San Francisco Progressive Parents Form Group to Counter Conservative Education Discourse

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Another San Francisco education advocacy group has joined the chat.

Resisting recalls and privatization, a group of local progressives associated with Bernie Sanders’ organization Our Revolution formed a group dedicated to education. Announced on Monday, the SF Education Alliance identifies as “proudly left, anti-racist, anti-fascist, anti-carceral, pro-union.”

Organizers say the group formed primarily to prevent the privatization of public schools, advocating a fully funded school system for both K-12 schools and City College of San Francisco.

Although the alliance is local, it also intends to campaign for a statewide defense of Proposition 13 reform, the 1978 California property tax measure that is detrimental to education funding, and push for a wealth tax.

Noah Sloss, a San Francisco public school parent and organizer of the group, cited the reactionary politics that have erupted in the city since 2020 as a spur to the alliance. Covid caused controversy over school closures, equity initiatives and ultimately led to the firing of three school board members.

“It’s a response to what’s been going on with education in the city over the last year or so, especially around the recall,” Sloss told The Standard. “We view public education as political in nature. We see that education needs fundamental changes.”

Sloss said the education alliance has no current plans to nominate candidates or campaign in local elections. Instead, the group seeks to make policy change by educating and engaging community members.

It also aims to be an active group around schools and youth more broadly. Recently, education policy in America has turned to the right. Conservative groups dominate the discourse, aggressively banning books and curricula dealing with racism, sexuality, and gender, especially in Florida.

“We are not immune to these national trends and movements,” Sloss said. “Public education is one of the few parts of life that has not been destroyed and privatized. You always have to be very vigilant.”

Sloss said the team is keeping a close eye on Oakland, which has decided to close several schools that have been largely redesigned under the new council, but the fate of those campuses is still unclear.

Student Council member Alida Fischer, who has declared herself an ally of the group, was scheduled to formally introduce the group at the Our Revolution virtual meeting on Monday.

“This is a perfect example of why this defense is so important and should be bigger than San Francisco,” Fisher said. “A lot of the work and the call to action will be to figure out how we’re pulling back from a national perspective on these really conservative narratives that we’re seeing.”

At the local level, moderate education groups that formed during the pandemic in support of the recalls are increasingly infiltrating the campaign environment. The SF Parents Coalition, a non-profit group formerly known as Reduce Distance that pushed for schools to reopen, supported the candidates and the 2022 recall. Most recently, it has been looking for candidates for a boot camp program to recruit potential candidates for the Board of Education, which has four seats to vote in November 2024.

The couple behind the historic and well-funded school board recall last February, renamed the SF Guardians, opened an academy earlier this month to educate people to “make change through the political process.” State Senator Scott Weiner, former Supervisor Matt Gonzalez, and Supervisor Joel Engardio, who were heavily involved in the recall, will be ready to train newcomers to politics.

“People who run things well don’t always win elections well,” SF Guardian co-founder Siva Raj said in a press release. “Our goal is to find the former and teach them the latter so they can win elections and run our city much better.”

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