Willie Brown's wife corrects his memory lapse about SF's acclaimed arts school

Absent-minded

In the strange case of former Mayor Willie Brown's fuzziness about the existence of a highly acclaimed public arts high school in the city he ran for eight years:

We start with three items from Mayor Brown’s Sunday column in the Chronicle.

Willie Brown column, Sunday, April 26

They’re still letting me into Oakland. ... While I was there I spotted Academy Award-winning actor Sean Penn and Tosca’s Jeannette Etheredge, strolling into the Oakland School for the Arts.

I investigated further and found Penn acting as professor to students who were responding as if they were watching Susan Boyle and Simon Cowell exchanging expressions of appreciation.

That school is one of Jerry Brown’s finest achievements from his years as mayor. I would love to have that institution in our city.

In response to this item, the Chron received a number of letters pointing out that San Francisco has a successful School of the Arts (founded 1982) after which Oakland School for the Arts (founded circa 2002) is modeled -- including a letter from me and my SFSOTA PTSA co-president, and one from SFSOTA principal Carmelo Sgarlato. Two of the letters ran on the Chronicle's editorial page on Tuesday (April 28) -- see next post.

Willie Brown column, Sunday, May 3

Item A:

Got a call from one very ticked-off backer of the San Francisco School of the Arts - my wife, Blanche.

Like all the others who have let me have it the last few days, Blanche was upset that I wrote last week regarding Oakland’s School for the Arts, “I would love to have that institution in our city.”

“You obviously are slipping,” Blanche said. “We have a School of the Arts.”

I said, I know that, Blanche.

Obviously, my writing missed the point. What I meant to say was that no one has pushed - at least to my knowledge - to advertise our school and tell the world that it is as glamorous or attractive as Oakland’s.

The good word is that they are trying to raise the money to bring the school to the Civic Center area where it belongs.

Item B:

The SF Jazz Gala at the Four Seasons the other night was quite the party, with elevated seating, incredible lighting, wonderful sound and a group of teenage players who had McCoy Tyner tapping in time.

This gala is definitely on its way to becoming an annual San Francisco must. Hooray for Robert Mailer Anderson, the man responsible for bringing it all together.
 

Here are comments I e-mailed to Willie Brown (not as a letter to the editor) in response to this week’s column items:

Dear Mayor Brown — thank you for clarifying your comment about SFSOTA. And also thank you for plugging the teen jazz musicians at the Four Seasons gala — the SFJazz High School All-Stars. The group you heard includes three student musicians from San Francisco School of the Arts, all soloists in the ensemble (I named two trombonists and a trumpeter).  They follow numerous SFSOTA student jazz musicians who have been admitted by audition to the SFJazz High School All-Stars over the years. There has never been an Oakland School for the Arts student in the SFJazz High School All-Stars, just for the record.

I’m very familiar with Oakland School for the Arts, whose growth I’ve followed since its founding. While I am a critic of charter schools largely because of the union-busting that is the heart of the charter movement, I agree with a parent there who told me, “Oakland really needs a school like this.”

But a few points:

– OSA is still a new, struggling school. It has been badly troubled since its founding in many ways, and many agree that it would never even have survived — let alone achieved its high-profile new location — without the relentless commitment and involvement of Jerry Brown.
– OSA gets a huge amount of private money, again directly to Jerry Brown's nonstop efforts. SFSOTA has no comparable income stream from private donors.
– The “glamour” and “attractiveness” you attribute to OSA are brand-new and due to its new location in the restored Fox Theatre. Until a couple of months ago, OSA was located in portable classrooms and tents in the parking lot of the Fox, surrounded by construction equipment.
– OSA’s principal is the longtime former principal of SFSOTA, Donn Harris, recruited by Jerry Brown — who has long struggled with rapid turnover of administrators and teachers at OSA. I know that Donn began working to bring an AP (Advanced Placement) class to OSA for the first time. An OSA parent told me it’s not the kind of school where students seek out AP classes, so he questioned how successful that effort would be. SFSOTA has a thriving AP program in multiple subjects. That gives you a picture of the contrast between the two schools.

It was a great achievement for OSA when it moved into its new home at the Fox (Phil Tagami also gets major credit, along with Jerry Brown), and of course the Sean Penn fundraiser was a fantastic PR and income-generating coup. (I’m not sure how Penn would feel if he understood the extent to which the charter-school movement is based on eliminating teachers’ unions, but that’s another story.) But your idea that OSA is a stronger or more “glamorous and attractive” school that SOTA should envy is still not fully based in reality.

Thank you very much for your attention to this, and please thank Mrs. Brown for her advocacy! We’ll send you a schedule of SFSOTA’s performances for the rest of the school year; we hope you can attend one or more. Please share it with Mrs. Brown. — Caroline Grannan, parent of a trumpet student (SOTA class of 2009/Oberlin Conservatory class of 2013) and a trombone student (SOTA class of 2012).