Early Results in San Francisco Show Lead for Recall of 3 School Board Members

Early results Tuesday evening in the recall elections of three school members of the San Francisco United School District (SFUSD) show proponents of the recall leading by 3-to-1 margins.

As of 8:01 p.m., according to the San Francisco Chronicle, the “yes” vote to recall board member Alison Collins was ahead of the “no” vote, 78 percent to 21 percent; the “yes” vote for the recall of board member Gabriela López was leading the “no” vote, 74 percent to 24 percent; and the “yes” vote to recall board member Faauuga Molina was leading the “no” vote, 71 percent to 27 percent.

As Breitbart News reported this week, the recall was fueled by public frustration with the prolonged closures of San Francisco’s schools during the pandemic while board members discussed closing a merit-based magnet school and changing allegedly “racist” school names.

Breitbart News noted:

At one point last year, public outrage at the school closures was so great that the city sued its own school district. And while anger stirred at the closures, the board focused on ideological priorities, such as renaming 44 schools — even those named for presidents such as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, who were said to be relics of a white supremacist history.

The Associated Press noted:

Most of the city’s 115 schools that serve 50,0000 students were closed for over a year, from March 2020 to August 2021, even as nearby districts eventually reopened classrooms and private schools across the city held in-person classes.

“Sadly our school board’s priorities have often been severely misplaced,” Mayor London Breed said in her endorsement of the recall effort. “San Francisco’s public school parents aren’t just voicing normal, commonplace frustrations.”

Organizers say they would recall all seven board members if they could, but only three have served long enough to face a challenge.

…

Many Asian parents were already angered by the board’s efforts to end merit-based admissions at the elite Lowell High School, where Asian students are the majority.

The Department of Elections was showing 24 percent of possible registered voters had been counted thus far, with more results expected as the evening continues and as mail-in ballots arrive and are counted.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.