San Francisco school board incumbent Phil Kim has won reelection, holding an insurmountable lead as ballots continued to be tallied, while two other board seats remained too close to call. Eight candidates competed for three seats on the seven-member board, with full results expected in the coming days before winners take office in January.
The outcome, reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, shows Tim Tung in second place and Autumn Brown Garibay in third, with Virginia Cheung trailing just behind them. Ryan Hazelton, Reina Tello, Alida Fisher and Laurence Lee were all reported further back in the field. Cheung, Hazelton and Tello had each secured the local teachers union's endorsement heading into the race, according to the Chronicle.
As of a 9:45 p.m. update Tuesday, only 151 of the city's 514 precincts had reported in-person results, according to the San Francisco Department of Elections, which cautioned that the figures are preliminary. The department said certification of final results could take up to 30 days after Election Day.
A Board Facing Consolidation and Assignment Fights
Whoever fills out the board will inherit decisions on whether to close or merge schools amid declining enrollment, as well as the fate of a newly approved push toward neighborhood-based student assignment. On October 13, the board voted 5-2 to direct the district to develop a system for assigning students to elementary schools based on their home addresses, according to San Francisco Unified School District. That system would take effect in October 2027 and apply to students enrolling for the 2028-2029 school year and beyond, replacing the district's lottery-based approach.
Kim staked out a middle position on school consolidation in comments reported by KQED, which lists him as the board's president. “SFUSD needs to consolidate schools, it should not and cannot be through a mass closure process,” Kim said. He added that the board must make difficult decisions while remaining focused on improving student outcomes and providing excellent schools in every neighborhood, and said limited resources cannot continue to be spread across a system misaligned with enrollment realities.
KQED framed the race against a backdrop of district efforts to find stability after a historic strike, budget hardships and enrollment decline. The outlet's voter guide also noted that declining enrollment has led administrators and fiscal experts to raise the possibility that the district might need to reduce its footprint, or close and merge schools, as overall enrollment keeps falling.
Echoes of the 2022 Recall
The contest unfolded four years after San Francisco voters recalled school board President Gabriela López and board members Faauuga Moliga and Alison Collins on February 15, 2022. At the time, there was also a separate effort to recall then-District Attorney Chesa Boudin.
Mission Local took a different approach to covering this year's race, posing one question to each of the eight candidates and publishing their answers on a weekly basis ahead of Tuesday's election, according to the outlet.
Separately, the U.S. Department of Justice has said its Civil Rights Division launched a compliance review concerning instruction on sexual orientation and gender ideology in grades pre-K-12 at SFUSD and three other California districts, Graves Elementary, Santa Rita Union and Soledad Unified, according to the department.
