the works, with overburdened teachers looking to dump classes and underburdened teachers wishing they could have them. “The idea of AP is to give a very intensive college experience and give teachers the time to properly attend to those classes. The whole system has been corrupted,” said David Yuan, an English teacher.
Nowhere in the school is that more obvious than the language department, where one teacher has four Chinese AP classes. “It’s a tremendous amount of work,” Xiaolin Chang said. “I’m hoping next year someone else will teach.”
Hansen said these concerns have not fallen on deaf ears. Two subcommittees have been established for reviewing the numbers to determine classes and another “to create policies and procedures that are written, so that it isn’t ‘I like you, I don’t like you, you’re cute, or whatever, the kids like you better.’ So that there’s some process,” Hansen said.
She refused to allow teachers to review old data to see if favoritism had played into past decisions and defended the language department chair. “I feel that in the limited time that I’ve been here, Ms. Ong deals with a staff of at least 18 or 19, all of whom feel passionate about their language, a complicated scheduling process, and I think she does a herculean task. She has the support of the majority of the faculty, who trust her and believe that she’s doing the best she can.”
Despite the concession to be included in future decision-making processes, Raya continues to wonder why there hasn’t been more of an effort to find out who trashed his computer and to rectify the rumors. “People still think a student did it. I’ve gotten lots of cards and e-mails from people, all supportive, but they keep thinking it’s a student,” Raya said.
But that seems almost impossible to believe, since no students had access to the area and there was no forced entry, “I would be very, very, very surprised if it wasn’t an adult,” Lipman said. “The note said you’re making too many problems for this department — students don’t know that.”
The district hired a private investigating firm, Brubeck and McGarrahan, to look into the situation, and Ellen McGarrahan released the findings of her investigation to SFUSD legal counsel Nov. 20. Her report states that 15 people — all faculty or staff — were interviewed. The investigators were unable to reach any conclusions.
But not everyone who uses the room was questioned. “I’m shocked that they haven’t questioned everyone in the department,” said Lipman, who was not contacted by any investigator. “I’m surprised they didn’t ask everyone what they knew. It seems like that would be the logical thing to do.”
Instead, on Oct. 23, during the middle of the school day, Raya was called downtown by Inspector Milanda Moore for almost three hours of what felt like a full interrogation. “My mistake was I didn’t get a lawyer. I didn’t think I needed one. She duped me. She said it was an interview,” Raya said. He told the inspector he didn’t have a key to the building or any knowledge of the security code to quell the alarm and was at a class at City College the night before and working out at the gym the morning the vandalism was discovered.
“She said, ‘Why don’t you take a polygraph?” I said, ‘I have no problem doing it, but I’ll do it on the condition that every administrator, every faculty member, and every student do it.’<\!q>”
Raya told her, “I’m the victim! Why are you asking me?”
At Raya’s interrogation, one of the letters he wrote to assistant principal Peter Van Court was touted as an example of how Raya was capable of orchestrating his own hate crime. “She [Moore] said to me the language in the hate crime note sounds like the language I used to Van Court in my letter. I said, ‘Excuse me, there’s nothing in that letter that says faggot.’<\!q>”
Inspector Moore refused to comment on this case, except to say it was still open.
Hansen is not a popular principal these days. Since September she’s been “dropping in” on classes for short observations, which she says are a way to get to know the school and encourage a pedagogical dialogue.
In theory, this sounds exactly like what an engaged administrator should be doing — but the practice has had a hard launch as teachers have perceived it as an opportunity for the administration to unfairly critique them at their jobs.
“The principal started off the school year wanting to have this intense conversation about our teaching. Dropping into classes was initially portrayed as a collegial part of an ongoing process of a development exercise,” said Ken Tray, a social studies teacher and United Educators of SF union representative. Instead, the principal’s practice of dropping into classes to casually observe teachers has created a backlash against her style and approach.
“A record number of grievances have already been filed this year,” Tray said. “Last year we had one grievance the entire year, and there were some very serious issues that came up.”
“They’re clearly a lot more than friendly, getting-to-know-you visits,” Yuan said. “There are a lot of people that are unhappy. It’s tense. This is essentially a new policy.”
An unprecedented meeting Nov. 2 drew more than half the faculty to a forum to air their concerns. Their biggest gripes: a lack of trust, a rush to judgment, issues with communication, a sense of top-down management, and a real worry that teachers were being unfairly evaluated, which is a violation of the contractual agreement between the teachers’ union and the district.
“Lowell does not have to be fixed,” Tray said. “It’s creating a faux crisis. What’s the issue here? We have outstanding students doing outstanding work. More punitive measures from the administration seem out of place.”
Some say Hansen may be a good principal who’s just at the wrong school. “I think she’s probably a pretty good turnaround principal,” Yuan said. “Her approach is good for schools with more difficult students.”
“I think everyone is pretty much united,” school board member Eric Mar said. “The principal is autocratic and doesn’t resolve conflict. The principal chosen is the wrong person for the school, and that’s one of the root causes for the conflict.”
November is Transgender Remembrance Month at Lowell. GSA posters commemorating transgender victims of hate crimes hang throughout the hallways, and on a busy afternoon the students rush by them, their arms loaded with books, their ears pressed to cell phones, appearing like the young professionals they hope to someday be.
When asked why the students weren’t informed or brought together as a group to discuss a hate crime on their campus, Hansen said, “We can’t, first of all, have a schoolwide assembly. We have 2,700 kids and we have an auditorium of 900 capacity.”
And she said, “We wouldn’t generally broadcast this kind of information. Whenever a computer’s stolen or something terrible happens, we don’t tend to broadcast it.”
However, the day before the hate crime was discovered, another teacher’s tires were slashed. Hansen went on the school’s broadcasting system, Radio Lowell, to denounce the slashing as an inappropriate way of dealing with anger and asked anyone in the community with information to come forward.
That wouldn’t necessarily be the way to handle a hate crime, but according to other professionals in the field, secrecy isn’t always the best route either.
Al Adams has handled a few hate crimes during his 19 years as a principal, even writing about a 1994 incident at his school, Lick-Wilmerding High, for the National Association of Independent Schools newsletter. He titled his article “When Homophobia Rears Its Head.”
“My rule of thumb with anything like this is to be open and honest and candid about it. That always goes a long way. Make sure the victim feels safe and also search out teachable moments,” Adams said.
“The most effective treatment of a hate crime is to shine the spotlight on it and make the perpetrators accountable,” said Sam Thoron, who recently retired after six years as national president of Parents for Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), an organization he’s been involved with since his daughter came out in 1990.
He said there’s a fine line between shining a light and making too big a deal, but “burying something like this tends to make it worse.
“I would expect the school to make a clear and public statement that this is not acceptable, but it’s awful easy to hide these things.”
Barbara Blinick, faculty sponsor of the GSA, was worried about the lack of candor. “That was a fault. I do think that could have been done better. [Hansen] made a choice not to make it public. But everyone knew about it, everyone was talking about it, and that’s why the GSA wanted to respond.” Blinick spoke with Hansen shortly after the incident and arranged for the GSA to do the outreach.
“The students have been really brave and thoughtful and working so hard,” Blinick said. “We all agree it took too long, and some of the tardiness was that we wanted it to be perfect.”
On Nov. 30, more than two months after Raya discovered his defaced desk, an outreach bulletin written by the GSA was distributed to the students, with a cover letter from Hansen denouncing homophobic discrimination but without specific mention of Raya or the hate crime that happened in the school.
Communities United Against Violence does outreach in the SFUSD through a speaker’s bureau, a program founded by Sup. Tom Ammiano. The group is often contacted by schools after a hate crime occurs, and since 1978 some 70 volunteers have been visiting schools such as Washington, Galileo, Ida B. Wells, and Mission to talk about what it takes to have an open and supportive community, “but we don’t get invited to Lowell,” program director Connie Champagne told us.
“They need to be coming here,” Blinick said. “That’s a really easy way to talk about these issues. They should be hitting every 10th-grade classroom, and I thought that they were.”
The private investigator’s report has been finalized, with no conclusion about who may have targeted Raya. The city’s investigation is ongoing and already reeks of a case gone stale for lack of evidence and witnesses.
Nothing further about it has been said to the faculty, and nearly everyone questioned by the Guardian said they hoped to hear something more soon. Conditions in the department haven’t necessarily improved, and veteran teachers are already looking forward to the end of the year.
“Who did it? That piece needs to get solved for them to move forward,” said the mediator, Lynda Smith, who, after two sessions, was not invited back by the administration.
“I’m so discouraged now,” Raya said. “I’m just at low ebb. I’m really disgusted. I don’t want to leave Lowell. I love Lowell. I’m addicted to Lowell. But the morale is so low I think it’s going to be my time to go. I never thought I would.
“The sad part is it’s not the kids. They’re the ones I will miss the most. It’s sad that this has to prompt me at 50 years old, spending more than half my life in this profession, to decide that this is the time to quit.”

