Like most people who leave the city they grew up in and build a life somewhere else, I did not pay much attention to my hometown school board — until the barrage of bad decisions out of San Francisco became so extreme that I couldn’t turn away.
Voters there clearly felt the same. In a landslide Tuesday, they threw three San Francisco Unified school board members out of office in the city’s first recall election in nearly 40 years.
It was one in a wave of school board recalls that have taken place across the country during the pandemic, as parents everywhere deal with the frustrations of school closures, masking requirements and what feels like never-ending uncertainty. But every election is unique, and I don’t think this one is simply a backlash against COVID-19 or a repudiation of progressive politics. It shows what’s possible in a city where residents are hyper-politically active and elected officials demonstrate extreme ineptitude — ignoring the pleas of their constituents over and over again.
