I was recently listening to a Clubhouse discussion sponsored by GrowSF, in which members interviewed Supervisor Asha Safaí. GrowSF is a concerned citizens group that is pushing on a number of fronts to improve San Francisco city governance. This discussion was centered on the Board of Education and school reopening.
I am not going to waste time recounting the numerous controversies surrounding this body. It’s a mess. The notion that it needs some kind of reform has created an unlikely coalition across San Francisco’s far- to center-left political spectrum. The devil is in the details, though.
We need to think through all the permutations for reform and what the various political incentives are for the principal actors. The game theory involved here vaguely suggests to me that any change is likely to be sub-optimal - but it needs more consideration and likely will become clearer later. So put a pin in that for now.
On the topic of reform, Supervisor Safaí suggested that creating district elections for the Board of Education might be a good solution. He did not, as far as I recall, say anything about using Ranked Choice Voting (RCV).
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Sidebar on the current arrangement: the Board is meant to be elected on an at-large basis for staggered four year terms (unless a vacancy arises), with four elected in one cycle and three elected two years later. Everyone in the city gets to vote on the same candidates, unlike the Board of Supervisors election where your ballot only lets you vote for those members running in the district you live in. Also, the Board of Supervisors election is decided by RCV while the Board of Education election is not.
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I am not going to waste time recounting the numerous controversies surrounding this body. It’s a mess. The notion that it needs some kind of reform has created an unlikely coalition across San Francisco’s far- to center-left political spectrum. The devil is in the details, though.
We need to think through all the permutations for reform and what the various political incentives are for the principal actors. The game theory involved here vaguely suggests to me that any change is likely to be sub-optimal - but it needs more consideration and likely will become clearer later. So put a pin in that for now.
On the topic of reform, Supervisor Safaí suggested that creating district elections for the Board of Education might be a good solution. He did not, as far as I recall, say anything about using Ranked Choice Voting (RCV).
—
Sidebar on the current arrangement: the Board is meant to be elected on an at-large basis for staggered four year terms (unless a vacancy arises), with four elected in one cycle and three elected two years later. Everyone in the city gets to vote on the same candidates, unlike the Board of Supervisors election where your ballot only lets you vote for those members running in the district you live in. Also, the Board of Supervisors election is decided by RCV while the Board of Education election is not.
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Supervisor Safaí‘s suggestion is, I think, a very bad one. I’ll state up front that my preferred approach would be to eliminate elections for this body entirely and have the mayor appoint them. For the sake of argument though, let’s give some consideration to the district election proposal.
Arguments for:
- Electing someone to represent your geographic area gives you “one throat to choke.” Board members are meant to act in the broad public interest but have a special obligation to their district. If the Board is a shit show, you know who to call.
- Voters will be more attentive to selecting good people to represent their neighborhood, which will help solve the pitiful amount of voting for these offices (speculative). For context, in the latest election, people who actually voted left 36% of the selections blank and the top vote getter only got 17.5% of the votes that were cast.
- The mayor shouldn’t have the right to appoint the Board of Education, they are powerful enough (?). This is really an argument against other reforms, so is less potent than an affirmative argument. I am also not sure it’s true. One thing to note: San Francisco is on the “strong mayor” model. Some cities are more parliamentarian, while others are more presidential. SF is the latter, in which the mayor has relative autonomy over a number of functions and appointments, and can even introduce legislation before the Board of Supervisors. We can debate just how powerful Mayor Breed is in practice, but the argument here would be that Mayor Breed has enough authority as it is. You can imagine Supervisor Safaí being receptive to this argument.
Arguments Against:
- Election districts are incongruous with the way public education is organized in SF. San Francisco has a unified school district - it’s one district for the entire city, which is itself also the county. What’s more, school assignments are on a lottery system, so kids might attend a public school nowhere near their election district.
- A district model actually gives voters less voting power. As mentioned above, half the Board turns over every two years. If you are a voter, you get to cast three or four votes for the Board depending on the election year. Presumably, a district would only send a single candidate. Even in an RCV model, there is still one winner per district. If you think this is an improvement, then why not go all the way and remove voter power entirely?
- Elected school boards appear to be less decisive. This is a pandemic lesson. Boston, Chicago, Washington, D.C. and New York City all have unelected Boards of Education. All of them reopened schools faster than San Francisco. We can speculate as to why this is the case. My guess: boards are less likely to dither when they serve at the pleasure of city officials rather than in a locked-in term where being recalled is extremely difficult.
- It is not obvious that a district election model will insulate the Board of Education against capture by machine politics. It is a truism that most candidates for the Board of Education are put forward by various political and activist organizations. I would like to believe the members are genuinely committed to student success, but the board is a pit stop on the way to higher office for many. It’s a proving ground, and so ideological preening is rewarded as much (or more) than administrative competence. What reason is there to believe that a district model would change this? I struggle to come up with a mechanism.
- Voters are not going to be less ignorant about the candidates in a district model (speculative). I am somewhat cynical by nature, so discount appropriately. Anecdotally, I can say that while being a pollworker in the November election, the vast amount of under votes were for municipal offices, particularly the Board of Supervisors election. It was the last page of a four page ballot which, in typical California fashion, had lots of state and local ballot measures. Maybe people were just tired by the end and/or didn’t care.
This is what I got so far. I need to do a better job brainstorming arguments in favor of the district model. Cognitive bias is hard. I’ll keep noodling on this and I suspect lots of arguments are to come from all factions once other more pressing crises are addressed. Students are starting to go back next week.
- Cameron Parker