Turning point

0

› news@sfbg.com
It’s amazing what the New York Times can find newsworthy. On a night when progressives in San Francisco racked up an impressive list of victories — and the popular mayor, often described as a rising star in state and national politics, got absolutely walloped — the nation’s newspaper of record led an online report on city politics with this gem: “A bike-riding member of the Board of Supervisors apparently won re-election while his wife was reported to have screamed an epithet at opponents.”
The Times story, by Jesse McKinley, called it “just another night in San Francisco’s iconoclastic politics,” meaning, apparently, that only in this city would a politician ride a bicycle and only here would a politician’s wife use foul language in public.
Please.
For the record: Sarah Low Daly — who watched her husband, Chris, get pummeled mercilessly for weeks by brutal attack ads paid for by, among others, the Golden Gate Restaurant Association — did dismiss “those motherfuckers” with a colorful epithet that no less than the vice president has used on the floor of Congress but that can’t ever appear in the New York Times.
But allow us a little context here.
Daly’s wife had every right to celebrate on election night — and every right to slam the forces that were so unwilling to accept a living wage for local workers, sick pay for employees, requirements that developers pay for affordable housing, and the rest of Supervisor Daly’s progressive agenda, which had made him the subject of a Karl Rove–style smear campaign.
And the Times (as well as the embittered blogger at the San Francisco Sentinel who leveled personal insults at the supervisor’s wife) utterly missed the point of what went on in San Francisco last week.
This was a watershed in city politics, an election that may turn out to have been every bit as important as the 2000 ballot that broke the back of the Brown-Burton machine. It was evidence that district elections work, that downtown money doesn’t always hold the day — and that Mayor Gavin Newsom made a very bad political mistake by aligning himself with some of the most intolerant, unpleasant, and ineffective forces in local politics.
NEWSOM THE LOSER
We ran into Newsom’s press secretary, Peter Ragone, the day after the election and asked him the obvious question: “Not a very good night for the mayor, huh?”
It was a hard point to argue: Newsom put immense political capital into two key races and was embarrassed in both of them. He worked hard for Rob Black, the downtown candidate trying to oust Daly in District 6, showing up at Black’s rallies, walking the streets with him, talking about the importance of the race, and helping him raise funds. His handpicked contender in District 4 was Doug Chan, a former police commissioner. Black lost by 10 percentage points; Chan finished fourth.
And a long string of progressive ballot measures that the mayor had opposed was approved by sizable margins.
Ragone began to spin and dissemble like crazy. “We endorsed [Black and Chan] but didn’t put a lot into it,” he said despite the fact that Newsom spent the last two weekends campaigning for his two favorites.
“The real key for us was Hydra Mendoza, who won [a seat on the school board],” Ragone said.
Yes, Mendoza, who works as the mayor’s education adviser, was elected — but she already had a strong base of support as a former leader of Parents for Public Schools and might very well have won without the mayor’s help.
Besides, if Newsom saw her as a top priority, why did she finish second in a race for three positions, behind Green Party candidate Jane Kim? And how significant will it be to have Mendoza on a school board that now has a solid progressive majority, one she’s not a part of?
Ragone shrugged again, sticking to his line.
But the Mayor’s Office can’t spin away the fact that, as pollster David Binder put it at a postelection event, “I don’t think Newsom had a very good night.”
“It showed that we had a progressive turnout and this is a progressive town,” Binder said.
Boris Delepine, a campaign veteran and Sup. Ross Mirkarimi’s board aide, went even further: “This election ranks up there with the 2000 supervisorial races as far as I’m concerned.”
In other words, progressives battled the downtown interests and won.
The most exciting race was in District 6, where Daly’s expected reelection was thrown into doubt a few weeks ago by some polls and the onslaught of downtown attacks on Daly (which Binder jokingly referred to as “a deforestation project” for all of the negative mailers).
The problem was that most of the material just attempted to savage Daly without really making the case for why Black would be better. That appears to have backfired.
In fact, the assault served to galvanize Daly supporters, who stepped up a vigorous campaign in the final push. “It was very efficient and very effective,” Binder said.
Or as Daly put it to his supporters on election night, “We were under attack…. San Francisco values were under attack, and you responded like nothing before. Five hundred volunteers were in the streets today to say this district is not for sale.”
The message from the Tenderloin, inner Mission, and South of Market was resoundingly clear: with district elections downtown can’t simply buy a seat on the board anymore. Money is powerful — but an organized grassroots campaign can still prevail.
The impact for the mayor is more than just the loss of a potential board ally. Newsom found himself in District 6 working closely with SFSOS — a group that has become so nasty and is so reviled, even two of its key founders, Senator Dianne Feinstein and financier Warren Hellman, have walked away in disgust.
“If all things were equal, I’d just as soon that SFSOS went away,” Hellman told us.
It’s not going to help the mayor’s reputation to be seen in that sort of company.
A HIPPER DUFTY
The District 8 race showed the power of district elections in a different way.
From the start it was going to be tough for Alix Rosenthal, a straight woman, to defeat incumbent supervisor Bevan Dufty, a gay man in what has always been a gay district. But Rosenthal says her candidacy had a clear impact on Dufty — during the late summer and fall, the onetime solid mayoral ally moved a few noticeable steps to the left, supporting Sup. Tom Ammiano’s universal health care bill and voting with the progressives (and against the mayor) for police foot patrols.
“Dufty became a much hipper person after I challenged him,” Rosenthal said.
Dufty told us the challenge made him work harder but had no impact on his votes. “What you saw on foot patrols was an immense amount of frustration with the police chief’s failures to lead the department,” he said. “That had nothing to do with this race.”
Binder pointed out that District 8 has a higher percentage of registered Democrats than any district in the city, and Dufty locked down party support early on. And even though Dufty’s voting record was less progressive than his district, he remains popular. “There are people who think he doesn’t vote the right way on the issues, but nobody thinks he doesn’t try hard,” Binder said.
The District 4 race was not only a test of the power of the mayor’s coattails in a district where Newsom has always been popular. It was also a test of how ranked-choice voting works in complex election demographics.
From early this year, when it became clear that incumbent Fiona Ma was going to the state assembly, Newsom and his allies tapped Chan as the candidate they would promote. That was an odd choice for Newsom, who claims to be a public power supporter: Chan’s law firm has received more than $200,000 in legal fees from Pacific Gas and Electric Co. in just the past two years, and like his alliance with Black in District 6, the Chan endorsement put him on the side of one of the least popular actors on the local political stage.
And in the end, the mayoral support meant little: Chan finished fourth, after Ron Dudum, Ed Jew, and Jaynry Mak.
There was a certain amount of nervousness on election night when Dudum emerged atop the candidate list at the prospect that for the first time in a generation, the board would be without Asian representation. Four Asian candidates appeared to have split the vote, allowing Dudum to win.
But when the ranked-choice voting program was run Nov. 10, that concern evaporated: the new system allowed Asian voters to divide their preferences without risking that sort of vote-split result. When it was all over, Ed Jew emerged the winner.
As Jew told us, “I think it showed that having so many Asians benefited the top Asian vote-getter.”
GREEN DAYS
The school board and community college board races get less press than the top of the ticket, but as citywide contests, they can be even tougher for progressives. And this year the Green Party had some surprising victories.
Jane Kim, a Green, finished top in the balloting — remarkable considering that she didn’t have the endorsement of the Democratic Party. Mendoza came in second, followed by Kim-Shree Maufas. That puts three new members, all of them women of color, on the board and shows that activists frustrated by the votes of longtime incumbent Dan Kelly could defeat someone who until recently was considered a shoo-in for reelection.
Peter Lauterborn, a Kim supporter, was ecstatic about the win. “This is a massive triumph,” he said. “We beat the money and we beat the establishment.”
The same goes for the community college board, where John Rizzo, a Green, appears to have edged out Johnnie Carter, bringing new reform blood to an ossified and often corrupt agency.
Binder attributed the strong finishes by Kim and Maufas to their endorsements by the Guardian, the Democratic Party, and other lefty supporters. He was surprised by Rizzo’s apparent victory (absentees could still change the outcome) but most on the left weren’t. Rizzo had a lot of grassroots support and ran a strong campaign.
Similarly, Mirkarimi — who attended the postelection briefing along with fellow supervisor Daly — didn’t agree with Binder’s line on the school board, noting that the defeat of Kelly and the election of Kim and Maufas were strong endorsements for the stand that the current board lefties — Mark Sanchez, Sarah Lipson, and Eric Mar — have taken against positions by autocratic former superintendent Arlene Ackerman and her downtown backers.
“We got four votes on the school board,” was how Delepine put it, adding, “President Sanchez, man.” SFBG
Steven T. Jones and Alix Rosenthal are domestic partners. Tim Redmond wrote the analysis of the results in District 8. Amanda Witherell contributed to this story.

Oh, the fists!

0

by Amanda Witherell

Mayor Newsom is getting pummeled left and right. (Actually, they’re probably all lefts.) Only one of his three acolytes won the election last Tuesday. The 49ers are waving good-bye after they promised they weren’t talking with any other cities. The Olympic bid went south with them. Supe. Aaron Peskin switched sides and Supe. Jake McGoldrick showed up for the Board of Supervisors vote for foot patrols.
Oh, what else…after Newsom said abolishing JROTC in public schools “sends the wrong message…” You guessed it: the Board of Education just voted to nix the program and send the military packing. What’s next for Mr. Popularity…

EDITOR’S NOTES

0

› tredmond@sfbg.com
I tell this story to politicians a lot, and I’m telling it again because there’s an awful lot of angst at City Hall over the demands of a few (admittedly madly aggressive) sunshine advocates who are coming close to paralyzing some departments.
The tale goes back, way back, to about 1986, when a reporter named Jim Balderston and I got onto a story about the horrible, potentially deadly problem of asbestos contamination in the public schools. We called Ray Cortines, who had just taken over as school superintendent, and asked to see a long, long list of district records — the sort of broad, sweeping request that makes city attorneys work hundreds of hours trying to decide how to comply.
But Cortines didn’t call the city attorney. He invited us over to district headquarters, took us into a room filled with file cabinets, and said: here you go. He told a staffer to help us make copies of what we needed. Then he left us alone.
No district lawyer sat in the room checking to be sure that there was nothing confidential in the files. Nobody prescreened the stuff for possible secrets.
We spent a week there and came out with some amazing stories that embarrassed a lot of district officials — and may have saved the lives of a lot of kids.
I’m sure there were reams of documents in those files that contained what are technically confidential bits of information. But here’s the amazing thing: nothing bad happened.
The district didn’t lose any lawsuits because of what ran in the paper. No labor contracts were jeopardized. No personnel records were wrongly exposed. Not a goddamn thing.
This is what drives me nuts about “metadata” and all the other stuff that gadflies like Kimo Crossman are asking for, tying the City Attorney’s Office in knots and costing the taxpayers all this money.
Please: just give it to them. The republic will survive. SFBG

