Why the School Board Election Matters

By Min Chang

I am a candidate for the SFUSD Board of Education

When I started my campaign three months ago, I was told that the school board race is down ballot and not many people will care or take the time to vote. I believe that this would be a mistake; the school board election this November is critical, and we cannot afford to get it wrong. Our children and families are depending on us to address the near-term fiscal crisis looming over SFUSD and to build stronger public schools for the longer-term. 

The school district has a large budget (over $1 billion), but it has been running a deficit for several years and is currently projected to be in deficit spending again this year and next. The investment funds that the district has been tapping into is also going to run out in the next two years, so the budget needs to be balanced or there is the potential of the state coming in to run our public schools, which no one wants. For the past two years, the state has placed an advisor over the school district so that they can monitor and help us address the fiscal crisis. His assessment of our progress has also been bleak. 

In addition to the near-term fiscal crisis, we also have the longer-term challenges of increasing enrollment, building a stronger curriculum, fixing our school buildings, raising the bar on our educators and other improvements needed to attract and bring families back to SF public schools. This is not an easy task but one that is achievable, but we must start now. 

A good education is foundational to the future of our kids and a good public-school education is what we deserve to have here in San Francisco. Most of our children go to public schools and our families depend on our public schools to nurture, grow and set our children on the right path to college, vocational school and eventually to work and be competitive in the job market. We expect our public schools to have strong curriculums, competent educators, well-maintained school facilities, safe environments and an effective management team and Board. 

Here is what I believe is needed:

• Bring solutions that address the near-term fiscal crisis and longer-term growth.
  • Closing schools is not the only answer; it may make things worse and drive more families away from public schools. It may also make the existing schools more crowded and class sizes even larger. If we must consolidate schools, let us do it responsibly with input from educators/families so we have the benefit of their perspectives and needs.
  • We need to address the fiscal crisis this fiscal year and will need to make hard decisions in the near-term so that SFUSD survives; costs will need to be addressed:  indirect costs like supplier spend as well as position-control and organizational optimization.
  • In parallel, we will need to invest in the longer-term growth of enrollment, investing in schools, upgrading of our curriculum, and raising performance of educators.
• Increase enrollment and bring families back to SF public schools.
  • Assess the 125 schools in our district and really understand their needs. In business we always start with the customer in mind and work backwards to develop the right solutions. The SFUSD “customers” are the families, students, teachers, and schools. 
  • Develop the improvement areas for each school with the “customers.” This needs to be both a bottoms up and top-down assessment so that the best solutions can be developed. We need to do the hard work of understanding our “customers” first.
  • When we invest in our schools, they will be more competitive in the marketplace and families will come back to public schools.
• Invest in our schools and move resources from the administration to where it is needed – the schools.
  • There seems to be plenty of money in the budget and yet the money does not trickle down to the schools.
  • While enrollment has declined sharply, administration costs and budgets have increased.
  • Look for revenue sources and funding at the federal, state, and local levels; exhaust all options on revenue sources inclusive of grants and bonds. Our per pupil allocation by the State is not the highest; we can increase this through advocacy.
• Develop robust curriculum that brings back the basics of education and offers accelerated courses
  • Bring back many of the things we used to have like gifted programs, accelerated classes, merit-based admissions.
  • Start early with core subjects and foreign languages in elementary and middle schools.
  • Keep the language immersion programs; they are one of the reasons parents stay with SFUSD.
  • Raise the bar on performance for all schools and ensure that we challenge our students and not hold them back; they can and should accelerate. 
• Raise the bar of our educators.
  • Work with the administration and the union to retain and attract good teachers back to the school system.
  • Give educators a career path and leverage them as assets; they have ideas that we should listen to and incorporate.
• Really engage with parents and community in school improvements; they know the solutions and can help with implementation.
  • Visit and meet with schools, parents, teachers to truly understand their needs and ideas for improvement.
  • Involve them in the assessment of schools, idea generation and implementation; they are our most valued assets, and they can help.

I am running for the school board because we need someone like me that has the experience of solving the near-term fiscal crisis as well as to in parallel address the longer-term needs of the district. I am a parent, mother, and taxpayer in San Francisco. I have over 35 years of experience in solving problems collaboratively and I know how to get things done. This is what I do every day at work as the CEO of a successful healthcare company here in San Francisco. I have been a CEO for three organizations and have effectively turned them around. I will bring fiscal responsibility and operational excellence as well as experienced leadership to challenge the norm, manage various stakeholders’ needs, make hard decisions and effectively implement solutions.