Accomplishments

Here are my second term accomplishments:

2013: As President of the Board, I worked with the staff and Board to align our new Superintendent’s evaluation to district goals, and kick off the Vision 2025 process to engage stakeholders across the city in a collective vision for the future of our schools. I also convened several Board retreats to improve our internal communication and norms of behavior.

2014: Commissioner Fewer and I urged a new stance on student assignment, proposing a minor change to the order of preferences that would encourage prioritizing local schools in our school choice process. We spent almost a year analyzing the proposal in committee, and though it was ultimately voted down 4-3, an important conversation on equity in student assignment continues today as a direct result of our advocacy.

2015: The Board unanimously passed my proposal to align movies, television shows and other video content shown in class to clear academic standards. After hearing about, for example, biology classes watching the entire film “The Lion King” as a proxy for instruction, I knew the Board needed to weigh in with additional guidance and direction. In addition, Commissioner Matt Haney and I co-sponsored a resolution to end out-of-district admissions at the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts and encourage the school to look more broadly at its procedures and policies to encourage access, equity and diversity within the context of a competitive-entry arts high school. Finally, after hearing concerns from parents about the district’s implementation of our new math policy, I was able to secure additional resources to lower class size and improve teacher support in middle school math classes.

2016: Commissioner Fewer and I co-authored “Expanding Access to Mandarin and Other World Languages,” which will pilot Mandarin world language instruction in elementary school. That resolution passed unanimously in early February. We also introduced “Encouraging Students to Exercise Their Voting Rights,” which draws attention to the fact that students as young as 16 can, under California law, pre-register to vote. This is an important provision, because research has shown that voting is a habit, and voter pre-registration increases the likelihood that young people will vote once they are eligible. I have more plans: we need to do more to support teachers so that they can afford to stay in San Francisco and will want to teach at some of our neediest schools. Finally, I continue to closely monitor math achievement and the implementation of our math sequence. I have heard a lot from parents, mostly concerns about whether students will be competitive for college, and I’m committed to addressing those concerns.