Jaw-Dropping: Massive Election Results in San Francisco

Yesterday, voters in San Francisco, California overwhelmingly voted to recall three members of the city’s school board. Voters recalled the school board president, vice president, and commissioner all by over +70%. The parents in San Francisco unified together and let their voice be heard that there was too much focus on social justice, racial issues, and renaming schools and not enough on the student’s education.

It can simply be boiled down to parents – voters of all political persuasions – being fed up with school officials prioritizing renaming schools instead of reopening schools.

The only reason why the entire school board wasn’t replaced is because others weren’t eligible for recall. Jenny Lam, who is one of the school board members not eligible for recall, had a long-awaited realization after these results:

With this evening’s election, we change course. We now must move forward to focus our energy back on our students and our schools.

Why wasn’t their energy always on the students? San Francisco Mayor London Breed supported this recall effort and expressed what message these parents sent to the school board here:

The voters of this city have delivered a clear message that the school board must focus on the essentials of delivering a well-run school system above all else. San Francisco is a city that believes in the value of big ideas, but those ideas must be built on the foundation of a government that does the essentials well.

Even Left-leaning media outlet the Washington Post admitted that this recall is a warning sign to liberals everywhere:

The recall election is the latest signal that mainstream voters, even in a liberal city like San Francisco, have grown frustrated with public schools during the pandemic. Education, particularly its struggles with coronavirus measures and racial justice, is expected to play a prominent role in elections across the country later this year. The results in San Francisco offer another warning sign for Democrats.

ACLJ Senior Counsel for Global Affairs Mike Pompeo explained this frustration by parents all across the country:

Parents from the inner-city, parents from rural environments, parents from big towns and small towns all across America want one thing for their kids – they want them to live the American way of life and have a chance to do just a little bit better than they did. They saw this the last few years that what the kids were being taught was garbage. . . . So, what you saw in San Francisco, it happened in my hometown . . . where we had school board members thrown out. . . . It wasn’t partisan. It wasn’t political. It was about making sure that the most important institution – the places that we teach our children – is actually delivering on that outcome for kids all across the country. So, it doesn’t surprise me at all what happened in San Francisco yesterday.

ACLJ Chief Counsel, and my dad, Jay Sekulow summed up how this issue has remained critical to the ACLJ since the very beginning:

I do think it’s important for people to understand that when we started the ACLJ, and I’m talking well over now 30 years ago, back in the 80s, school boards . . . is where we cut our teeth. I would say probably in those days 30% of our cases were in front of school boards. . . . We were in school boards. Then as the organization got bigger, obviously our cases got bigger. But we never lost the focus on the idea of parental control of schools.