Editor’s Notes

0

› tredmond@sfbg.com
The San Francisco Examiner reported last week that enrollment in the local public schools is down by another 1,000 students this year, which means, some school board members say, that more sites will have to be closed.
I understand the economic issues — the state pays for education based on average daily attendance, and if fewer kids show up, the school district gets fewer dollars. And I’ll admit I have a dog in this fight: my son goes to McKinley Elementary, a wonderful school that represents everything that’s right about public education in San Francisco — and McKinley was on the hit list last year. It’s a small school; that makes it vulnerable.
I also understand that there are some things the school board can’t control. Families are leaving San Francisco in droves. That’s largely because of the high cost of housing, which is an issue for the mayor and the supervisors (and one that’s going to take a lot more work and resolve to address). So we’re going to lose some students that way.
But we’re also losing a lot of kids to private schools; I know that because I have good friends who’ve chosen that route, mostly because they don’t think the public schools can offer what they want for their kids. This is a perception problem, and it’s something the school board doesn’t have to sit back and accept.
That, I guess, is what really frustrates me — so many people simply saying that as a matter of strategic planning, we need to assume 1,000 fewer students a year will go to the public schools. The district spent around a quarter of a million dollars last year on a public relations office, and almost all the office seemed to do was hide information from the press and promote the career of then-superintendent Arlene Ackerman. Now Ackerman’s gone, and so is her officious flak, Lorna Ho. It’s time to take district PR seriously.
How hard would it be to have one PR staffer dedicated to creating a major citywide ad campaign promoting the public schools? I suspect it would be relatively easy to find a top-flight local ad firm that would work pro bono and not at all impossible to raise money for media (billboards, bus sides, direct mail, print ads, TV, whatever). Lots of prominent people would do testimonials. Set a goal: no enrollment drop-off next year. Before we close any more schools, it’s worth a try.
Now this: Clear Channel, which owns 10 radio stations in San Francisco and does almost no local public affairs programming at all, recently dropped its only decent San Francisco show, Keepin’ It Real with Will and Willie on KQKE, and replaced it with a syndicated feed out of Los Angeles. To listen to most of Clear Channel radio, you’d never actually know that you’re in San Francisco; the giant Texas chain doesn’t care anything about this community.
If you’re sick of this kind of behavior by an increasingly consolidated monopoly broadcast industry (using, by the way, the public airwaves), you’re not alone: Media Alliance, the Youth Media Council, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People will host a hearing on media consolidation in Oakland on Oct. 27, and two Federal Communications Commission members, Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps, will be there to take public comments.
The hearing’s at the Oakland Marriott Civic Center, 1001 Broadway. For more information, go to www.media-alliance.org. SFBG

East Bay races and measures

0

Editor’s note: The following story has been altered from the original to correct an error. We had originally identified Courtney Ruby as running for Alameda County Auditor; the office is actually Oakland City Auditor.

