Mayor London Breed is putting pressure on the San Francisco Unified School District, slamming schools over their decision to rename dozens of schools instead of reopening.
“Today I issued a statement on the need for our School District to focus on reopening our public schools, not renaming them. To address inequities, we need to get our kids back in the classroom,” she tweeted alongside an image of her official statement.
COVID-19 health orders allowed schools to reopen in September, but the majority of public schools have remained closed, while many private schools have reopened their doors.
San Francisco currently has approximately 11,904 cases of COVID-19 and of those, 133 people have died.
“As a City, we have provided the school district $15 million from our general fund for support during this pandemic, opened Community Hubs to help our students with learning under adult supervision, and our Department of Public Health has worked with the District and provided guidance on how to safely reopen. I know this isn’t easy, I know there are tough choices to be made, but the School District and the Board of Education need to do what needs to be done to get our kids back in school,” Breed writes.
“And now, in the midst of this once in a century challenge, to hear that the District is focusing energy and resources on renaming schools — schools that they haven’t even opened — is offensive,” she charged.
“It’s offensive to parents who are juggling their children’s daily at-home learning schedules with doing their own jobs and maintaining their sanity. It’s offensive to me as someone who went to our public schools, who loves our public schools, and who knows how those years in the classroom are what lifted me out of poverty and into college. It’s offensive to our kids who are staring at screens day after day instead of learning and growing with their classmates and friends.”
