Notes and Comments on the San Francisco School Board Recall

Heather Knight:

About a dozen smiling people in matching yellow T-shirts wheeled 45 heavy boxes through the City Hall basement to the Department of Elections the other morning.

Inside those boxes sat six months of effort and nearly a quarter million signatures of San Francisco voters that are almost certain to qualify school board members Gabriela López, Alison Collins and Faauuga Moliga for a recall.

Get ready for a special election, probably in January or February, that would be the first local recall to qualify for a San Francisco ballot since 1983. Already, supporters of the internationally ridiculed school board have bashed the recall for supposedly being fueled by Republicans, conservatives and dark money, but is it?

Unlike with Tuesday’s recall election of Gov. Gavin Newsom, the answer is no. Everyday San Franciscans with real concerns about the school board — and who believe the city’s kids deserve better — launched the effort and worked tirelessly to gather signatures. And their beefs are far more significant than Newsom’s unwise, unmasked dinner at the French Laundry.