A Letter to SF School Board Members López, Collins and Moliga
Commissioners López, Collins and Moliga,
You had one job: to educate our children. And you failed.
Over a year into the pandemic our schools are still shut. Our city leads its peers in covid control, but our public schools are among the last to reopen. A few children will see the inside of their classrooms for a few weeks this year. And you still won’t commit to returning all our children to school full-time in the fall.
Thanks to this extended school closure, the children who were already disadvantaged are those who have fallen furthest behind. You speak endlessly of equity, yet your actions (& inactions) have hurt the very children who need the most help. Meanwhile our children’s isolation has led to a mental health crisis that you haven’t even acknowledged.
You rushed through a renaming process without caring about due process. You showed no desire to understand history yet were so ready to castigate it. You shut out the voices of those who used these schools, in whose name you sought the right to rename them.
You dismantled a 55 year old admission process in 5 days. You seem to believe that the only way to create opportunity for one child is by denying another. Instead of fighting to make all our schools great, you make us fight over who gets into one. Instead of baking more brownies, you make us fight for crumbs.
And when parents speak up to ask questions, make suggestions, or offer help, you spend hours judging our skin tone. Every parent is colored red, the color we bleed for all our children.
Our deficit is exploding, families are fleeing the school district, our services are being cut and school facilities shut… and now one of you is fighting for the right to spew hateful venom at an entire community whose safety, education, and welfare you all took an oath to protect.
Did you ever really care about educating our children? You didn’t — and you gave us no choice but to recall you all.
Sincerely,
Siva Raj
Co-lead, Recall SF School Board