Is the SF Parent Coalition Malicious or Incompetent?

San Francisco Parents at a Loss

With a delay in school closure announcements and questions about whether they’re even necessary to begin with, many look to SF Parent Coalition for guidance. But is the organization just another astroturf nonprofit funded by billionaires to ultimately undermine public schools?

The Boogeyman

In San Francisco, it’s not a secret that the school district is in trouble. Parents know changes are coming, even to the irrevocable and devastating point of school closures. 

Parents have heard these are necessary to avoid a state takeover. It’s the Boogeyman that shows up in SF Parent’s 501(c)3 Coalition and 501(c)4 Action messaging around closures. But the state, whose takeover might happen regardless, has not asked SFUSD to close schools, as Mission Local reports. 

The discussion around school closures has been happening since last year. Rhetoric has been all over the place and highly charged. But disappointingly and somewhat unexpectedly, SF Parent Coalition has treated it like a foregone conclusion from the jump. For an organization hellbent on reopening schools, it appears they are taking closures lying down.

So What Gives?

True grassroots parents groups are the antidote to ‘dark money’ evils like Moms For Liberty. To be the most effective, they “avoid repeating and thus reinforcing dark money rhetoric.” Just a note: Dark Money Rhetoric is hard to define in a liberal city like San Francisco; we don’t have a Don’t Say Gay bill on the table. It takes a fine-tuned ear to hear it. Great grassroots parents groups also focus on building culturally responsive, sustained education.

What’s the difference between grassroots and astroturf? We did a deep dive this summer, but if you need a refresher it comes down to the funding. SF Parents (the Coalition as well as their political arm, SF Parent Action) received $60,000 from Neighbors for a Better SF last year, which according to some would make them a branch of the astroturf network. Oddly, they’re also funded by everyone from the Chathams (who also donate to Tipping Point, mayoral candidate Daniel Lurie’s nonprofit) to Bilal Mahmood – and from NewSchools to Crankstart (the Michael Moritz money). 

Toothless

It’s unclear if the funding has anything to do with SF Parents’ slow-as-molasses and doomy rhetoric around what they say is necessary surgical removal of neighborhood schools. Let’s assume it isn’t; sometimes there’s no conspiracy.

When the Board of Education votes on whether to close schools (which, again, doesn’t save money or stop The Boogeyman), it will be one vote for an entire list, not individual schools. Like a toothless hound guarding a chicken coop, the Parent Coalition can howl but it’s unclear if they are able to mobilize their network, or frankly if they even want to. 

Meanwhile, SF Parent Coalition has allowed a fractious cacophony of independent neighborhoods and affinity groups who have begun circulating petitions to keep theirs, and only theirs, safe from the chopping block. And who is to blame them when there’s hardly any tangible action from an organization so powerful they hosted the education-focused mayoral debate this past Monday? 

The Debate

Executive Director Meredith Dodson says, “We’re not endorsing for this [mayoral] race, just for BOE.”  Still, the Board of Education and the Mayor are colleagues in a crisis. During the mayoral debate, the one candidate so far who has come out explicitly against closures, Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, said, “There doesn’t seem to be a lot of cost savings here.” Mark Farrell, Daniel Lurie, and Ahsha Safaí all say closures are necessary. Mayor London Breed, the other candidate who made overtures about restructuring being necessary but didn’t get into specifics, recently appointed Phil Kim to the Board of Education.

Peskin also shared he grew up in a district where his parents could help the district make good decisions. “I don’t see that…” he says in the recording of the debate. But isn’t that what SF Parent Coalition is for?

Not having your shit together isn’t a crime. If it was half of us would be locked up. But when you’re purporting to be the only voice that represents parents in a troubled school district, you’ve got to step up your game. 

Facebook Groups

It all started on Facebook, as most millennial Greek Tragedies do. In the spring of 2024, right after main round notifications, overwhelmed parents headed to SFUSD Lottery Support Group. It’s a seven-year-old Facebook community where parents turn for answers, guidance, and potential new classmates for their children. 

