San Francisco mayor says ‘we failed our children’ after ouster of school board members

San Francisco Mayor London Breed (D) said on Sunday that the three school board members who were voted out of their positions were “focusing on other things,” adding that they did not address “the fact that our kids were not in the classroom.”

“It was really about the frustration of the Board of Education doing their fundamental job, and that is to make sure that our children are getting educated, that they get back into the classroom, and that did not occur,” Breed said during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” 

“We failed our children, parents were upset, the city as a whole was upset, and the decision to recall school board members was a result of that,” she said.

Breed also said that while a conversation around renaming schools and “conversations round changes to our school district” are essential, kids not being in classrooms was “what was most important.” 

WATCH: On @MTP San Francisco Mayor @LondonBreed says “we failed our children.”

“The Board of Education … was focusing on other things that was clearly a distraction. … What was most important was the fact that our kids were not in the classroom.” pic.twitter.com/bIFb1taOuR

— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) February 20, 2022

Board President Gabriela López and Commissioners Faauuga Moliga and Alison Collins were voted out of office last week.

Parents were reportedly frustrated that their children were still in remote learning, despite county and state approval of a shift back to in-person learning, which resulted in multiple lawsuits against the board to reopen. 

The board also wanted to rename 44 schools amid a racial reckoning.

In addition, the district moved to end merit-based admissions at an elite high school where Asian Americans hold the majority after old tweets from Collins were unearthed where she reportedly said Asians Americans used “white supremacist” thinking to get ahead of Black students.