San Francisco voters will fill three seats on the San Francisco Unified School District Board of Education on Nov. 3, and the city's usual political alliances have split over who should get them. Eight candidates will appear on the ballot: Autumn Brown Garibay, Virginia Cheung, Alida Fisher, Ryan Hazelton, Phil Kim, Laurance Lee, Reina Tello and Tim Tung, according to Mission Local's candidate series.

Why three seats are open

Two incumbents are running. Board President Phil Kim, appointed by Mayor London Breed in August 2024 and elected in a June special election to finish that term, is seeking a full term. Commissioner Alida Fisher, a special education advocate first elected in 2022, is also running again. The third seat is open because Commissioner Lisa Weissman-Ward is not seeking re-election, The San Francisco Standard reported Tuesday.

Three competing slates

  • GrowSF and the San Francisco Democratic Party: Kim, Brown Garibay and Tung.
  • SF Parents Action: Kim, Brown Garibay and Fisher.
  • United Educators of San Francisco (the teachers union): Cheung, Tello and Hazelton.

That is a sharp change from 2024, when the union and the moderate groups all backed the same two winners, Parag Gupta and Jaime Huling. The Standard traces the split to two fault lines. The union dropped Fisher, whom it endorsed in 2022, citing her response to February's teachers strike and her close alignment with Superintendent Maria Su. SF Parents Action, which opposed Fisher in 2022, now backs her, crediting her support for literacy and math changes. Separately, Tung's late entry in July won him GrowSF and party backing but not SF Parents Action's, whose former director warned it put Brown Garibay at risk. Tung's sister, Nancy Tung, chairs the city's Democratic Party.

GrowSF says it will spend six figures on Kim, Brown Garibay and Tung, which it calls the largest outside investment ever in a San Francisco school board race. The union says it cannot match that and will lean on door-to-door organizing.

Who the newcomers are

Brown Garibay is a first-time candidate who spent six years on PTAs at Flynn Elementary and James Lick Middle School. Tung was a lead analyst for California local governments at S&P Global Ratings for 12 years and chairs the district's bond oversight committee. Cheung finished sixth of 11 candidates in 2024. Tello is an SFUSD graduate and an organizer with the Latino group PODER, and Hazelton runs the after-school nonprofit Mariposa Kids.

The money question: reserves

The biggest policy argument is over SFUSD's savings. The district says its official reserve is $139 million, of which $28 million is required by the state, Mission Local reported. Asked how the district should use reserves, Kim said one-time emergency dollars should not pay for permanent costs, pointing to the structural deficit left when federal COVID relief ran out. Tung said reserves are about 12% of the budget, below a 17% best-practice level, and forecast to fall to 3% by 2029. The three union-endorsed candidates argued for spending more now on staffing, special education support and chronic absenteeism.

The winners will help decide the district's replacement for the school assignment lottery, school closures and instruction. For other local races and measures, see the Bay Area Brief Nov. 2026 election guide.