Oakland City Auditor
COURTNEY RUBY
Incumbent Roland Smith has to go. He’s been accused of harassing and verbally abusing his staff and using audits as a political weapon against his enemies. The county supervisors have had to reassign his staff to keep him from making further trouble. And yet somehow he survived the primary with 32 percent of the vote, putting him in a November runoff against Courtney Ruby, who led the field with 37 percent. Ruby, an experienced financial analyst, would bring some credibility back to the office.
Peralta Community College Board, District 7
ABEL GUILLEN
Challenger Abel Guillen has extensive knowledge of public school financing and a proven commitment to consensus building and government accountability. In the last six years Guillen, who was raised in a working-class community and was the first in his family to go to college, has raised $2.2 billion in bond money to construct and repair facilities in school districts and at community colleges. Incumbent Alona Clifton has been accused of not being responsive to teachers’ concerns about the board’s spending priorities and openness.
Berkeley mayor
TOM BATES
This race has progressives tearing at each other’s throats, particularly since they spent a ton of cash last time around to oust former mayor Shirley Dean and replace her with Tom Bates, who used to be known as a reliable progressive voice.
Bates’s reputation has shifted since he became mayor, and his record is a mixed bag. This time around, he stands accused of setting up a shadow government (via task forces that duplicate existing commissions but don’t include enough community representatives), of giving developers too many special favors instead of fighting for more community benefits, and of increasingly siding with conservative and pro-landlord city council member Gordon Wozniak.
The problem is that none of Bates’s opponents look like they would be effective as mayor. So lacking any credible alternative, we’ll go with Bates.
Berkeley City Council, District 1
LINDA MAIO
Incumbent Linda Maio’s voting record has been wimpy at times, but she is a strong proponent of affordable housing, and her sole challenger, Merrilie Mitchell, isn’t a terribly serious candidate. Vote for Maio.
Berkeley City Council, District 2
DONA SPRING
A valiant champion of every progressive cause, incumbent Dona Spring is one of the unsung heroes of Berkeley. Using a wheelchair, she puts in the energy equivalent of two or three council members and always remains on the visionary cutting edge. If that weren’t enough, her sole challenger, Latino businessman and zoning commissioner Raudel Wilson, has the endorsement of the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce. Vote for Spring.
Berkeley City Council, District 7
KRISS WORTHINGTON
Incumbent Kriss Worthington is an undisputed champion of progressive causes and a courageous voice who isn’t afraid to take criticism in an age of duck and run, including the fallout he’s been experiencing following the closure of Cody’s on Telegraph Avenue, something conservatives have tried to link to his support for the homeless. His sole challenger is the evidently deep-pocketed George Beier, who describes himself as a community volunteer but has the support of landlords and the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce and has managed to blanket District 7 with signage and literature, possibly making his one of the most tree-unfriendly campaigns in Berkeley’s electoral history. Keep Berkeley progressive and vote for Worthington.
Berkeley City Council, District 8
JASON OVERMAN
Incumbent Gordon Wozniak postures as if he is going to be mayor one day, and he’s definitely the most conservative member of the council. During his tenure, Wozniak has come up with seven different ways to raise rents on tenants in Berkeley, and he didn’t even vote against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s special election last year. Challenger Jason Overman may be only 20 years old, but he’s already a seasoned political veteran, having been elected to the Rent Stabilization Board two years ago. Vote for Overman.
Berkeley city auditor
ANN-MARIE HOGAN
Ann-Marie Hogan is running unopposed for this nonpartisan post, which is hardly surprising since she’s done a great job so far and has widespread support.
Berkeley school director
KAREN HEMPHILL, NANCY RIDDLE, NORMA HARRISON
With five candidates in the running and only three seats open, some are suggesting progressives cast only one vote — for Karen Hemphill — to ensure she becomes board president in two years, since the job goes to the person with the most votes in the previous election.
Hemphill has done a great job and has the support of Latino and African American parent groups, so a vote for her is a no-brainer.
So is any vote that helps make sure that incumbents Shirley Issel and David Baggins don’t get reelected.
Nancy Riddle isn’t a hardcore liberal, but she’s a certified public accountant, so she has number-crunching skills in her favor. Our third pick is Norma Harrison, although her superradical talk about capitalism being horrible and schools being like prisons needs to be matched with some concrete and doable suggestions.
Rent Stabilization Board
DAVE BLAKE, HOWARD CHONG, CHRIS KAVANAGH, LISA STEPHENS, PAM WEBSTER
If it weren’t for the nine-member elected Rent Stabilization Board, Berkeley would have long since been taken over by the landlords and the wealthy. This powerful agency has been controlled by progressives most of the time, and this year there are five strong progressives running unopposed for five seats on the board. We recommend voting for all of them.
Oakland City Council
AIMEE ALLISON
When we endorsed Aimee Allison in the primary in June, we pointed out that this was a crucial race: incumbent Patrician Kernighan has been a staunch ally of outgoing mayor Jerry Brown and Councilmember Ignacio de La Fuente — and now that Ron Dellums is taking over the Mayor’s Office and a new political era could be dawning in Oakland, it’s crucial that the old prodevelopment types don’t control the council.
Kernighan’s vision of Oakland has always included extensive new commercial and luxury housing development, and like De La Fuente, she’s shown little concern for gentrification and displacement. Allison, a Green Party member, is the kind of progressive who could make a huge difference in Oakland, and she’s our clear and unequivocal choice for this seat.
From crime to city finance, Allison is well-informed and has cogent, practical proposals. She favors community policing and programs to help the 10,000 parolees in Oakland. She wants the city to collect an annual fee from the port, which brings in huge amounts of money and puts very little into the General Fund. She wants to promote environmentally sound development, eviction protections, and a stronger sunshine ordinance. Vote for Allison.
