A View From The Brink ... the beach is backwards

San Francisco School District Considers Changing Schools' Names

       

George Washington High School is one of 39 schools throughout San Francisco being considered for name changes by the School Names Advisory Committee at the behest of the SFUSD Board of Education. File photo by Tom Pendergast.

 

By Thomas K. Pendergast
    

A San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) committee is recommending 39 schools across the City, including 18 on its west side, change their names.

In the Richmond District, schools on the list include: George Washington High School; Presidio Middle School; Theodore Roosevelt Middle School; Claire Lilienthal Elementary School; Alamo Elementary School; Frank McCoppin Elementary School and Sutro Elementary are all recommended by the School Names Advisory Committee for name changes.

In the Sunset District, schools on the list include: Abraham Lincoln High School; James Russell Lowell High School; Herbert Hoover Middle School; Lawton Elementary School; Dianne Feinstein Elementary School; Thomas Jefferson Elementary School; Francis Scott Key Elementary School; Commodore Sloat Elementary School; Robert Louis Stevenson Elementary School; Ulloa Elementary School and Noriega Early Education School.

       

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SF Educator Housing Project Plans Complete, Waiting For City Approval

    

The Francis Scott Key Annex as it appeared in 2014. File photo by Tom Pendergast.

     

By Thomas K. Pendergast

       

Blueprints for buildings to house teachers and other employees of the San Francisco Unified School District at the old Francis Scott Key Annex are currently with the SF Planning Department, waiting for approval.

The plans show new construction of a four-to-five-story tall, 165,193 gross-square-foot, multifamily residential building located on nearly 60,000 square feet of land.

The project consists of 135 residential apartments, including 24 studios, 43 one-bedroom units, 59 two-bedroom units and nine three-bedroom units, plus an 8,050 square-foot publicly-assessable open space adjacent to 43rd Avenue.

     

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SF Scientist Leads Team Fighting COVID-19

     

UCSF research scientist and Sunset District resident Peter Walter, PhD, is working with a team on a weapon against COVID-19. Photo by Steve Babuljak, courtesy UCSF.

    

By Thomas K. Pendergast

      

As scientists around the world scramble to make a vaccine to fight COVID-19, a San Francisco team of about 60 people – co-led by a Sunset District resident – is working on a unique potential solution that is roughly analogous to a molecular prophylactic. 

UCSF’s Peter Walter, PhD, is leading this effort with his collaborator, Dr. Aashish Manglik, to test and produce AeroNabs, a nasal spray or nebulizing inhaler that would act as a first line of defense against infection in the nose, throat and lungs, where the virus enters the body. 

The spray is not an anti-viral vaccine, but instead uses nanobodies, tiny molecular proteins that “sheath” parts of the virus attempting to penetrate the cell, thus preventing replication.

     

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UCSF Murals Face Unknown Future As Campus Develops

     

Courtesy photo from UCSF

     

By Thomas K. Pendergast

     

“The Life of Washington” murals at George Washington High School in the Richmond District are not alone in their dubious fate. Another set of New Deal-era murals is in danger of destruction – but this time for a different reason and with a different response from Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who has initiated a landmark designation to save them.

In a unanimous vote, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a resolution requesting the SF Planning Department prepare a Landmark Designation Report for the City’s Historic Preservation Commission, who are then requested to consider the 10 mural frescos, dubbed “History of Medicine in California,” for landmark status. The murals are located in Toland Hall at the Parnassus Campus of the University of California, San Francisco. They were painted by artist Bernard Zakheim.

The murals are threatened with destruction because Toland Hall is slated for demolition to make room for new research and academic buildings as part of UCSF’s massive renovation project. The problem, like with the Washington murals, is that they are frescos  painted on the wall plaster of the hall, so they cannot simply be removed like panels. The wall would need to be preserved as well.

      

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17-year-old Mission District Teen Leads Protest Of Thousands In San Francisco

     

17-year-old Simone Jacques speaking in front of San Francisco's Mission High School at a rally and demonstration protesting the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. Photo by Amy Graff. 
    

