SFUSD Equity Audit Committee: Another Absolute Mess
Highly Touted Effort Is Still Being Pushed Hard
An Equity Audit of the SFUSD is indeed sorely needed. It’s too bad the current effort is completely broken in so many ways. Biased Committee selection. Inadequate translation. No minutes. No Committee leadership. Lack of a plan. Expectations of a certain result. Microaggressions galore.
The Superintendent search report highlighted a key strength of the District is its “commitment to social justice and equity.” Yet here we are a few weeks later with a complete ruse, an exclusive effort pretending to be inclusive.
A proper Equity Audit could really give a sober assessment as to the status of so many open questions across the 100+ schools in the District. Per that Superintendent search report, “The District and the Board needs to take a careful look at their current practices and approaches to ensure they are addressing the needs of all student groups in an equitable manner and are not creating greater divisions among subgroups in the school district.” Such an audit could provide a path forward to addressing some of these unfortunate findings.
We have this mess run by Deputy Superintendent Enikia Ford Marthel. And pushed forward warts and all by Board President Gabriela López and Commissioner Alison Collins.
Committee Membership. Committee Members were selected without applications and after the submission deadline. Now one Committee Member asks, “If our committee members have already come to a conclusion before we even start the audit work…what is the point of having this committee and conducting the audit?” Why bother auditing if we already know Lowell is racist. Except it’s not (I went there).
Translation in disarray. Translation for Spanish and Chinese monolingual parents are routinely not working. The published translation information was incorrect for one December meeting. For a January meeting, the dial in number was changed at the start of the meeting. Parents could not get access. I once watched Commissioner Alexander poorly translate (sorry, sir, but my Spanish might be better). Another Committee Member described the situation: “SFUSD put more road blocks to stop AAPI Chinese American families from engaging in these important meetings and discussions.”
The Auditor. The selected auditor is from the state of Kentucky, a state that the City of San Francisco recognizes it must not do business with because of restrictive abortion and anti-LGBTQ laws. This Kentucky group has performed one prior Equity Audit. But, sure, let’s give money to folks who exemplify every value we don’t hold here in San Francisco.
No records of prior meetings. Minutes of prior meetings? None. Video recordings? Promised but only a couple delivered this week. Repeated requests for such documents were ignored for months.
This whole Equity Audit fiasco is so tainted it is likely next in the long line of expensive SFUSD losing lawsuits.
So much lost time, lost effort, and lost money. The only way to do a real Equity Audit is to make a fresh start. Every family of the school district deserves a good process.