Civil Rights in Education in California — The Williams Complaint in Practice: The Case of Buena Vista Horace Mann
PART TWO — As discussed in PART ONE, the Williams Complaint was implemented as a citizen grievance procedure meant to ensure educational equity in California. It is a process that may be examined in-depth through the lens of the ongoing facilities issues at Buena Vista Horace Mann.
Buena Vista Horace Mann (BVHM) is a bi-lingual community school in the heart of the Mission District. The school building is one hundred years old, and is literally falling apart. The school has almost 600 students attending Kindergarten through 8th Grade. BVHM also has a substantial before and after school child care program, which is run by a non-profit.
Around 400 students at BVHM are enrolled in before and after school programs, which means that many of them are on campus ten hours per day. It is common for children to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner on site. Despite this very heavy use of BVHM facilities, little or no attention was paid by the school district’s management to ongoing issues.
Discussion among stakeholders about sub-standard conditions at BVHM have been ongoing. Teachers, parents, and staff have long advocated for better facilities. Many have made phone calls, sent letters, emails, and given public comment at school board meetings. After years of nothing but excuses from SFUSD, members of the school community began filing Williams complaints.
The standards set forth in Williams require that schools have credentialed teachers, sufficient textbooks, and proper facilities. It is striking that many of the hazards that were pointed out in our Williams Complaints, such as falling ceiling tiles and unusable bathrooms, were exactly the same issues described by the plaintiffs in the Williams case.
What’s also striking is the lack of veracity in the School Accountability Report Cards (SARCs) and the Annual Williams Reports. As some diligent journalists have already pointed out, the report cards do not provide an accurate assessment of school facilities. However, district officials failed to sit up and take notice until after media outlets like Mission Local began to cover our struggle.
Though BVHM had ongoing safety hazards, none of these were reflected in the state mandated School Accountability Report Card (SARC), which labelled the school facilities as in “good” condition.
The SARCs are not the only documents that demarcate a school’s facility conditions. An annual Williams Report must be submitted each year by School District (SFUSD) to the Board of Education. The Annual Williams Reports include information about textbooks, teachers and facility conditions.
The most recent “inspection report” was submitted by George Kalligeros of Elmast Construction and Inspection Services, who is named in the reports as the “Facilities Inspector of Record” for the San Francisco Unified School District. The report says that 38 district schools were inspected in all, including BVHM. Each school was given an overall rating of “Good” or “Exemplary.”
Julie Zigoris, reporting for El Tecelote, questioned SFUSD contractor George Kalligeros about the school inspections. According to the article, Kalligeros received a $38,500 contract with SFUSD to inspect schools, and was paid at a rate of $125 per hour.
As parents at BVHM continued to file Williams Complaints with the San Francisco Unified School District, various promises were made for repairs. When San Francisco public schools closed for the pandemic, remaining on top of repairs was difficult for parent volunteers. Nevertheless, parents were frustrated with the slow pace of change, and appealed the case to California’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tony R. Thurmond, who is up for re-election this November.
Parent volunteers received a response from Juan Mireles, Director of School Facilities and Transportation Services Division of the California Department of Education (CDE). The letter is dated October 19, 2021.
The unsigned Appeal Report, read, in part, as follows:
“Older school buildings develop many issues over time. When school district budgets are cut, maintenance can be deferred, sometimes for many years. Under these conditions, repair issues become more serious and can develop into bigger problems. While it can be frustrating for parents and community, the Williams Uniform Complaint Process allows them a process to bring complaints to the school administration. CDE would encourage the complainants to continue to bring issues that they are aware of to the SFUSD.
The SFUSD took the complaints seriously. They followed up and made the necessary repairs. CDE would encourage the SFUSD to continue to work with the parents and community members on these issues until they have the opportunity to pass a local school bond to renovate the facilities and replace or repair systems or materials that are worn and past their useful life.”
California is still struggling to attain the standards set forth in Williams. Facilities may be a particular point of contention. In PART THREE, we will look at school bonds.
