Providing Better Schools

By Dennis Herrera

Among the current candidates for Mayor, no one has fought harder to protect San Francisco's public schools from fraud and abuse than Dennis Herrera.

Dennis Herrera was nationally recognized for his investigation and lawsuit that exposed fraud among public school contractors. The case involving technology vendors revealed a scheme to submit bogus funding applications for computers and other technological equipment, which became known nationwide as "the E-Rate Scandal." The corporations submitted these bogus applications on behalf of the San Francisco Unified School District, along with other districts throughout the nation. Herrera successfully sued to stop this practice, recovering roughly $16 million overall, and some $3.3 million for San Francisco's school kids.

Dennis Herrera rescued millions of dollars for school projects from large developers. He successfully fended off a lawsuit by large developers that sought to take $20 million from the San Francisco Unified School District and put it in the hands of those developers. After fiercely litigating the case for over the course of five years, Herrera reached a resolution ensuring that the money would continue to be used for much-needed school improvement and construction projects. In the process, Herrera helped the school district reform its financial practices to ensure accountability in spending on school facilities.

Dennis Herrera helped the San Francisco Unified School District reform its dysfunctional student assignment system, which had previously frustrated many young families and forced them to leave the City in search of a public school system to better serve their needs. Herrera provided guidance to the District in the creation of its new system, being implemented this year for the first time, which makes a greater effort to place children in their neighborhood schools while maintaining a commitment to diversity in our School District.

In the past four years, Dennis Herrera has diligently worked to help the School District bolster its language programs. Working with school officials and the U.S. Department of Justice, Herrera helped improve language programs for students with limited English proficiency, and has helped bolster the School District's commitment to immersion programs that are essential for a 21st Century urban workforce.

As San Francisco's Mayor, Dennis Herrera will put his experience as a fighter for San Francisco public schools to work to implement measures that continue to bolster multilingual programs, empower teachers and principals, and make our public schools more responsive to families with children. Herrera's goal is to eliminate the incentives for families to leave San Francisco once their children reach school age, and instead to make San Francisco a nationwide model for creating an urban multilingual workforce.

Herrera knows that providing our children with access to quality public education is a critical priority. He believes that we share a responsibility for our children's future and must work together to ensure that every child that graduates from our schools is given the tools to succeed.

As a parent and elected official, Dennis Herrera strongly believes that City government can do more to support and improve upon our school system. That's why he has put forward a specific plan to strengthen our schools as Mayor.

A Herrera Administration will invest in San Francisco's public school system. Proposition H funding is a demonstration of San Francisco's commitment to the education of our children. As Mayor, Herrera will support the renewal and increase of this critical funding beyond its current level to ensure that our schools receive the resources that they so desperately need. He will work with the School Board to dedicate a significant portion of this funding to dramatically increasing access to language immersion programs from kindergarten through high school, since San Francisco's kids need to become prepared to work in the new, international economy, and language skills (particularly Chinese and Spanish) are becoming more and more essential for that. This would make San Francisco the leading City in the nation in terms of providing multilingual education to its students, and it would create a local workforce that would help attract foreign trade and create jobs for our people. It would also attract more families to SFUSD schools by making available the programs that they want.

Herrera will work as Mayor to empower teachers and administrators. A School District cannot succeed without a strong infrastructure, Dennis Herrera knows, and a District's infrastructure consists of its people. Teachers and principals need to be given the support (both in terms of finances and professional development) that will eliminate the incentive to leave San Francisco for private or suburban schools once they have obtained a few years of experience. Accordingly, a significant portion of the funding should also be dedicated to attracting and retaining strong teachers and principals. In particular, the money should be used to ensure that teachers and principals receive strong training (for teachers, through Stanford's National Board Resource Center, which provides an advanced credential, and for principals through Berkeley's Principal Leadership Institute, which credentials school administrators), and to ensure that salaries remain competitive, particularly for teachers in their third, fourth and fifth years.

Dennis Herrera strongly believes communities have a key role to play to support our schools by encouraging partnerships between the schools and other local, neighborhood resources. As Mayor, Herrera will work to make schools the centers of our community, open to all people and activities. Integrating academics, social services, youth programs, and community engagement will help prepare our children to enter school and later to enter the workplace. It will also encourage parents and community members to have a personal investment in the success of our local schools.

Dennis Herrera included an aggressive, long-range goal as part of his Jobs Plan, which is worthy of our City's rich diversity: let's make San Francisco the first American city to graduate a tri-lingual workforce by 2025. By introducing basic English, Chinese and Spanish language comprehension skills for 1st grade students in 2014, and afford students opportunities to build on those skills moving forward, San Francisco begin to leverage its greatest asset--its diversity--and best provide for the promise of employment opportunities in the increasingly globalized economy for generations to come.