RECALL: San Fran Parents Revolt Against Woke Agenda

By canadastock @ Shutterstock.com

In San Francisco, voters have chosen to recall a trio of “woke” school board members who spent the COVID era ignoring efforts to get kids back in school. Instead, they focused their efforts on renaming schools to cancel such supposed villains as Abraham Lincoln and even Dianne Feinstein. The LA Times reports:

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.

First came the school board’s move in January 2021 to rename 44 schools based on an embarrassing dearth of research. The goal was to advance equity by removing names of historical figures linked to slavery and colonialism. But instead of consulting scholars, the school board backed recommendations made by a committee whose research sources included Wikipedia, the History Channel website and erroneous interpretations of local news sites. The committee got important facts wrong about some of the people whose names it wanted to wipe from the schools — “embarrassing, avoidable, and credibility-destroying errors,” local columnist Joe Eskenazi wrote at the time.

“This is what you get when you perfunctorily cut-and-paste material from sources that would not be acceptable for a junior high school oral report, and then misstate and misinterpret even that paltry material,” he wrote.

The board also wanted to rename schools honoring Abraham Lincoln, who ended slavery, and U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who was the first woman to become mayor of San Francisco and the first woman elected senator of California. Why Feinstein? Because when she was mayor in the 1980s, the city replaced a vandalized Confederate flag in front of City Hall — though she eventually replaced it with a Union flag. Many people spoke out against renaming Feinstein Elementary, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Nevertheless, the board decided it would get a new name.

A day after reading about the renaming debacle, I came across a video clip [embedded below] in which a student from my high school spoke during a late-night school board meeting about the difficulty of learning on Zoom. On the verge of tears, she begged for clarity about whether students would be able to return to campus.

“For lack of a better word at this hour of the night, you need to cut the crap and just tell us,” the student said. “Give us a little bit more help.”

I’ve been reporting on school reopening in SF and want to elevate this clip.

Listen to a senior at Lowell HS as she pleas with @SFUnified to “cut the crap” and say definitively whether she and her classmates will be returning to in-person learning this school year. (1/3) pic.twitter.com/3qPJzylTIv

— Sophie Bearman (@stbearman) January 29, 2021

Action Line: San Francisco politicians need to remember who they work for. It isn’t George Soros, it’s residents. Your Survival Guy calls the states looking at their residents like valued customers Super States. Those looking at their residents like a piggy bank from which to withdraw money, like California, are the Escape States. If you are serious about making the move from an Escape State to a Super State, but can’t get going on your goal, I can help. Click here to subscribe to my free monthly Survive & Thrive letter, and I’ll help you break inertia and achieve your goal of freedom. But only if you’re serious.

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E.J. Smith - Your Survival Guy

E.J. Smith is Founder of YourSurvivalGuy.com, Managing Director at Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd., a Managing Editor of Richardcyoung.com, and Editor-in-Chief of Youngresearch.com. His focus at all times is on preparing clients and readers for “Times Like These.” E.J. graduated from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with a B.S. in finance and investments. In 1995, E.J. began his investment career at Fidelity Investments in Boston before joining Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd. in 1998. E.J. has trained at Sig Sauer Academy in Epping, NH. His first drum set was a 5-piece Slingerland with Zildjians. He grew-up worshiping Neil Peart (RIP) of the band Rush, and loves the song Tom Sawyer—the name of his family’s boat, a Grady-White Canyon 306. He grew up in Mattapoisett, MA, an idyllic small town on the water near Cape Cod. He spends time in Newport, RI and Bartlett, NH—both as far away from Wall Street as one could mentally get. The Newport office is on a quiet, tree lined street not far from the harbor and the log cabin in Bartlett, NH, the “Live Free or Die” state, sits on the edge of the White Mountain National Forest. He enjoys spending time in Key West (RIP JB) and Paris. Please get in touch with E.J. at ejsmith@yoursurvivalguy.com To sign up for my free monthly Survive & Thrive letter, click here.

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