Back-to-school week is turning into back-to-court week for San Francisco Superintendent of Schools Maria Su and the school board. On Tuesday, a diverse group of public school graduates and supporters, taxpayers, and local organizations sued the school district in Superior Court seeking to block the district’s attempt to control the membership, meetings, and authorities of the independent public watchdog committee that oversees how the district spends $1.5 billion in school bonds.
The lawsuit, filed by attorney Gregory Chopskie, follows a series of concerns raised by Quincy Yu that were not answered by school district officials while and following her service as chair of the Citizens’ Bond Oversight Committee (CBOC). Included among the petitioners joining Yu in the lawsuit are Laurance Lee, a school board candidate and CBOC member; former judge and state senator Quentin Kopp; leaders of the George Washington High School Alumni community; the San Francisco Taxpayers Association, and the California Association of Bond Oversight Committees, a statewide organization composed of bond oversight committee members from across the state with expertise in best practices to comply with state law bond oversight requirements.
As previously reported in The Voice of San Francisco, the Yu petitioners challenge the school district staff’s unilateral decision made last December, after the final school board meeting of the year, to issue new rules that shifted control over CBOC to the staff. The rules, known as Administrative Regulation 1225, eliminate CBOC’s traditional authority over its agenda and ability to provide input into school board nominations and appointments of its members. At the beginning of 2025, the school board voted to direct staff to provide recommendations to it about CBOC’s procedures. The staff failed to do so and, according to the lawsuit, unlawfully compromised the independent review of decisions about $1.5 billion in school bond expenditures that were approved by San Francisco voters in 2016 and 2024.
The 32-page petition and complaint seeking injunctive relief “challenges the [school district’s] present and ongoing failure to comply with the accountability requirements [of the] California’s Constitution and Education Code.” As a result of the lawsuit, the school district risks a delay in its ability to issue the remaining $630 million in authorized bonds. While the school district has, over a period of years, provided less specific information to voters about what the bonds will pay for, it is believed that upcoming bonds will pay for a new centralized citywide kitchen for the school district to produce and transport meals that will replace or augment existing facilities in schools themselves.
As a result of the lawsuit, the school district risks a delay in its ability to issue the remaining $630 million in authorized bonds.
The Yu petitioners are careful not to challenge the 2024 bond election itself or the validity of bonds already issued. Their demand is for the school district to adopt and implement the oversight mechanisms required by state law to promote transparency and ensure that bonds are spent on the purposes for which they were authorized. For example, the petitioners quote from a school district certification that district officials had evaluated class size reduction in determining which projects would receive bond funding. When the petitioners asked about any such evaluation, they received no documents — in their words “complete silence on class size reduction” — and have informed the court that the school district’s certification that it had evaluated class size was “unsupported by any identifiable evaluation, plan, analysis, or deliberation.” Conducting this evaluation and making this certification are specifically required by the California Constitution.
Although existing bond projects are not the target of the lawsuit, what happens now is uncertain. School district officials are already using the existing but challenged administrative regulation to make CBOC appointments, schedule meetings and veto requests from CBOC members about matters that previously were within the members’ recognized purview. Last week, the school board approved without debate the nomination of a new CBOC member who is running for the school board in the November general election. Current CBOC members were excluded from consultation about the nominee.
The lawsuit follows months of requests from CBOC leaders and community members to discuss the changes. A last minute effort by the school district legal staff to seek additional time to respond to the Yu petitioners was rebuffed as insufficient and unresponsive without the district setting aside the new CBOC rules.
Possible next steps include the Yu petitioners serving the lawsuit on the school district to trigger a deadline to respond; school district legal counsel seeking a meeting to negotiate a settlement; intervention by Superintendent Su or school board members to avert a stalemate; or the district defending itself against a possible injunction. One thing is certain: The tug-of-war over whether the school district can oversee CBOC — the independent citizens body established to oversee billions in school district bond spending — has brought governance issues out in the open for the public’s and City Hall’s attention and possibly quick action by the Superior Court.
