Subject Matter

Faculty Board member Ann Hsu’s feedback had been indefensible. They’re additionally political malpractice.



No first rate particular person is defending mayoral faculty board appointee Ann Hsu’s feedback on race. So, don’t really feel the necessity. She definitely doesn’t; she’s apologized, and her supporters declare she’s off on a grand apology tour. 

It has, to date, been the Ford Pinto of apology excursions; the NAACP, on July 22, met with Hsu in particular person and then proceeded to vote, 105-0, to name on her to resign from the college board. Final week, the native Democratic Get together adopted swimsuit.

Hsu didn’t return our many calls to a number of cellphone numbers.  

Ethically, if not all the time strategically, it’s good to apologize after you’ve mentioned or executed one thing indefensible. However the act of apologizing, in and of itself, doesn’t earn one absolution. The NAACP members I spoke with appreciated Hsu’s acknowledgement of wrongdoing and her pledge to enhance herself. However they’d admire her doing this whereas not serving on the oversight board of a college district that’s plurality Black and Latinx.   

So, that’s the place we’re.

However first, the specifics. Query No. 5 on a San Francisco Mother or father Motion type for Board of Training candidates operating in November’s election requested “How can SFUSD improve tutorial outcomes for essentially the most marginalized college students?” Hsu answered: 

From my very restricted publicity up to now 4 months to the challenges of training marginalized college students particularly within the black and brown neighborhood, I see one of many greatest challenges as being the shortage of household assist for these college students. Unstable household environments brought on by housing and meals insecurity together with lack of parental encouragement to deal with studying trigger kids to not be capable of deal with or worth studying. 

It warrants mentioning that this isn’t some kind of gotcha query, and San Francisco Mother or father Motion shouldn’t be an adversarial entity. No one is taking Hsu’s response out of context. And that response — which Hsu both penned or allowed to be penned in her identify — was deliberative. It was written out and submitted. 

So, we are able to all acknowledge the longstanding statistical measures outlining disparate outcomes for this metropolis’s white and Asian public faculty college students and their Black and Latinx counterparts. But it surely’s a hell of a factor to, unprompted, say the “greatest challenges” for Black and brown kids are “lack of household assist” and “lack of parental encouragement to deal with studying.”

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