Political infighting over the creation of city-sponsored learning hubs for vulnerable students last year resulted in a less effective system and likely fewer children served, according to an outside review of the process.
The San Francisco teachers union and at least some school board members pushed back against the hubs even as schools remained shuttered, which left families scrambling for child care and academic support. Tension between city officials and district staff also made collaboration more difficult, the report said.
The independent researchers described in a report released earlier this month how hubs evolved amid the pandemic and what 86 sites serving 2,500 students looked like in practice. But the authors also identified roadblocks in the process.
The report, funded by private philanthropy and sponsored by the Education Fund, offers insight into the complicated and chaotic effort in the early months of the pandemic to find a way to help students from low-income families, foster youth and those in public housing, among others, who struggled with distance learning and who faced hurdles at home.
It also comes in the wake of intense criticism of the board and union over the handling of the pandemic, school board controversies, and criticism by the mayor and families for a delayed and limited reopening this past year that left nearly all middle and high school students at home.
City officials worked with community groups and nonprofits to plan and launch the hubs in a two-month period, opening the first sites in mid-September, giving children “a safe and sanitized place to do their distance learning, eat, play, and generally experience a sense of belonging and community that schools normally provide.”
It was, even without consistent support from the school district, a model for how to bridge the silos of government bureaucracy, the report said.
“This is truly government at its best — when we come together and say we’re going to put our most vulnerable citizens at the center of our work,” said Maria Su, executive director of the city’s Department of Children Youth and Families, Friday in an interview with The Chronicle.
The lack of consistent support from district and union leadership was a “missed opportunity,” one fueled by turf wars and long-standing political divides, the report said.
“We don’t have to wait for a pandemic to do good. We actually have the right recipe for it. We do have all the ingredients,” Su said.
While the report highlights the benefits found in city and community groups working together, it repeatedly returns to the lack of support from educational leadership, which sought to delay the opening of the hubs to do community outreach, for example.
The report specifically cited resistance from board member Alison Collins as well as from the United Educators of San Francisco, the teachers union. The authors also noted that all current seven school board members were endorsed by the teachers union.
Union officials and school board leadership did not return requests for comment.
“To some teachers union supporters, the fact that people outside their union were providing in-person services to students, while their own members were not, represented a threat,” according to the report’s authors, David Phillips, founder of Panorama Advisors, which offers coaching and planning, and Carolyn Gramstorff, founder of s3dx, a school design consulting firm.
In the report, however, school board member Kevine Boggess said he hoped to see the success of the hubs moving forward.
“The pandemic and the Hubs collaboration created new energy,” he said. “Hopefully, we can seize that momentum and push forward something that’s more permanent — part of our new normal.”
Yet the report offers several examples of how the union and school board members pushed back on the hubs. In one instance, those critic balked at calling the sites “learning hubs,” because staff was providing academic support rather than teaching.
The authors of the study, who interviewed city and school district officials, nonprofit professionals, parents, children and others, chalked up such concerns to “broader turf battles in public education, in which the union defends the interests of its teachers against all possible challenges.”
Board members and union officials said that nonprofit and city workers who ran the hubs, often people of color, were being exploited during the pandemic, with less pay than district teachers. The city acknowledged the concern and allocated more funding to increase pay for hub staff.
The report noted that district staff did collaborate with the hubs, “despite vocal opposition from UESF and some members of the Board of Education.” That included delivering distance learning materials to hubs and helping the sites access district software and hardware.
“It’s kind of like when the parents are fighting,” said one district worker cited in the report. “Kids find a way to build alliances and help each other out.”
Aside from the politics and territorial grudges, the report provides a case study of how to provide similar structures of support for families moving forward, said Phil Halperin, founder of the Silver Giving Foundation, which helped fund the study.
“We shouldn’t have a case study that says this is extraordinary; this should be the norm,” he said. “What it demonstrates to all of us is when people come together, we can do right by kids.”
Jill Tucker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jtucker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jilltucker
