I’ve watched the San Francisco Board of Education (SFBoE) for years. But one of the first active roles I took involved the general obligation bond and the lack of oversight. Let me start at the beginning, because this is really about the students.
For the last twenty years, San Franciscans have allowed the SFBoE to issue bonds—borrow money—to improve our schools. The most recent bond (often called “Prop A”) was approved by voters in 2016. It gave the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) $745M for a bunch of projects.
Over time, the money got shifted around some. For example, the SFBoE “reallocated” the $100M for the District Arts Center to other projects, including $40M for Buena Vista Horace Mann. The $100M for “new school construction” was earmarked for schools in Mission Bay and Bayview, but the Bayview project got unceremoniously dropped back in 2020.
Part of the deal of getting this money was that the SFBoE would form a “citizen’s bond oversight committee” (CBOC) to make sure SFUSD was spending the money wisely. The SFBoE failed to form the CBOC (despite telling investors it had) for three years. That’s where I started raising my hand and demanding action. That’s when I really started paying attention to the way SFUSD is spending our money.
And our future money. SFUSD has long talked about a 2022 bond. It needed $1B to finish the work started by the 2016 bond. That’s not going to happen. And here’s why.
In February 2020, our Chief Facilities Officer (CFO) Dawn Kamalanathan stressed to SFBoE’s Buildings & Grounds committee (B&G) the importance of meeting the 2022 timing. She told us it would avoid stagnant projects and the risk of having to “dismantle” the whole program. Here's the slide she presented:
And here’s what she said:
You can also see that … a lot of these projects wrap up in late 2020. And what that means is that we have downtime in the program. Essentially, we've got staff, we've got the infrastructure set up to deliver projects, but there isn't funding needed to actually work on projects in that time. I'm going to talk to you about some ideas I have about how to smooth out that workflow, because you don't want to dismantle your entire bond program the year before you go to the ballot. It's a bad idea, we need these folks to help us plan the work, figure out what we'll be doing. And also, it's a lot of work to build these teams and pull together the infrastructure and division.
It's true. I’m a general contractor. I know all too well the importance of timing and funding on large projects.
But if that wasn’t enough, Ms. Kamalanathan had another reason for getting the 2022 bond done: the City needed SFUSD to meet that date because lots of agencies in San Francisco need money. So the City times the requests to voters. And it held open November 2022 for SFUSD.
Here’s what Ms. Kamalanathan had to say about that:
We actually work quite closely with the city and county of San Francisco, to try and coordinate our bond cycles to make sure that we're not crowding them, and they're not crowding us. And so right now, if you look at the City's 10-year capital plan, the 2022 November ballot is empty and their plan because we plan to be on it. And we've signaled that to place a ballot.
It’s true. The City held open November 2022 for SFUSD.
But before SFUSD could get on ballot, a few things needed to happen. At a minimum, we needed to do a “facilities condition assessment.”
What’s that? An “FCA” is a top-down look at our schools. How’s the roof? How’s the boiler? How’s the playground?
Let’s do that! But timing was critical. Ms. Kamalanathan told B&G that to place a bond “before voters in November 2022, you have to basically have all your work completed by…late spring 2022.”
That did not happen.
Ms. Kamalanathan hemmed and hawed. “We’ll do the FCA in February 2021.” Then, “we’ll do this in April 2021.” Then “by August.”
And Mr. Moliga—chair of B&G—didn’t seem to care. “Sounds good, sounds good” he said.
Here’s the bottom line: our 2022 bond went away because the SFBoE and SFUSD didn’t bother to get it done.
Who gets screwed? Our kids. There is no money for this:
Sorry kids, those projects are off the table.
And this:
Unless you’re BVHM, you remain unfunded for years.
The SFBoE and SFUSD have failed our kids. They’ve squandered money. They’ve ignored the real issues. And they’ve burnt through $750M. How can we give this Board more money?