East Bay Municipal Utility District director, Ward 4
ANDY KATZ
Environmental planner Andy Katz is running unopposed. Despite his relative youth, he’s been an energetic and committed board member and deserves another term.
AC Transit director at large
REBECCA KAPLAN
Incumbent Rebecca Kaplan is a fixture on the East Bay progressive political scene and has been a strong advocate of free bus-pass programs and environmentally sound policies over the years. A former public interest lawyer, Kaplan’s only challenger is paralegal James K. Muhammad.
Berkeley measures
Measure A
BERKELEY PUBLIC SCHOOLS TAX
YES
This measure takes two existing taxes and combines them into one but without increasing existing rates. Since 30 percent of local teachers will get paid out of the revenue from this measure, a no vote could devastate the quality of education in the city. Vote yes.
Measure E
RENT STABILIZATION BOARD VACANCY
YES
Measure E seeks to eliminate the need to have a citywide special election every time a vacancy occurs on the Rent Stabilization Board, a process that currently costs about $400,000 and consumes huge amounts of time and energy. The proposal would require that vacancies be filled at November general elections instead, since that ballot attracts a wider and more representative group of voters. In the interim, the board would fill its own vacancies.
Measure F
GILMAN STREET PLAYING FIELDS
YES
Measure F follows the council’s October 2005 adoption of amendments that establish the proper use for public and commercial recreation sports facilities, thereby allowing development of the proposed Gilman Street fields. Vote yes.
Measure G
GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS
YES
Measure G is a nice, feel-good advisory measure that expresses Berkeley’s opinion about the dangers of greenhouse gas emissions to the global climate and advises the mayor to work with the community to come up with a plan that would significantly reduce such emissions, with a target of an 80 percent reduction by 2050. Vote yes.
Measure H
IMPEACHMENT OF PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH AND VICE-PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY
YES
In left-leaning Berkeley this is probably the least controversial measure on the ballot. Do we really need to spell out all over again the many reasons why you should vote yes on this issue?
If this measure passes, both Berkeley and San Francisco will have taken public stands in favor of impeachment, which won’t by itself do much to force Congress to act but will start the national ball rolling. Vote yes.
Measure I
AMENDING CONDO CONVERSION ORDINANCE
NO, NO, NO
Measure I is a really bad idea, one that links the creation of home ownership opportunities to the eviction of families from their homes. It was clearly cooked up by landlord groups that are unhappy with Berkeley’s current condo conversion ordinance, which allows for 100 conversions a year. Measure I proposes increasing that limit to 500 conversions a year, which could translate into more than 1,000 people facing evictions. Those evictions will hit hardest on the most financially vulnerable — seniors, the disabled, low- and moderate-income families, and children. With less than 15 percent of current Berkeley tenants earning enough to purchase their units, this measure decreases the overall supply of rentals, eliminates requirements to disclose seismic conditions to prospective buyers, and violates the city’s stated commitment to fairness, compassion, and economic diversity. Vote no.
Measure J
AMENDING LANDMARK PRESERVATION ORDINANCES
YES
A well-meaning measure that’s opposed by developers, Measure J earns a lukewarm yes. It establishes a nine-member Landmarks Preservation Commission; designates landmarks, structures of merit, and historic districts; and may approve or deny alteration of such historic resources but may not deny their demolition. It’s worth noting that if Proposition 90 passes, the city could face liability for damages if Measure J is found to result in substantial economic loss to property — all of which gives us yet another reason to say “vote no” on the horribly flawed Prop. 90 while you’re voting yes on Measure J.
Oakland Measures
Measure M
POLICE AND FIRE RETIREMENT BOARD INVESTMENTS
YES
Measure M would amend the City Charter to allow the board that oversees the Oakland Police and Fire Retirement System (PFRS) slightly more leeway in making investment decisions. The board claims that its current requirements — which bar investment in stocks that don’t pay dividends — are hampering returns. That’s an issue: between July 2002 and July 2005, the unfunded liability of the PFRS grew from $200 million to $268 million — a liability for which the city of Oakland is responsible. We’re always nervous about giving investment managers the ability to use public money without close oversight, but the new rules would be the same as ones currently in place in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Measure N
LIBRARY IMPROVEMENT AND EXPANSION BONDS
YES
Oakland wants to improve and expand all library branch facilities, construct a new main library at the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center, and buy land for and construct two new library facilities in the Laurel and 81st Avenue communities. The upgrades and construction plans come in response to residents’ insistence that they need more space for studying and meeting, increased library programs and services, tutoring and homework assistance for children, increased literacy programs, and greater access to current technology and locations that offer wi-fi.
This $148 million bond would cost only $40 a year for every $100,000 of assessed property. Vote yes.
Measure O
INSTANT RUNOFF VOTING
Ranked-choice voting, or instant runoff voting, is a great concept. The city of Oakland is using it to elect officials in the November election without holding a prior June election. There’s only one problem: so far, Alameda County hasn’t invested in voting equipment that could make implementing this measure possible. Voting yes is a first step in forcing the county’s hand in the right direction. SFBG

A full-time school board

0

EDITORIAL The San Francisco Board of Education oversees a budget of more than $400 million. Its seven members attend regular board and committee meetings, analyze complex financial documents, visit school sites, meet with parents and administrators, attend conferences and trainings … and try to find a little bit of time to think about the future of public education in a very difficult urban situation. It’s one of the most important jobs in the city. And the board members get paid about $500 a month.

