Political Notebook: Gay SF school board prez gears up for election bid

More than a year after being appointed to his oversight body, gay San Francisco school board president Phil Kim is gearing up to seek election to his seat. He will first appear on the June 2 primary ballot to serve out the remainder of his current term through 2026.

Kim, 35, will then need to run on the November ballot for a full four-year term. Former mayor London Breed had tapped Kim in late August last year to fill the vacancy created when then-president of the school board Lainie Motamedi resigned because of personal and health issues.

“I am incredibly committed not just to our city but ensuring our district delivers for the kids we serve and maintains its focus on student outcomes,” Kim told the Bay Area Reporter this week on why he wants to continue serving on the board that oversees the San Francisco Unified School District.

Ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday, Kim held his first and only campaign event of 2025, a fundraiser at a private home in the Castro. He and his fiancé Andrew Tremblay, who plan to wed in September 2027, live nearby in the city’s LGBTQ neighborhood.

Kim’s campaign website should go live by the end of January, and he is planning to hold an official kickoff event for his candidacy in the spring. At his November 19 fundraiser, which the B.A.R. was invited to cover, Kim noted he was talked into having it by co-host Bevan Dufty, a gay dad of a college student who formerly represented the Castro on the city’s Board of Supervisors and later was elected to the board that oversees regional transit agency BART.

“I am very focused on my responsibilities for the school board as president right now. That has been and continues to be the driving force of my energy right now,” explained Kim about the soft launch to his campaign in speaking to the B.A.R. this week.

At the event last month Dufty told the B.A.R. he is supporting Kim’s continued tenure on the school board due to “his passion for teaching and learning” as well as his willingness to “dive in” to a leadership position at a time when the school district is facing myriad issues, from budgetary cuts estimated as of last month at $48 million and possibly closing school sites to a looming threat of a teachers’ strike. (At an impasse on contract talks with the district since October, the United Educators of San Francisco held the first of two required strike authorization votes Wednesday with its union members.)

“You know, we need our schools to be successful, and the way finances are going with municipal finances, school finances are very challenging. And so I just, I feel like he's the right person,” said Dufty, adding that he and others have taken note of “how serious and thoughtful that Phil is, but also how warm and gregarious and kind he is to people. So, the qualities that he brings, I think, are exactly what our schools need, and our students need.”

SFUSD has a $1.2 billion budget and nearly 9,000 employees, serving approximately 49,000 students. Superintendent Maria Su, Ph.D., and the board earlier this year dealt with a $114 million deficit in its 2025-2026 budget that began July 1, and will be tackling the current fiscal shortfall in the coming weeks.

Earlier this fall the district reached a tentative collective bargaining agreement for the next three school years with the United Administrators of San Francisco, the union representing school principals and others. The school board just extended through June 2028 the contract for Su, who like Kim was first appointed to the position by Breed.

“At this moment a significant priority for the district and the board is to ensure we have someone in our superintendent who understands our local context and school communities. We believe Dr. Su is well positioned to continue to stabilize our schools and our district in the path we are in right now,” said Kim.

As of December 2, Kim was the only candidate to have filed for the special election next spring, according to the city’s ethics commission. As for the November election next year where three of the seven school board seats will be up for grabs, Kim is one of two candidates who have already filed with the ethics agency in order to begin fundraising for their candidacies.

The other is nonprofit education leader John Jersin, who came within 248 votes of being elected to the school board in the November 2024 election. That race saw bisexual married mom Jaime Huling be elected to her school board seat with the most votes of the four winners. She and Kim are currently the only LGBTQ members of their governing body.

Kim took his oath of office in late August 2024 and resigned as executive director for school strategy and coherence in the SFUSD superintendent's office. Earlier this year he was elected president of the school board then, in April, was named deputy director of the city’s Human Rights Commission, whose previous leader Cheryl Davis resigned in disgrace last year amid a contract scandal.

Kim serves under Mawuli Tugbenyoh, a gay man named the agency’s permanent executive director by Mayor Daniel Lurie in September. Breed had named Tugbenyoh to the position in an acting capacity last fall following Davis’ ouster.

Wanting to respect the boundaries between his city position and role on the school board, Kim declined to talk in depth about his job for this article since it is focused on his reelection bid.

“I am deeply committed to our city. I believe deeply in the HRC, and it is an honor to be working here,” said Kim, who had stepped down as the national senior director of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) for the public charter schools network the KIPP Foundation when recruited to work for the city’s school district at the start of 2024.

