Hi everyone! I’m Leslie Hu, Secretary at United Educators of San Francisco and longtime social worker and Community School coordinator, most recently at MLK Middle.
So much has happened in the last couple months and I wanted to take a moment to appreciate all the students, families, and educators who, through these tough times, as hard as they’ve been – and they’ve been rough – have continued to work hard, focus on learning, support each other, organize together, and stay hopeful about what’s possible in public education.
To that last point, we also wanted to take a moment to appreciate the Board of Education and especially Board President Matt Alexander and all the work he’s done to help steer our district to a more hopeful place. Not the final destination by any means, but a starting point where we can finally get serious about the process of fixing our district.
I think it’s important that we zoom out of what seemed like daily crises that left us frequently confused and frustrated to acknowledge that, under Matt Alexander’s leadership, the district is in a much better place now than it was two months ago when he took on the role.
And that’s not by accident. Matt deserves a ton of credit for holding the district accountable for its disastrous school closure plan, building bridges with Mayor Breed to bring in the School Stabilization Team, rallying the ideologically diverse school board to make the tough choice to accept the previous superintendent’s resignation and hire Maria Su, and staying focused through it all on what matters most – our students and their education.
As Mayor Breed said about Matt Alexander at this week’s press conference, “From day one, he has chosen to work with my office, my administration, and the stabilization team that we put together. And, in every instance, it has been about the students, it has been about the educators, it has been about trying to provide clarity of communication. And I appreciate being able to work with him to help us guide this ship during this very, very difficult time.”
UESF educators appreciate him too. Matt Alexander relied on his more than 20 years of experience in public education as a teacher, principal, community organizer, and school board member to dive into the weeds of the policy details and confront our district’s problems head on.
Matt Alexander is an experienced problem solver, and he’s been the right leader at the right time on the Board of Education, and we thank him for his commitment to the schools our students deserve.