The members have no staff, just a secretary who handles messages and administrative duties for the entire board.

And you wonder why superintendents can run amok without proper oversight, why the budgets get passed with very little scrutiny, why the board members aren’t more actively involved in dealing with complex community issues like school closures. They just don’t have the time. Most of the board members have actual jobs; some, like Mark Sanchez (who teaches at a public school on the peninsula), have to use their vacation time to visit San Francisco schools.

It’s time to recognize what almost everyone in town concluded about the Board of Supervisors several years ago: This is a full-time job and ought to be treated as one.

Sure, paying the seven board members full-time salaries would cost some money, and the district is pinching every penny it has these days. But when you consider the benefits, the price tag is insignificant:

Full-time board members would be able to carefully manage district finances. Right now, the members get a budget document of more than 1,000 pages just days before they have to vote on it. There are almost certainly millions of dollars in that document that could be better spent, but only the administration the superintendent and his or her staff has the time to figure out what’s really going on.

The opportunity for public input would increase dramatically. School board meetings are once every two weeks, which is about all a part-time board can handle. Committee meetings are less frequent, and even when there are huge issues (like school closures) on the agenda, not all the members manage to show up. A full-time board could meet every week, hold regular committee meetings, and hold plenty of public hearings to get input on decisions.

Oversight would be transformed. When there are issues or problems involving San Francisco city departments, the supervisors can hold hearings, bring in the relevant parties, and get to the bottom of what’s going on. That never happens with the school board but it could, and with full-time board members, it would.

The city would get better candidates for the job. Right now it’s really hard for anyone who has a full-time job and kids in the public schools to sit on the school board. There are hundreds of people who would make excellent school board members who won’t even consider running because they just can’t afford to serve.

Full-time board members could actually market the schools. The SF schools badly need some goodwill ambassadors to show more parents the value of public education (and thus increase enrollment). That’s a perfect job for board members and a more functional board would present a much better image for the schools.

If the school board members were paid as much as San Francisco supervisors (roughly $80,000 a year), and if they each had one full-time staff aide, the total tab would run to around $1 million a year. We’re convinced that the resulting improved oversight and public input would allow the board to find far more than $1 million a year in savings elsewhere in the budget.

Giving the board members a huge raise is a tough sell when schools are closing and teachers are getting laid off. But it would transform the public schools and parents, teachers, and students would all be much better off. SFBG

{Empty title}

0

› tredmond@sfbg.com

I sat in the second row at McKinley Elementary School’s “junior Olympics” last week, right behind Superintendent Gwen Chan, who is doing a pretty good job so far, and district spokesperson Lorna Ho, who remains the most annoying public relations person I’ve ever had to deal with, and as I watched the kids do this amazing opening ceremony on the playground, I realized how much I love San Francisco public schools.

I don’t always love the school board, and I don’t always love the flacks at headquarters, and I really, really didn’t love the last superintendent, but on some level, that doesn’t really matter. On the ground in the places where teaching actually happens, in the classrooms, in the auditorium, on the playground my public school is amazing.

There’s nowhere near enough money. It’s not an easy, upper-middle-class student population. But the principal, Bonnie Coffey-Smith, is fantastic, the teachers are all full of energy, and the students all of the students are learning.

I could have spent tens of thousands of dollars a year on a private school, and I don’t think my son, Michael, could possibly have gotten a better educational experience than the one he’s getting now.

Onward: It’s been 25 years, exactly, since the first AIDS cases were documented, and 10 years, more or less, since Paul O’Connell died.

Paulo was my best friend. We met in college, smoked a lot of pot, and dreamed about world revolution. After we both (narrowly) emerged with our diplomas, we drove out west, escaping a nasty law enforcement problem in upstate New York, losing all of our worldly possessions to burglars in Chicago, scrounging some blankets from an old motel so we wouldn’t freeze when we slept on the ground in the Rockies, and finally running out of gas and money in San Francisco. We stayed for a while, then hit the road again and wound up in an apartment in East Hartford, Conn.; in a commune (of sorts) in the New England woods; in a house in Croton, NY; and on a buffalo ranch in Oklahoma before we eventually came home, to a slum on Hayes Street with no shower and no doors.

And always, everywhere, Paulo loved life.

We lived together for three years or so, all told, until I moved in with my girlfriend and Paulo went to work for Ralph Nader in DC. I saw him a few times a year, usually when the Grateful Dead were in town. It was about 1987 when he told me he was gay, which was a big whatever except that Paulo was never good about safety, and that was a dangerous time. He loved to party, hated condoms because they never seemed to fit right, and figured if he got an AIDS test every couple of months, he’d be OK.

Then one of the tests came back positive.

Paulo fought bravely: He never once complained, never slowed down, and refused to give up the pursuit of happiness. But that was before the drug cocktails, when there wasn’t any truly effective treatment. In the end, the plague was stronger than Paulo. I still miss him, every damn day.

And here’s the thing: There are 80,000 stories like that one, just in San Francisco alone.

As long as the rest of us live, that’s something we should never forget. SFBG

{Empty title}

0

tredmond@sfbg.com

I was in upstate New York last weekend, flying low over farmlands and old industrial cities in one of those bumpy little "commuter" planes, then driving through small towns in areas that, I’ll say politely, have seen better economic days. And yet, everywhere I went, a landmark stood out: From the air and from the ground, the public schools seemed universally spacious and well maintained. They had nice baseball and football fields, all-weather tracks, and new playground equipment. I didn’t go inside, but I can tell you nonetheless that the schools in most of New York are way better than the schools in most of California.

And there’s a good reason for that.

My brother owns a house in Putnam Valley, a small town about two hours north of New York City. He bought it 15 years ago, for about $105,000, and while it has increased in value, it’s still assessed at way less than half of what I paid for my house in San Francisco. And yet he pays more property taxes than I do.

He’s a contractor, a small-business person, subject to the volatile whims of the home-building industry, and he’s trying to support two kids and save money for their college fund. He pays $5,000 a year in school taxes alone, and it’s a real burden.

But for that money, he gets to send his kids to public schools that are better than most $25,000-a-year private schools. He considers it a bargain.

In New York they spend about twice as much per student as we do in California. That money has to come from somewhere, and a lot of it comes from property taxes. This isn’t rocket science even people educated in California should be able to figure it out: You want good schools, you have to pay for them.

