Stop Privatization, School Closing & Union Busting In SFUSD & CCSF

Stop Privatization, School Closing & Union Busting
In SFUSD & CCSF

The rush to stop the closure of 11 public schools in San Francisco is only a temporary victory. Behind the school closures scheme is an organized coordinated drive to dismantle public education in San Francisco not only at SFSU but also at Community College of San Francisco and San Francisco State University.

This was only stopped because this became a political liability for Breed and her election campaign when privatizer Matt Wayne announced the closures before the election and her election opponent Peskin rallied at one of the closed schools Spring Valley Science Elementary School in Chinatown against the shutdowns.

Within days, Breed who was pushing the closures flipped fearful that it would hurt her election chances.

Mayor London Breed has been a big supporter of charters, and she also has received $2 million from former NYC Mayor and billionaire Michael Bloomberg for her election campaign. He also pushed charter schools such as Green Dot in New York and supports the same thing in San Francisco. AFT president Randy Weingarten, in fact, worked at Green Dot and supports “unionized charters”. This is a trojan horse which undermines public schools and sets up a two-tier education system. These capitalist politicians in San Francisco are talking about supporting public school closures in a city with 50 billionaires and who are gloating about how they are taking over San Francisco.

One of the ways the billionaires and their political shills are pushing privatization, school closures, and union busting is through the Fiscal Crisis & Management Assistance Team, FCMAT, which is a “non-profit” funded by the State of California and run by mostly retired white school superintendents. They use their power in FCMAT to coerce mostly Black and Brown school districts like Inglewood and Oakland to shut down Black and Brown schools while keeping charters open.

While the FCMAT is demanding the closure of schools, the charters continue to get public funding, and private schools are taking students from wealthier families. The CFA/CFT supported school bond measures also provide billions to these same union busting charters. The new Breed supported superintendent Maria Su has already called for more austerity, and she has also supported the attack on Free City College by cutting the funding by millions of dollars. This will hurt working class, Black and Brown students from San Francisco, and is part and parcel of the attack on CCSF by Breed and the privatizers. Golden Gate Park privatizer Phil Ginsburg who runs the Rec & Park department under Breed was put in charge of helping to push privatization in her “School Stabilization Team”. He has opposed any transparency in the Rec & Parks Dept and put the billionaires in charge of privatizing the park.

What is needed not against any school closures and further attacks is to demand that that the city get more funding from the billionaires in San Francisco and California. That will not happen with the Democrats who run the city and the State. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond is a big supporter of charters in California. He put charter bosses in a commission to investigate the effect of charters in California, and Newson along with former governor Brown have appointed many charter operators and supporters on the State Board of Education.

The California Charter School Association is funded by the Fisher family which runs KIPP and are suing the school district to take over more room at Malcolm X Academy in Hunters Point.
Behind the school closures are the developers who want this land.

The Board of Supervisors are helping them at CCSF by voting unanimously to sell the Balboa Reservoir to the for-profit developer Avalon for $11 million which has led to the elimination of
parking for thousands of students at the school.

It is time for a political education campaign about who is privatizing and destroying public education. UESF, SEIU 1021 and IFPTE need to start educating and fighting the drive for more school closures and privatization and unite with all other education unions and students to build a local statewide workers student action against the attacks on public education. We need to make the billionaires pay instead of giving them tax breaks.

This will not happen with the Democratic party which is funded by these charter billionaires like Netflix owner Reed Hastings and the Fisher Family who helped put Newsom in office, and
they use these politicians to do their bidding. We need a mass democratic labor party based on the unions that can provide a political alternative to the two capitalist parties who push austerity and privatization while spending trillions on the genocide and war machine. We cannot stop the attacks on public education here and ignore the criminal genocidal destruction of Gaza by the Democrats including London Breed and the Democrats in San Francisco and California. While there is unlimited funds for the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and a real possible war in Asia against China, they are telling working people and their kids they don’t have the right to a great public education.

Join the Rally
Thursday, October 24, 2024
5:00 PM
At: MUB (Multi-Use Building) City College of SF
55 Frida Kahlo Way, SF

Join the rally at CCSF on Thursday 10/24/24 at 5:00 PM at the MUB where the Board of Trustees will be meeting to Demand More Classes, Stop the School Closures and Privatization of Public Education

United Front Committee for A Labor Party - ufclp.org, info [at] ufclp.org