A one-time science teacher with KIPP, Kim twice lost bids to be elected to an SFUSD board seat in 2016 and 2018. He had also entered the school board race in 2022 but ended up suspending his campaign that year.

“It's been a while,” Kim acknowledged at his fundraiser since he last ran for the education post. “And I have learned a lot since. I have quite literally grown up a lot since.”

The classroom, whether it be in grades K-12 back in Michigan where he grew up the child of South Korean immigrants or college where he struggled not just academically but also financially to pay for it, has always provided him a haven, said Kim. It is what drives him now as a school board member and as a candidate for the elected office, he explained.

“That whole experience, the thing that I reflect back on, is that the people in my life who kept me going along the way were educators. Always,” recalled Kim. “They were the ones who stood up and said, ‘You can do this. In fact, you have to do this.’ And it's a huge part of the reason why I chose to go into the teaching profession.”

 
In order for the city to thrive, it needs a thriving school district, argued Kim. Due to investment from the community and the city, SFUSD “is on the right track,” he said.

“But it requires focus; it requires consistency; and it requires stability,” continued Kim. “And that is part of the reason why I'm running. And that stability is so critical for us, not just from a board level, but from a district standpoint.”

Among Kim’s supporters is queer dad Ed Center, who with his husband, Chris Punongbayan, has an 8-year-old third grader enrolled at the district’s Rosa Parks Elementary School, which he said they love. Their eldest child, now 14, had been a student at SFUSD but is now at a boarding school.

“I actually have been supporting Phil since early on in his first run for school board and what impressed me about Phil that remains impressive today is he is a practical person who is really concerned about the quality of education for kids in San Francisco. And that's his focal point,” said Center, the founder of The Village Well that focuses on the needs of students with disabilities and supports their families. “And so political divides and debates are far less interesting to Phil than are we getting the right resources to the right people to have amazing teachers with great curricula create great educational experiences for our kids.”

It is unlikely that Kim will be uncontested in the special election in June; the deadline for candidates to file is in early March. He will also be navigating a host of hot-button issues prior to election day, with a potential teachers’ strike one of the more pressing.

“I am very hopeful our district will continue to work in partnership with UESF to come up with an agreement that honors their profession, respects their work, and maintains stability in our financials,” Kim told the B.A.R. when asked about the matter.

He remains noncommittal on keeping open the Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy, the elementary school in the Castro named for the late gay city supervisor killed nearly 50 years ago. The school is again among about a dozen school sites with low enrollment mentioned as possibly being shuttered in order to consolidate classrooms and save costs for the district.

Any final decision is a way off, noted Kim, adding that the superintendent has been tasked with having an open discussion with the school communities before bringing a plan before the school board to approve. He called the Milk school “a very special place” whose namesake the district should not only continue to honor but also “uplift the work that school community is doing. I firmly believe that.”

Pressed if that meant he supports keeping the Milk school site open, Kim responded that he and the board will be looking for Su and her team “to build a holistic school closure plan for ensuring our district is organized in a way that meets the needs of our school communities and our students.”

That requires the district to engage in dialogue with all of its campuses, including the Milk school, Kim noted.

“I look forward to partnering with the Milk academy community to ensure we continue to honor their school community,” he said.

While Kim will be running citywide for his seat, he is now faced with being on the same ballot in June with the special election for the District 4 seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors due to the recall in September of gay former supervisor Joel Engardio. Appointed Supervisor Alan Wong, sworn into office Monday by Lurie, will be seeking to serve out the remainder of Engardio’s term through the end of 2026 and if elected, like Kim, will need to seek a full four-year term on the November ballot.

With District 4 voters animated over the fate of not only their supervisorial representation but the city park Sunset Dunes that shuttered a major commute route through their neighborhood, they are expected to account for a good chunk of the electorate next June and could play a spoiler role in the school board race as a result. (A special election will also be held next June for the board’s District 2 seat, with appointed Supervisor Stephen Sherrill also seeking to serve out the remainder of the term of his predecessor, Assemblymember Catherine Stefani, ahead of running for a full term next fall to represent the city’s northern neighborhoods such as Cow Hollow and the Marina.)

Asked about how that is impacting his own campaign plans, Kim told the B.A.R. that he intends to campaign throughout the city and not merely concentrate on one area.

“SFUSD has schools in every corner of our city, and I look forward to engaging with all communities across San Francisco and having conversations on how to improve education outcomes for all kids. That focus will not be changing,” said Kim.

Political Notes, the notebook's online companion column, will return Monday, December 8.
 
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