Then I came back and met with Steve Westly, the state controller and the front-runner for the Democratic nomination for governor. Westly loves to talk about education but he’s not even willing to commit to seeking changes in Proposition 13 that would allow for higher property taxes on commercial buildings to pay for the schools.

It’s this air of unreality we have in California. For 28 years, since the "tax revolt" movement was born in this state, politicians have pandered to the selfish among the voters (and that’s most of them, it seems) by saying they can have it all for free. We’ve been promised a beautiful state with lots of parkland, top-rate public schools and colleges, massive spending on cops and prisons, stable union jobs for public employees, abundant water for thriving agriculture, extensive resources to meet urban problems … and low taxes for all.

Let’s party.

Westly’s Democratic opponent, Phil Angelides, is at least honest: He promises the same sorts of things Westly does, but he admits that somebody will have to pay for them. He’s focusing on the wealthy, which is the right idea this is a rich state, and the millionaires have done quite well the past few years. But the rest of us will get hit a bit too, and I hate to say it, but we should.

Because the teachers don’t have to be underpaid, the roads don’t have to be crumbling, the parks don’t have to be overcrowded, the hospitals don’t need to be teetering on the edge of collapse. We can have high-speed rail to LA.

Taxes are a small sacrifice for the public good. My parents’ generation seemed to get that. California’s baby boomers apparently don’t. SFBG

Save John Swett!

0

OPINION In seeking to close the John Swett Alternative Elementary School in San Francisco’s Western Addition, the San Francisco Unified School District is making a gargantuan mistake.

We knew from the start of the evaluation process that John Swett didn’t come close to qualifying for closure or merger. By the board’s own criteria, Swett shouldn’t have been a candidate. Yet it remained, inexplicably, on the closure list.

Only now, through our own research and public records requests we made to the school district, has the rationale for the school’s closure become clear: It’s not an educational decision made in the best interests of students. It’s a property decision made in the best interests of administrators. Situated just two blocks from the SFUSD’s headquarters at 555 Franklin St., John Swett has apparently struck some administrators as an attractive target for expanding administrative offices.

Long before the unhappy coincidence of its proximity to SFUSD headquarters potentially doomed its existence, John Swett was rapidly becoming a poster child for public schools in working-class minority communities. It offers the only arts program of its kind in the district and has provided opportunities for cultural enrichment to a population to whom far too many opportunities are routinely denied. Its enrollment of 240 students was quickly approaching the facility’s full 280-student capacity, with a population reflecting the rich, diverse mosaic of San Francisco: 43 percent African American, 31 percent Pacific Islander, 14 percent Latino, and the remainder an integrated mix of whites, Asians, and others. And more curiously, if the issue at Swett was really about enrollment, the district could have looked across the street to reconcile any shortfall: Tenderloin Community School’s population is at 120 percent.

Sup. Chris Daly and I have worked hard to galvanize as much support as possible within City Hall to make the school board’s decision to save the school for students an easy one. We secured passage of an ordinance to provide $660,000 from city funds to gain John Swett a reprieve.

For neighborhoods like the Western Addition and Tenderloin, plagued by the interrelated problems of joblessness, drugs, truancy, and gun violence, the decision seems utterly counterproductive. What good are violence-prevention strategies when they are subverted by actions like shutting down John Swett School?

This battle is about setting the right priorities. It’s time to put the students first. The plain fact is that kids from minority working-class communities need good schools that are already intact more than school bureaucrats need adjacent facilities for themselves or a half-baked plan for something else. An innocent school has been unjustly condemned. Its execution is set to go. There are moments until midnight. Can we save it? SFBG

Ross Mirkarimi

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi represents District 5.

A selective guide to political events

0

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 29

Pro-choice films

Join the Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights and New College as they screen two films that comment on the state of reproductive rights in the United States. Remember the haunting image of a woman lying dead on a motel room floor from an illegal abortion? That story, of the late Gerri Santoro, is told by Jane Gillooly in her film Leona’s Sister Gerri. Imagine what would happen if South Dakota’s ban on abortion spreads from state to state. Raney Aronson-Roth addresses this issue in her film The Last Abortion Clinic.

7 p.m.

Roxie Cinema

3117 16th St., SF

$8, $4 students

(415) 437-3425

THURSDAY, MARCH 30

The 9/11 Commission’s omissions

Is there a story out there that is just too big to touch? David Ray Griffin, theologian and philosopher, has pointed out the proverbial elephant in the room and is attempting to jump on its back and ride it to Washington, DC. In his lecture "9/11: The Myth and the Reality," Griffin discusses crucial omissions and distortions found within the 9/11 Commission Report.

7 p.m.

Grand Lake Theater

3200 Grand, Oakl.

$10

(510) 496-2700

SATURDAY, APRIL 1

A laughing matter

You know all about the tragic San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906, in which thousands lost their lives and hundreds of thousands were left homeless. But do you know about the vaudeville shows and circus acts that rose from the fire’s ashes? In the aftermath of destruction, wit and humor kept spirits high. Starting today, April Fools’ Day, and lasting throughout the month, the San Francisco Public Library puts its collection of memorabilia from the era on display. The exhibition includes cartoons, theater programs, and postearthquake items that may leave you chuckling uncomfortably.

San Francisco Public Library, Skylight Gallery

100 Larkin, SF

Free

www.sfpl.org

Bayview women in politics

Attend a one-day leadership seminar designed by the National Women’s Political Caucus to get Bayview women politically involved in their community. Enjoy free child care and lunch while listening to speakers, including Willie Kennedy of the Southeast Community Facilities Commission.

10 a.m.–2 p.m.

Bayview–Hunters Point YMCA

1601 Lane, SF

Free, RSVP required

(415) 377-6722, nwpcsf@yahoo.com

Creative resistance

Hear a report from local artists Susan Greene and Sara Kershnar on their efforts to bring about Palestinian freedom and on recent events in the West Bank and Gaza. Other Cinema hosts an evening of discussion with these two muralists and the premiere of their video When Your Home Is a Prison: Cultural Resistance in Palestine.

8:30 p.m.

Artists’ Television Access

992 Valencia, SF

$5

(415) 824-3890

www.othercinema.com

Running clean campaigns

Listen to Trent Lange of the California Clean Money Campaign and Jim Soper of Voting Rights Task Force talk about the effort to strip political candidates of large private donations and demand that politicians answer people’s needs.

12:30–3 p.m.

Temescal Library

5205 Telegraph, Oakl.

Free

(510) 524-3791

www.pdeastbay.org

MONDAY, APRIL 3

Debate SF demographics

Join Inforum, a subgroup of the Commonwealth Club, in a discussion of why San Francisco is losing its young workers and families owing to the state of the public schools and a dearth of affordable housing. A panel will address what is needed to keep young families in the city.

