Over the last year, I have seen so many school board meetings, angry meetings,

meetings where parents were dragged out the door, meetings where whole contingence of observers

jeered and then sang the star-spangled banner. But I've never seen a school board

meeting quite like this. Roll call, please. Thank you. Thank you very much. Mr. Alexander?

Here. Mr. Bogus? President. This is a school board meeting from last January in San Francisco.

It was held over Zoom.

The president of the board kicked things off.

We want to make sure you feel welcomed and heard, especially during a time when so much pain

in hurt is persisting.

The way she speaks here, with a lot of talk of holding space and lifting people up,

that is the vibe the board is cultivating.

There are a lot of good-natured shoutouts among this crew.

But it all takes a lot of time.

The school board meetings often go for seven or eight hours well into the evening with, you know, lots of comment, lots of craziness.

Seven or eight hours?

Yeah.

There's a lot of talking.

Jill Tucker writes about education for the San Francisco Chronicle, says the problem with all this

talking is that it was happening as a lot of San Francisco parents were struggling.

At this point in the pandemic, kids had been out-of-school buildings for almost a year.

San Francisco still didn't have a firm reopening date on the schedule.

But you would not know any of that if you tuned in to the first few hours of this meeting. Because reopening the buildings,

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