Last week, San Francisco public school officials cut the ribbon for Mission Bay Elementary School, fulfilling what they described as “a vision over two decades in the making.” Mission Bay Elementary is the only school to be built as a result of either the $744 million bond measure San Francisco voters approved in 2016 or the $790 million bond measure passed in 2024. The 2016 bond funds are devoted primarily to modernizing existing schools rather than building new ones. Meanwhile, the single largest planned expenditure of 2024 bond funds is for a new central kitchen for school meals to carry out the school district’s self-described role as the single largest food service provider in San Francisco.
Against this backdrop, key stakeholders are now raising significant and troubling questions about how bond funds are being spent and whether the school district is interfering with independent citizen oversight of the more than $1.5 billion in bond funding. In 2000, California voters added a provision to the state constitution to make it easier for school districts to gain approval of bond measures. Associated with that change was a requirement that school districts establish independent citizens’ committees to inform the public about spending of bond revenues and to ensure they are spent only for authorized purposes.
The sole applicant district staff interviewed is Autumn Brown Garibay, a current school board candidate and a beneficiary of a joint fundraising drive along with Board President Kim and Commissioner Alida Fisher.
In July, a group of parents, graduates, taxpayers and residents, including former and current members of the school district’s Citizens’ Bond Oversight Committee (CBOC), raised serious governance concerns to Superintendent Maria Su and Board of Education members about the oversight of bond spending. In a letter from local attorney Gregory Chopskie, they allege that Superintendent Su and school district staff have overstepped their authority and now seek to evade public scrutiny of the bond program by controlling membership in the oversight panel, scheduling of CBOC meetings, CBOC’s access to documents, and whether CBOC may employ independent counsel.
From 2018–21, the school district completely lacked a CBOC despite the state’s legal requirement to have one. Following a whistleblower report and threatened litigation, the school district created a new CBOC that drafted its own governing by-laws and began to produce reports, sometimes critical, of the school district’s actions and expenditures.
In January 2025, after the passage of the 2024 school bond measure (in which, for the first time, the school district failed to inform voters where bond expenditures would be made), the school board added the responsibility to monitor 2024 bond expenditures to CBOC’s existing authority to monitor 2016 bond expenditures. The school board also gave school district staff 60 days to submit new operating rules for CBOC for its approval. Instead of following the board directive, school district staff waited until after the school board’s final 2025 meeting to issue Administrative Regulation 1225 without school board approval. The regulation took away from CBOC its authority to schedule meetings, set its agenda, obtain documents, and recommend future committee members.
Attorney Chopskie has reminded the school district of an admonition from California’s “Little Hoover” Commission that ferrets out wasteful public spending. In 2009, the commission warned that oversight panels “can provide an invaluable service to their communities, but only when the members are truly independent.” To foster independence and guard against reliance upon the very officials CBOCs are supposed to oversee, the commission recommended that civic groups nominate CBOC members. As a result of the school district’s new rules, a majority of the current CBOC members have now been selected by the District staff and school board without any consultation with CBOC.
Even as recently as May, CBOC’s membership committee expected it would select new members collaboratively with district staff and members of the public named by the superintendent. Although CBOC attracted a dozen prospective candidates, district staff has represented to the school board that “Since December 2025, only one person has applied.” The sole applicant district staff interviewed is Autumn Brown Garibay, a current school board candidate and a beneficiary of a joint fundraising drive along with Board President Kim and Commissioner Alida Fisher. Board President Kim has placed her CBOC nomination on the “consent agenda” where it is not open to debate or discussion and will be voted on in a single vote together with 105 other matters. In response to a request for comment, Candidate Garibay stated that no one on the school board had endorsed her and that “I was looking for committees to join to be more involved.”
In addition to using the challenged AR 1225 procedures to approve the new CBOC appointment, district staff has also proposed at Tuesday’s meeting that the school board approve — again, without debate — a 117-page Official Statement referencing CBOC and obligating or refunding half a billion dollars in bond activity. Whether the superintendent or board President Kim will pause these activities remains to be seen. Meanwhile, the stakeholder group requests a response from the school district by Friday.