The group is highly active during lottery season – no, not the Shirley Jackson type of lottery; after failed desegregation and lawsuits, SFUSD incorporated an extremely cumbersome and notoriously botched lottery that decides where you get to send your child. But after placement, things die down in the lottery group. This spring, commenters directed concerned families to the “SFUSD Families Forum, by SF Parents” for non-lottery conversation. 

I Love Public Schools, Yes I Do. 

This spring, there was an opportunity to fundraise for the ever-so-eager (if a bit clumsy) organization by selling blue magnetic bumper stickers with “I Love my SF Public School” plastered on in lawn green letters. The website states that the proceeds go to schools without well-funded, organized PTAs, but it’s unclear which ones or how many there are.

* Disclosure: This writer helped the 501(C)3 sell a few bumper stickers that said “I Love my SF Public School” during the 2023-2024 school year before knowing more about the organization.

Parents took the magnets to their kids’ school and collected the cash. In a recent interview with Sad Francisco, Ali Collins (who was one of the recalled BOE members that SF Parents had in their bullseye) explains, “It’s very easy to mobilize people’s emotions when it comes to their kids.” For a short time, the signs were as ubiquitous as a Fnnch in some neighborhoods. 

There was little in the way of tracking sales, and no directions on keeping receipts. Offers to drop off any extras resulted in lots of back-and-forth and the leftovers are still sitting in a closet under this writer’s earthquake kit. Some (at least one) ended up being asked to send in a charitable donation to the organization on their website instead of dropping off the collected cash. 

Sidequests

The bumper stickers were the first foray into recruiting recruiters. In June, their community manager, Giovanna Soto, reached out to potential parent leads who had sold the stickers and might be willing to engage at a higher level. 

During one conversation with a potential school lead, she discussed the (ahem) exciting idea of the Parent Coalition getting an AI-powered bedtime story app. The idea was that parents could tap in and generate ideas for bedtime stories. The cost? Unclear. The benefit? Also a little unclear.

Since then, Soto says, “We were interested in exploring how this app could benefit families, and while the results look promising, we haven’t been able to get it launched. At this point, we’re uncertain how it may fit into our priorities for the school year. We might revisit it later if everything aligns, but for now, there’s nothing new to report.”  

In the meantime, the weekend update from known school-closer Dr. Matt Wayne came and went without any communication from SF Parents other than a Facebook post. SF Parents has a newsletter audience of 7000. The school district is failing to communicate, this much is true, but perhaps SF Parents was too focused on hosting their swanky mayoral debate to send a formal update. 

The debate, by the way, was supposed to be telecast and wasn’t; when asked on the evening of, Dodson responded bluntly, “Livestream didn’t work but we’re recording and will share in a couple days.” As educators know, tech can be tricky, but given the org’s foundation as a Reopen The Schools movement during the pandemic, the universe must have been pulling a prank on them. 

For Better or Worse

As the closure announcements inched closure, the organization reached out on Facebook to ask for commenters to share their “non-negotiables” regarding school closure. What wasn’t on the table? Not closing schools to begin with.

Dodson shared in her 3000+ strong Facebook group that, “We did not know about their plan to delay when we asked here for families’ non-negotiables last week, though we certainly had a sense of SFUSD’s lack of a strong plan. Which was a huge reason behind why we came to you for your feedback that we could bring to them. We sent them the document earlier today but we know they often have eyes on our forum and can see the chatter unfold. It definitely could’ve had an impact when they saw that thread, maybe they realized they weren’t ready.”

Balls are being dropped. It’s clear the district has problems. But is the organization that originally started to open schools up during a global pandemic and evolved into a political recall of BOE members ready to be agile and step in to take on the mantle of being the voice for all parents in San Francisco? Because once you’ve got the ears and eyes of the district, it’s irresponsible to not use that to advocate for SFUSD to halt their poor plans and stop fumbling this. Our kids are at stake.