When the initial results were announced on Tuesday night, Phil Kim was perched on a chair at Cafe Flore in the Castro. The audience was applauding. By most accounts, he appeared relieved—the kind of relief that results from overcoming adversity rather than from victory. “It’s been a really challenging year,” he remarked as he steadied himself in his chair. With 64% of the vote, he prevailed. He resumes running in five months.
That is the peculiar circumstance that currently governs the San Francisco Board of Education. After a landslide victory, the incumbent must immediately begin campaigning after giving a victory speech. Tuesday’s primary only guaranteed Kim’s seat until the end of the current term because he was appointed to the board in August 2024 by former Mayor London Breed to fill a vacancy. Kim, Virginia Cheung, Brandee Marckmann, and at least eight other candidates have already filed papers for the three open seats in November’s general election, which will be a much larger and messier contest.
Perhaps nowhere in American public education is the disparity between the magnitude of the issues and the meager compensation more blatantly ludicrous. Each board member receives $500 per month. Kim has had to deal with a teachers’ strike, a superintendent’s resignation, a payroll scandal, a special education hiring crisis, a drop in enrollment, and a district that was on the verge of bankruptcy not too long ago. Sara Eisenberg, a district parent and supporter of his, called it “a really thankless job.” She’s not incorrect.
The city’s relationship with its school board remained unresolved following the four-day teachers’ strike in February. The outrage it caused served as a foundation for both Cheung’s and Marckmann’s campaigns. The United Educators of San Francisco supported Cheung, who picketed with striking teachers. She was already positioning herself as the voice of the disenfranchised as she stood outside City Hall on election night. “I fill a niche for folks who don’t feel represented by the other candidates,” she stated. She received 25% in the end. She’s not leaving.
Marckmann, on the other hand, ran what she described as a grassroots campaign against a “establishment-favored candidate”—and she had a point, considering that Kim’s supporters included the San Francisco Democratic Party, Mayor Daniel Lurie, and six supervisors. However, it’s important to note that Marckmann outspent everyone, spending almost $136,000 of her own funds, primarily on campaign advisors. With 12 percent, she came in third. On election morning, she spoke about her 80 volunteers spread out throughout the city outside the 16th Street BART station. She seemed to think she had more momentum than the outcomes showed.
Kim is a complex individual; the teachers’ union is leery of him because he was a teacher in the past and worked in charter schools early in his career. He is currently the city’s Human Rights Commission’s deputy director. His supporters contend that he has maintained composure in the face of actual chaos and that he is obviously capable. However, in San Francisco school politics, the difference between steady and beloved can cost you an election.
The November contest will have far greater stakes after Tuesday. In addition to managing school closures as enrollment continues to decline, the incoming board will have the difficult task of overhauling a student assignment lottery system that almost nobody likes. As San Francisco discovered firsthand in 2022 when three board members were removed in a historic vote, these are the kinds of decisions that have direct effects on families and lead to recall campaigns. Every board meeting is still tinged with that memory.
As all of this is happening, it’s difficult not to question whether the city’s desire for school board drama is structural—that is, whether a seven-member elected board, paid like a part-time employee, overseeing a district under ongoing financial strain, is merely intended to create conflict. Kim excels in this. Whether good is sufficient for November is the question.
