As we discussed last week, yesterday was the date of the recall election in San Francisco that would decide the fate of three of the members of the city’s School Board, a subject of perpetual embarrassment for the people in the community. Only three of the members of the board (including the president) had served long enough to be eligible for a recall under state law, but they had been fighting tooth and claw to hang onto their jobs. They tried to portray the effort as a “right-wing power grab.” (A suggestion that both of the remaining Republicans in San Francisco guffawed at.) Those efforts came to naught and the New York Post reports this morning that all three of them were recalled by an “overwhelming” majority of the voters.

San Francisco residents recalled three members of the city’s school board Tuesday for what critics called misplaced priorities and putting progressive politics over the needs of children during the pandemic.

Voters overwhelmingly approved the recall in a special election, according to tallies by the San Francisco Department of Elections.

“The voters of this city have delivered a clear message that the school board must focus on the essentials of delivering a well-run school system above all else,” Mayor London Breed said in a statement. “San Francisco is a city that believes in the value of big ideas, but those ideas must be built on the foundation of a government that does the essentials well.”

It will be a while before there are exact totals released, so we don’t know precisely how “overwhelming” the recall victory was. But CNN is reporting that the initial numbers suggest that the recall was approved by at least 70% of the voters. That’s really not even close.

This was all pretty much as John predicted earlier this week. He noted that the early voter turnout had been low and was expected to stay that way. A local analyst John quoted had predicted last year that if there wasn’t a significant surge in turnout, the board members were likely doomed.

It wasn’t as if the members facing recall had done themselves any favors. As previously noted here, one of them was found to have accused Asian families in San Francisco of “using white supremacy” to get ahead of other minority communities. It’s worth noting that the highest turnouts reported in early voting came from heavily Asian communities in the city. Do you suppose that had anything to do with it?

Mayor London Breed (an extremely progressive Democrat and anything but a “right-wing” conspirator) will now get to appoint three new members to serve out the current term until the next regular election. Breed was actually one of the more prominent supporters of the recall effort, further demonstrating that this was an internal battle among liberals rather than some conservative power-grab. She spoke at length about the need to remove the board members after the results were announced.

More than anything else, however, it appeared to be the parents in San Francisco who rallied for this change. If they could have removed the entire board yesterday, I truly believe they would have. The board failed miserably at trying to reopen the schools last year, bowing to the will of the teachers’ unions. They wasted their time working to rename 44 schools with “offensive” names, such as George Washington High School. They also tried (and failed) to drop the admission standards at one of the city’s most prominent high schools. That further angered the Asian community because the school is populated with a majority of Asian students. (That must be more of that “white supremacy” we keep hearing about.)

Will the new board members take the hint from this recall election and spend more time actually trying to improve the lives of students and working with their families? For the sake of San Francisco, I certainly hope so. But in that town, nothing is ever guaranteed when you’re hoping for common sense to prevail.