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BAIRC in the News |
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Push for Non-Citizen Vote in School Elections
Supervisor Gonzalez's measure on the November ballot
By May Chow, Staff Writer
AsianWeek
05/28/04
Non-citizen parents with children enrolled in the San Francisco Unified School District will be the first in California to vote in school board elections and decide who oversees their children's education, should a ballot measure introduced by Board of Supervisors President Matt Gonzalez pass in November.
While the school district does not keep track of the number of children from immigrant families, approximately 17,000 of its students, or 30 percent, are Limited English Proficient and live in non-English-speaking households. Currently, non-citizen parents of SFUSD students have no say in the educational system.
Gonzalez said this proposal would remove barriers to allow and encourage full parental participation. Permitting non-citizen parents to vote would give them an equal voice in addressing their children's educational needs and increase the accountability and responsiveness of the school district.
If adopted, this initiative would go into effect during the 2006 election and would remain in force for four years. That means any immigrant parent over the age of 18 with at least one child enrolled in the school district would be able to vote in school board elections. At the end of the four years, the school board elections would revert to the system now in place unless the Board of Supervisors votes to let immigrant parents continue participating in school board elections.
This is not the first time that non-citizen voting has come up in San Francisco. Eight years ago, Assessor-Recorder Mabel Teng, a supervisor at the time, proposed immigrant voting in the San Francisco City College Board elections.
“At that time, Chinese American voters were split, but you have to realize that the dynamic was different,” said David Lee, executive director of the Chinese American Voter Education Committee. “That measure was basically shot down, and it had nowhere to go. But things have changed in the past eight years, and Gonzalez's proposal deals with school board elections, not the City College Board's.”
Lee pointed out that many believe there is a divide among the school board, especially on the issues of neighborhood schools and busing. He added that there is an increased interest among Chinese American parents in their children's education, especially after last year's “diversity index” system pitted parents against the school district over neighborhood schools.
“This measure may be popular with Chinese American voters because of their opposition to busing and being in a stalemate with the current board,” Lee said. “If the parents feel that they can have a say in who gets onto the board, they might support this. There's a sense of frustration with parents who want to see the board concerned with children rather than just politics. And extending the right to vote to non-citizen parents may achieve that by giving a voice.”
Lee said, that with the right campaign and targeted outreach, there's a chance that this measure can pass.
Sheila Chung, of the Bay Area Immigrant Rights Coalition, said this initiative is extremely important for San Francisco since immigrants account for 37 percent of the population.
“This is a broad-based initiative that deals with disenfranchised community members,” Chung said. “There's a large Asian and Chinese immigrant population in San Francisco, so this will have a huge impact on that community, but this measure cuts across all immigrant communities.”
Chung said if parents are able to participate in school board elections, they can better understand the democratic process.
“We allow non-citizens to be U.S. soldiers, and currently there are 37,000 non-citizens serving in the U.S. Armed Forces,” Chung said. “And out of the first 10 individuals who were killed in Iraq, five were non-citizens. So basically, you can die for your country, but you can't vote for your child's education.”
Prior to 1926, non-citizens were allowed to vote in 22 states and U.S. territories; however, anti-immigrant sentiment after World War I led to the repeal of this right. But in the last 25 years, local governments in Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts and New York have allowed non-citizens to participate in various types of local elections. Last April, Chicago allowed non-citizens to vote in public school council elections, and in New York City, non-citizens had been allowed to participate in school board elections before Mayor Michael Bloomberg reformed the city's educational system and dismantled school boards two years ago.
In the next several months, the New York City Council will hold hearings on whether the city's 1.3 million legal immigrants who are not citizens should have the right to vote for all local offices.
David Chiu, senior vice president and general counsel of Grassroots Enterprise, said a common misperception is that non-citizens should wait to become naturalized and then vote.
“What they don't know is that becoming a U.S. citizen is a bureaucratic challenge,” Chiu said. “There's a lot of red tape, and currently there's a huge INS backlog with people who have been waiting for 10 years. And this is the critical time period in which their children go through school.”
Chung added that many opponents believe that allowing non-citizens to vote in local elections would do away with the whole citizenship process. She disagrees.
“We've seen that if parents get involved and participate on a political level that makes sense to them, it will encourage them to continue with the citizenship process to become a full-fledged citizen,” she said.
Supporters of Gonzalez's proposal said the ultimate goal of this measure is to get parents involved in their children's education.
“As a parent of two children in San Francisco's public schools … I enthusiastically support the proposal by Supervisor Gonzalez to allow non-citizen parents of children enrolled in SFUSD to vote in school board elections,” Teng said. “This initiative would be a significant asset to San Francisco's educational system because it would allow all parents to have a voice in their children's education.”
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