Collins took allies on a journey with lawsuit fail

Righting injustices or angling for Board Presidency?

Well that was quick. Four days early, Federal Judge Haywood Gilliam Jr. published his order in Case no. 21-cv-02272-HSG: Plaintiff Alison Collins vs. Defendants San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) and 5 San Francisco Board of Education (SFBoE) Commissioners. By granting the defendant’s order to dismiss, the $87 million lawsuit and the injunction to return Collins to Board Vice President are off the table.

Looking back, Collins took her allies on quite a journey. She filed an $87 million lawsuit that, if successful, likely would have made many of her supporters jobless. She made eyebrow raising allegations about her fellow Commissioners. And for what? Her signed declaration strongly appeared to point to a desire for the position of Board President.

Figure 1: Commissioner Alison Collins (source: https://www.sfusd.edu)

That March Board Meeting in another light

By a 5-2 vote, the SFBoE stripped Commissioner Collins of her Board Vice President role as well as her roles on all of the Board Committees on March 25, 2021. Commissioners Matt Alexander, Kevine Boggess, and Mark Sanchez joined Resolution sponsors Commissioners Jenny Lam and Faauuga Moliga in voting in the affirmative. Board President Gabriela López and then Vice President Collins voted against.

Figure 2: Portion of SFUSD Resolution No. 213-25A1

For a while, the fate of Resolution No. 213-25A1 was unclear. Over 50 of the more than 650 participants at that Special Board Meeting spoke their thoughts in Public Comment, often in passionate personal terms. Collins’s many champions recommended an alternate course of restorative practice, applied in many district schools.

An hour into the afternoon Zoom meeting, the Commissioners took their turn at the mic. Moliga brought up the heartbreaking pain in communities and encouraged Collins to resign before the vote, as so many in the city endorsed. Lam echoed the sadness expressed by the public speakers and other Commissioners. She noted that Collins “…only made vague reference to possibly joining a restorative practice.”

But the votes from the non-Asian American Pacific Islanders (AAPI) Commissioners would decide the Resolution’s fate. Of those Commissioners, Alexander summarized their sentiments best:

“But I feel like this is a really sad day for our city. I think the way we've collectively handled this whole situation with the tweets from 2016 is a failure…And I think instead we've allowed it to further divide our community. And just even the reflection of public comment tonight: the emails we've gotten, it's just all on one side or another. And kind of it makes me sad that no one was able to sort of broker some kind of other process up to now…

So the resolution this past weekend, I advocated for more time for Commissioner Collins, to make amendments. I felt like it was very rushed, and I had hope. And I still in many ways, have hope that a restorative practice would be possible so that we could all take a different path here.

I've been involved in a lot of restorative practices. And in my experience, restorative justice has to begin with the person doing the harm. Being willing to ask for forgiveness, kind of acknowledging that harm. And sometimes that's really hard. And sometimes it requires a lot of support. And again, that's why I wish, perhaps, folks had been able to support and broker that process in some way.”

Figure 3: Commissioner Matt Alexander (source: https://www.mattalexandersf.org/about)

Collins, visibly distraught, responded by attacking the process. “The intent and the purpose of this resolution and the urgent and irregular manner in which it has been conceived and presented raises several questions and concerns for me,” she stated. Lopez later concurred with the account.

In another light, with the benefit of hindsight, Collins may have already put a plan in action. While her supporters and fellow Commissioners sought restorative practice, she demonstrated no real interest in that path.

“Solidarity Rally” or announcement to sue

Less than a week after that vote, several groups organized a self-advertised “Solidarity Rally” to support Collins, on March 31. “We are calling for leaders and allies in the AAPI community to stand with us in support of a restorative process which humanizes all,” began the online invitation. Another online invitation had a photo of Collins in front of the word “SOLIDARITY” repeated 7 times. The listed organizers described themselves as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), SF Black Wall Street, San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) Educators, Parents, and Students.

Figure 4: A portion of the online invitation to the March 31 Rally supporting Collins

The event was only partly as advertised. Several speakers of AAPI and non-AAPI descent defended Collins as their own and expressed solidarity with Collins and each other in front of a row of cameras. A restorative process, however, was mentioned only glancingly. Instead several speakers pilloried Board Commissioners for their vote on the Resolution.

Figure 5: Commissioner Collins and supporters at her Solidarity Rally, March 31, 2021 (source: Instagram feed of bivett)

The latter half of the event was completely devoted to an announcement of a legal action. Amos Brown, President of the SF NAACP, addressing “our counsel” and other city citizens, thundered that the SFBoE Resolution was a “high-tech lynching… in the darkness of night” for removing Collins of her roles.

SF Black Wall Street Co-Founder Bivett Brackett next introduced the first in a line up of suited men. Peter Cohn, attorney of the SF NAACP, decribed how they responded to the “spiritual lynching” of Collins by putting out a request for “Champions in the Courts” to help bring her justice.

