SFUSD Parent Advisory Council Appointments

Families for San Francisco believes that diverse representation on the SFUSD school board’s Parent Advisory Committee (PAC) is vitally important.  The lack of diversity within existing PAC membership and as reflected in the newest slate of appointments, especially for dads, is a major issue and concern.  

We urge the Board of Education to put in the work for a truly diverse PAC with proportionate membership across ALL identities, including gender, regardless of political ideology. The commissioners’ explicit blocking of the PAC’s unanimous recommendation of the only potential male volunteer (who also openly identified as a member of the LGBTQ community), citing a “lack of diversity,” raises questions about the purpose and role of a board-appointed PAC and the definition of diversity itself:

• Is the board willing to fill the open seats with members that truly represent the diversity of San Francisco? 

• Does the board consider thought diversity to be a component of diversity? 

• Isn’t the point of diversity to foster the inclusion of different backgrounds, viewpoints, and experiences to make discussions and decisions richer, fuller, and therefore more democratic?  

We also note that by blocking the unanimous recommendations of the PAC for its first and only dad, humiliating him live during a recorded BOE meeting and neglecting to issue any kind of formal apology or restorative meeting with this individual, the SFUSD Board of Education continues to show its inability and downright refusal to work productively with parents who are willing to volunteer. 

The incessant politicization of public education and the board’s refusal to genuinely seek out input from all types of parenting has now driven many of them to turn to other organizing groups. We urge the Board of Education to keep the PAC apolitical to regain the trust of the public. This starts with appointing a slate of PAC members who have demonstrated political neutrality, as opposed to being overtly politically aligned with certain commissioners’ ideology.