Letters to the Editor

May 30, 2003

Chronicle Biased for S.F. Superintendent

DEAR EDITOR: I am writing in response to the San Francisco Chronicle’s recent articles appearing on May 1 and 20, regarding San Francisco Unified School Districtís assignment plan, based on the diversity index. The news reporting really bothered me, especially the May 20 article entitled “Parents Stormed Ackerman’s Office — Anger over SF School Enrollment.” It bothered me that the Chronicle’s news reporting made us look like the bad guys especially on contentious issues such as this one. The newspaper managed to get about two sentences in from one of the parents, John Zhao, at the end of the article. I find that about 80 percent of the Chronicle’s reporting represented the SFUSD’s viewpoint. I wonder whether the Chronicle even bothered talking to any of us to see what our perspectives are.

Do you know that SFUSD wanted to send our 5-year-old across town in the beginning? Do you know that it will take an incoming high school freshman from the Sunset three buses (28 line to 38 Geary and 42 Van Ness) to get from his residence to Galileo? Do you know that if SFUSD succeeds in implementing this diversity index, our family will have about an hour of family time before our kids have to go to bed? What about the time needed for us to assist our kids with school work? SFUSD is asking us to be irresponsible parents.

Was a Chronicle reporter at our meeting with Superintendent Ackerman on May 12? Did the newspaper know that Ackerman refused to talk to us and we had to demand her attention? Did the Chronicle also know that her employees made insensitive remarks and called the parents “liars”?

It is obvious to me that Ackerman is playing the public sympathy card. She’s making us look like some uneducated bullies who stormed her office, pushing and pulling. That is completely untrue. As for her claim that she has been receiving hang up phone calls at her residence, it’s unfortunate but how is it related to us? We all have full-time jobs. We don’t have time to be crank calling Ackerman’s residence.

As for SFUSDís claim that 200 additional students were reassigned to Lincoln, that is simply not true. If it is, why would the parents be asking for another meeting with the superintendent?

From reading the Chronicle’s articles, I noticed the newspaper quotes Ackerman one line after the other. The newspaper cited data provided by SFUSD. Is there any proof to their data? All those numbers are just a shell game designed to win public opinion. If I were the Chronicle, I would ask for some proof. If this is responsible reporting, why doesn’t the Chronicle spend more time interviewing the parents? I feel like this is a political battle on a hotly contested issue and only one side’s point of view is being presented.

Daniel Quach

San Francisco

How About Pacific Islanders?

DEAR EDITOR: Chinese for Affirmative Actionís talk about Asian Pacific American civil rights sounds great, except that its Center for Asian American Advocacy as proposed actually leaves out Pacific Islanders in the equation of representation. So, what happens to the Filipinos, Samoans, Hawaiians, Guamanians, Indonesians, etc.?

Fortunately for the Filipinos, they will still have Filipinos for Affirmative Action advocating for them and providing direct services in Tagalog.

This APA advocacy thing sounds like just another bunch of professional APAs pretending to speak for and represent the interests of all Asians and Pacific Islanders when in fact they’re just promoting themselves.

Angie Wei in “Strengthening Asian Pacific American Civil Rights” (May 15) obviously thinks being CAA and serving the Chinese American community is too provincial and wants to be APA so she can work at the “high level”; She doesn’t want to strengthen APA civil rights. She wants to inflate her resume.

Rance Go

Via e-mail

Lowell High is Overrated

DEAR EDITOR: Reader Tommy Yip’s letter in the May 1 issue about “glorifying admission into a University of California” resonated with me.

In the same vein, admission into Lowell High School is grossly overrated, as well. My son and I visited a number of schools when he was going through the high school applications process for the entering freshman class of 2000. According to SAT scores and acceptance rates, Lick-Wilmerding and University High were head and shoulders above Lowell High School and Saint Ignatius, “the best Catholic School” in the city.

I might add that there were no graduates from Lick-Wilmerding or University High who went on to attend a junior college, whereas roughly one-third of Lowellís graduates attended junior college.

Furthermore, looking at the caliber of the students from my son’s eighth grade class who were accepted into Lowell and St. Ignatius, I am not at all surprised at the poor performance of the students at those two schools. One of the eight students who went to Lowell was not in the top half of his class of 58 students in the eighth grade. Many of the parents joked that with so many Chinese American applicants, Lowell probably got this student’s name mixed up with someone else.

Of the eight students accepted into St. Ignatius, four were not on the honor roll and three of the four were not even in the top half of the class. With factors such as the family belonging to a Catholic parish and whether the applicant came from a Catholic school taking precedence over academics in its admissions process, I am not surprised at the low level of selectivity at S. I.

Thus, we are lowering the expectations of our students by steering them into Lowell. By the way, my son is a junior at Lick-Wilmerding.

Letters to the Editor

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