6 p.m.

Commonwealth Club of California

595 Market, second floor, SF

$15, free for members

(415) 597-6705

www.commonwealthclub.org

TUESDAY, APRIL 4

MLK against the war

Read Martin Luther King Jr.’s "Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam" and listen to live music on this day of remembrance. Today marks the day he publicly denounced the growing war effort in Indochina. It was also the day he was assassinated.

7–9:30 p.m.

The Kitchen

225 Potrero, SF

$5 suggested donation

wrlwest@riseup.net

Free medical care

Receive free medical information and tests at City College of San Francisco’s health fair. Services include dental screenings, acupuncture, cholesterol tests, women’s health appointments, HIV tests, and a blood drive.

9 a.m.–noon

City College of San Francisco

1860 Hayes, SF

Free

(415) 561 1905 *

Mail items for Alerts to the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 255-8762; or e-mail alerts@sfbg.com. Please include a contact telephone number. Items must be received at least one week prior to the publication date.

EDITOR’S NOTES

0

It still boggles my mind: One of the most significant development issues in years came to a head last week at the City Planning Commission — and none of the news media seem to have noticed. G.W. Schulz describes the situation in depth on page 18, but here’s the short version: City planners have acknowledged they can’t allow any more market-rate housing in the eastern neighborhoods for the indefinite future.

At least they seem to have acknowledged that. The real test is still to come, when the next development comes along, but either way this is pretty big news — and I haven’t read a word about it in the Chron or the Ex.

I shouldn’t be surprised anymore.

Now this: The San Francisco Democratic Party is in a bit of a tizzy over something that ought to be basic common sense.

Sup. Chris Daly has put a measure on the June 6 ballot, Prop. C, that would make the Transbay Joint Powers Authority more directly accountable to voters. The TJPA is pretty important: It controls the Transbay Terminal project, which will determine the city’s transit future for many years to come. But right now, two of the city’s three representatives are basically bureaucrats (one from the Mayor’s Office, one from Muni) who answer (it often seems) to nobody.

Daly wants to make the mayor, the city’s representative to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (currently Sup. Tom Ammiano), and the supervisor from District 6 (Daly, who’s already on the TJPA) serve on the panel.

Sounds like alphabet soup and nothing to make a fuss over — except that the mayor would suddenly have to focus on this project because he’d be on the board. He might even have to go to a meeting or two. And everyone on that key panel would have to answer directly to the voters.

And for some reason (perhaps the thought of actually sitting through a TJPA meeting) this has Gavin Newsom up in arms. The Democratic County Central Committee, which makes policy for the local party, was set to endorse Prop. C last week until Newsom began twisting arms. Then a bunch of people (including state assemblymember Mark Leno and state senator Carole Migden) couldn’t be counted in the yes camp, so the whole thing was postponed until March 21, when Daly, the Sierra Club, and all of the city’s transit activists were set to square off against Newsom and the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR).

It will be a nice test: Can the County Committee stand up to the mayor? Will Migden and Leno?

And this: Caroline Grannan, a normally well-meaning and hardworking advocate for the public schools, is having a strange fit of indignation over our articles on school board expenses. The stories focused mostly on how former superintendent Arlene Ackerman pissed away public money on posh dining and accommodations, but Grannan is mad that we even mentioned board member Jill Wynns, who also spends district money on travel (but has run up nowhere near the sort of tab that Ackerman did).

Her complaint is on page 7, and I think she’s way overreacting here, but she makes one valid point: The school board members are essentially volunteers who earn all of $500 a month. That’s silly. A school board member ought to be a full-time job with full-time pay.

And board members’ salaries and expenses should be very much the public’s business. *

Bail out the schools – once

0

The San Francisco school-closure process has been about as bad as it possibly could be. Information about the potential closings came late out of the district office. The criteria for inclusion on the closure list were hard to understand – and harder to comprehend. The district kept parents out of the process until the very end and then restricted community input to a few moments at a series of crammed hearings. In many instances, representatives from the endangered schools had only 10 minutes to make their cases at last-minute hearings attended by only a few of the school board members.

And in the end, all that came out was a short-term solution to a very long-term, pressing problem.

It’s no surprise that the proposed closure list has very real problems – and that community leaders in the Western Addition and Bayview-Hunters Point, which would be the hardest hit neighborhoods, are outraged. Now the board, which, on Jan. 12, decided to put off making the decision, is scrambling to find a way to restore some degree of fairness and credibility to the process.

It’s an impossible task: After the mess of the past month, there’s simply no way to make a fair decision about school closures right now. And the way things are going in the district these days, it’s likely the exact same ugly and poorly thought-out process will take place next fall, and the year after, and the year after that.

It’s time to put a halt to the madness, for good. Mayor Gavin Newsom should drop his opposition to bailing out the schools; the city needs to step in and give the district the cash to stave off most of the closures for a year. But there has to be a condition: The school board and administration must undertake a real, credible, effective long-term planning effort, starting now, to determine how to handle declining enrollment in a fair and comprehensive fashion.

.  .  .

Just about everyone agrees that some San Francisco public schools have to close. The district is losing roughly 1,000 students a year, and has been since the early 1980s. But schools aren’t just buildings; they’re communities, they’re part of their neighborhoods – and closing them down is by definition going to be traumatic.

So at the very least, there needs to be some overall logic and educational policy behind the decisions. And right now that’s badly lacking. The main criteria for closures – declining enrollment and low test scores – virtually guarantee that low-income neighborhoods will be the hardest hit. And the proposed mergers would bring together two small, low-performing schools to make one larger school that will still have the same (or worse) issues.

There are all sorts of other alternatives. Could some of the most popular schools, the ones with huge waiting lists and stellar test scores, be expanded to take over empty space in under-enrolled schools? Would mergers between top schools and low-performing schools give low-income kids a better chance?

More important, how many schools will San Francisco need in 10 years, and where should they be located? Is there a way to phase some schools out without shutting them down altogether? Is there a way to promise parents who want their children to stay in the public schools that their schools – their communities – won’t be destroyed next year, or the year after?

If – and only if – the district is willing to commit to a credible planning process, with parents, teachers, community leaders, and someone from City Hall (perhaps a member of the Board of Supervisors) involved from the start, to create a facilities plan for the next decade, the supervisors and the mayor should look for the $5 million it would take to stave off most closures for this year. And if the city won’t do that, the District should look into using reserve funds to cover the gap. Sup. Ross Mirkarimi had the right line when he testified at the Jan. 12 school board meeting: The city should help the schools out – as long as the district can promise that this utter disaster of a process will never happen again.