The City’s public school teachers union, United Educators of San Francisco, called for the resignation of Board of Education Commissioner Ann Hsu on Thursday evening following her comment earlier this week claiming Black and brown parents do not encourage their children to excel at learning.

This demand follows several calls from political and educational leaders that Hsu step down from the post she has held for five months, following the February recall of board commissioners Alison Collins, Gabriela López and Faauuga Moliga.

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Answering the question posed in a recent San Francisco Parent Action school board candidate questionnaire: “How can SFUSD increase academic outcomes for the most marginalized students?” Hsu wrote:

“From my very limited exposure in the past four months to the challenges of educating marginalized students especially in the black and brown community, I see one of the biggest challenges as being the lack of family support for those students. Unstable family environments caused by housing and food insecurity along with lack of parental encouragement to focus on learning cause children to not be able to focus on or value learning.

“That makes teachers’ work harder because they have to take care of emotional and behavioral issues of students before they can teach them. That is not fair to the teachers. We (SFUSD) need to work better with community organizations to take care of students’ needs outside of school hours so that teachers can focus on teaching inside of school hours. {snip}”

Hsu later revised her statement and posted an apology after receiving an outpouring of criticism as well as support.

In her apology thread on Twitter, Hsu acknowledged that her statement “perpetuated biases already in the system” and reflected her own “limited experiences and inherent biases.”

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Mayor London Breed, who appointed Hsu to the board in March, said that while the comments were “disappointing and hurtful” to the African American and Latino communities, she appreciated Hsu’s apology and how Hsu said she will use this as a learning opportunity.

“What I’m hopeful is that we don’t just dismiss this and say, ‘Oh, she needs to resign,’” Breed said in an interview with Chinese language media. “How do we come together and make this a teaching moment? How do we prevent this from becoming politically divisive? Because she does, in fact, represent a bilingual constituency — and in many cases, a constituency that only speaks maybe Mandarin and Cantonese — who feel that they want a representative on the board.”

The Chinese Parent Advisory Council is confident that Hsu will learn from her mistakes and continue to fight for all students to close achievement gaps.

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Others, like the teachers union, are calling for Hsu’s resignation.

“It is sad and stunning that someone who is supposed to represent the interests of all San Francisco public school students responded in a written candidate survey with racist and offensive comments. {snip}” said UESF President Cassondra Curiel {snip}

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