From the steps of Mission High School in San Francisco, 17-year-old Simone Jacques addressed thousands of protesters in a crowd that stretched for blocks along Dolores Avenue and spilled across Dolores Park.

Amy Graff of SFGATE.com reported that on Wednesday Jacques and her friends organized the demonstration through an Instagram group called NoJusticeNoPeaceSF that now has nearly 10,000 followers.

"My name is Simone," said Jacques, her voice booming through a microphone as she welcomed the mass of people holding signs and wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the words "Black Lives Matter."

"I'm black and proud," she went on. "I'm Afrochicana and proud."

      

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SFUSD loses first round in GWHS mural lawsuit

     

 

By Thomas K. Pendergast

      

The George Washington High School Alumni Association won the first round in its court fight with the San Francisco Unified School District over a series of murals on the life of the first president, the school’s namesake.

The alumni association is suing the district because, it alleges, the district did not follow the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) when it decided to cover up the murals before going through the CEQA process, thus committing “unlawful pre-commitment.” 

The district responded by filing a “move for a judgment on the pleadings,” which could have been an early knock-out blow to end the case, on the grounds that the alumni association failed to allege sufficient facts to demonstrate any unlawful pre-commitment for removing the murals from public view in violation of CEQA.

The court sided with the alumni association this time, allowing the case to continue.

      

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San Francisco school district ignored plans to save high school murals

      

 

Story and video by Thomas K. Pendergast

New information has emerged that the San Francisco Unified School District’s (SFUSD) Board of Education broke a deal decades ago, setting the stage for the present controversy about the George Washington High School murals. A 1968 agreement indicates that a deal was reached to keep the murals in place but include plaques beneath each one explaining the history left out of the murals, which was not done.

The agreement  also included a plan to paint a new alternative mural, which was eventually commissioned and completed.

The school’s alumni association recently proposed six points to resolve the issue.

       

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Plan to Cover Washington Murals Faces Hurdles

     

Detail from Victor Arnautoff's mural series on the Life of Washington in the lobby of San Francisco's George Washington High School. 

     

Story and photo by Thomas K. Pendergast

     

Board members guiding San Francisco’s school district might consider the fate of murals on the life of first president George Washington at his namesake high school settled, but opponents of the plan to cover them are responding like Revolutionary War hero, John Paul Jones, when he said he had only begun to fight.

Two groups opposed to the San Francisco School Board’s plan to cover the murals at George Washington High School, the George Washington High School Alumni Association and the Coalition to Protect Public Art (CPPA), are firing back with volleys of a lawsuit and a ballot measure.

     

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School Board Changes Course on Washington Murals

    

 

 

Video and story by Thomas K. Pendergast

 

The San Francisco School Board’s abrupt change in its decision to cover some controversial murals with panels instead of paint has satisfied almost no one, but has also left opponents of the painting option scrambling to respond.

On Aug. 13, with a 4-3 vote, the board backed off a previous unanimous vote in June to cover the “Life of George Washington” murals with paint, thus permanently destroying the artwork. The new plan is to preserve them but cover them over with some kind of solid material.

   

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SFUSD Board Votes to Cover Washington H.S. Murals

       

The room was packed with both mural supporters and opponents at the SFUSD Board of Education meeting on June 25, 2019 when the board voted unanimously to cover up the entire Life of Washington mural series.

 

Story and photos by Thomas K. Pendergast

         

The writing is on the wall for the controversial murals on the life of President George Washington at his namesake high school now that the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) has voted to cover them over.

The only question left is whether they will be covered with paint or with solid panels.

One option before the SFUSD’s Board of Education was to cover the mural with a curtain, which will cost around $375,000.

Another option is to cover them with solid acoustic panels, at a cost of somewhere between $645,000 and $825,000.

The third option is to paint over them, at an initial estimated cost starting at $600,000. According to district staff, the painting option is likely to cost more than that. It is also estimated that the painting project might take up to three years to complete, because painting over them would make an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) necessary, plus additional legal steps might be unavoidable.

      

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