Attorney David Anderson spoke next. After he introduced himself as one of Collins’s legal team, he laid out the outlines of an effort to obtain courtroom justice: freedom of speech and the 14th Amendment, or due process.

Bonner, civil rights attorney, described the goal. In 7 days, they wanted Collins back in her multiple seats as well as a Board-written apology acknowledging that Collins’s words were not racist. If the Board did not comply, he produced a pithy couplet: “I sue people who screw people.”

Figure 6: Collins’s lead attorney Charles Bonner gesticulates in front of SF NAACP President Amos Brown

Clearly the door to pursuing a restorative process was shut, absent the explicit statement. And indeed, Collins was doing what she believed was necessary to continue her unfinished educational equity agenda. If that meant suing a cash-strapped district for millions, and mischaracterizing the statements of her fellow Commissioners, she barreled down that path. President López stood by her side.

Figure 7: Board President López, Commissioner Collins, attorney Charles Bonner, and an unidentified party (source: https://www.youtube.com)

The Price for Spiritual Injury

That legal team did file the complaint that morning of the rally. Her goals were as Bonner described: restoration of her seats or damages of $87 million from the SFUSD.

Notably, as Board Commissioner for 2.5 years, Collins has herself made that multi-million sum hard to find in the budget. She approved the annual expenditures that exacerbated the SFUSD budget imbalance. In that short period, the SFUSD spent down tens of millions in the rainy day fund, suffered two bond downgrades, and brought itself to the face of a $112 million structural deficit.

Though the SFUSD has paid out smaller judgment sums in the recent past, this $87 million sum scaled to roughly a thousand teacher salaries. For those Collins supporters paid by SFUSD as teachers or district staff, a financial win for Collins would mean a pay cut or pink slip for many.

The lawyers were doing their role. The complaint covered federal violations of her freedom of speech, her right to liberty and property without due process, and 4 state claims. They had to put a value to Cohn’s phrase of “spiritual injury to her soul,” amongst other harms, losses, damages and injuries “as far and wide as infinity of the internet’s world wide web.”

Figure 8: Portion of Collins’s Complaint highlighting claimed harms, injuries, losses, and damages

Commissioners Mischaracterized

Where Collins and legal team may have gone too far was in how they mischaracterized the other Board Commissioners. Lam and Moliga were described as co-conspirators with Diane Yap, the individual who had rediscovered the 2016 Collins tweets. Boggess was overlooked as Collins was described as “the only Black person on the Board.” That Resolution No. 213-25A1 was described as “slander(ing) her as a racist” when it really contained more nuanced and less inflammatory language.

In response, the defendant Commissioners likely approved their lawyer’s choice of words when she wrote about the “Plaintiff’s attempt to play fast and loose with the facts.” That same document also had harsh words about the claim of restricting Collins’s First Amendment rights: “Tellingly, while Plaintiff is complaining about her own free speech rights she is seeking to shut down the free speech rights of others.”

Figure 9: Portion of Defendant’s Opposition

Moliga, one of Collins’s reliable votes on her equity resolutions, was specifically targeted after he won the vote to take over the Vice President role. Collins declared in a signed statement that Moliga “…has a history of undermining female Commissioners leadership” and shows “what appears to be some inherent bias against women in positions of authority.”

She provided her interpretation of the Resolution and nomination of Moliga: “Defendants Lam and Moliga drafted the resolution to remove me and have positioned themselves to be next in line. This blatant power grab indicates they understand the real and perceived value of the office.”

Indeed, Collins’s ambitions appear laid bare when she declared, “Despite a record of achievement in my role as Vice President, the Board’s action now means it is extremely unlikely I will be President of the Board during my term in office.”

She declared the truth of those statements on penalty of perjury.

Figure 10: Portion of Collins’s Declaration

She said / She said on Brown Act violation

López, not included in the list of defendants, had a key role to play in one of Collins’s earliest and more frequently cited complaints. In her signed declaration, Collins repeated the claim that Lam and Moliga may have violated the Brown Act for public notice when they put forth the Resolution.

Esther Casco, longtime SFUSD employee, also gave a declaration under penalty of perjury. One of Casco’s jobs is to post the agenda for Board meetings. Her declaration read:

“On March 24, 2021, more than 24 hours before the March 25, 2021 special meeting, President Lopez informed me to expect a Resolution from Boardmembers Lam and Moliga and that the Resolution should be added to the special meeting agenda. President Lopez further informed me that the Resolution should be added to the March 25, 2021 agenda as well as a motion to suspend the Board’s Rules and Procedures as to the timing of the Resolution.”

Thus while the actions may have been followed, the key part came down to the conversation between López and Casco. She said / she said. The accusation appears ultimately unproveable. Notably damning to Collins’s version is that nobody filed a Brown Act dispute, even given a long 90 day window to contest.

What is next

Last school year was unusual. This school year already has many big items on tap: the budget deficit and superintendent search top the list. Given the judge’s order, Collins may continue to pursue California state concerns. For the sake of the SFUSD budget, already strained relations, and a prior year of tumult, prudence encourages that this matter be put to rest.

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