Karen Fleshman

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Karen Fleshman

Nonpartisan

Elections and appointments

Last election

November 8, 2022

Education

Bachelor's

Mount Holyoke College, 1991

Graduate

University of Texas, Austin, 1995

Law

New York Law School, 2003

Personal

Birthplace

Englewood, Colo.

Religion

Agnostic

Profession

Educator and business owner

Contact

Campaign website

Campaign X

Personal LinkedIn

Karen Fleshman ran for election to the San Francisco Unified Board of Education in California. She lost in the general election on November 8, 2022.

Fleshman completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2022. Click here to read the survey answers.

Biography

Karen Fleshman was born in Englewood, Colorado. She earned a bachelor's degree from Mount Holyoke College in 1991, a graduate degree from the University of Texas, Austin in 1995, and a law degree from New York Law School in 2003. Her career experience includes working as an educator and business owner. She also worked helping immigrants apply for US citizenship and for asylum and for local government agencies and nonprofits. Fleshman has served on the founding board of directors of Moms Allyship Against Racism. She has also been affiliated with Year Up, SEO Scholars San Francisco, Third Street Youth Center and Clinic, Inneract Project, and Education Outside.

Elections

2022

See also: San Francisco Unified School District, California, elections (2022)

General election

General election for San Francisco Unified Board of Education (3 seats)

The following candidates ran in the general election for San Francisco Unified Board of Education on November 8, 2022.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔	Submit photo	Lisa Weissman-Ward (Nonpartisan)	21.9	149,996
✔	Submit photo	Lainie Motamedi (Nonpartisan)	19.3	132,088
✔		Alida Fisher (Nonpartisan)	17.7	121,292
	Submit photo	Ann Hsu (Nonpartisan)	17.1	117,152
		Gabriela Lopez (Nonpartisan)	13.1	89,385
		Karen Fleshman (Nonpartisan)	10.8	73,744

---

	Incumbents are bolded and underlined. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 683,657
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates

• Phil Kim (Nonpartisan)

Endorsements

To view Fleshman's endorsements in the 2022 election, please click here.

Campaign themes

2022

Video for Ballotpedia

Video submitted to Ballotpedia Released October 24, 2022

Ballotpedia survey responses

See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection

Karen Fleshman completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2022. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Fleshman's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.

Expand all | Collapse all

Who are you? Tell us about yourself.

I’m an SFUSD parent volunteer, public school graduate, retired educator’s daughter, small business owner, and attorney. I love my children’s schools and want to build on all the good at SFUSD by listening, building bridges, and solving problems. We need safe and positive schools in every neighborhood providing high expectations and high support for all young people, families, and educators.

For 20+ years I worked for local government agencies and nonprofits to prepare young people for success in college, careers, and life, becoming a mentor to many. My mentees inspired me to become a diversity inclusion educator helping workplaces shift their culture to be safe and positive for everyone.

I will bring my experience to ensure every SFUSD student thrives and graduates ready for college or careers.

To get there, we must start early with all students enrolling in transitional kindergarten, reading at grade level in elementary, ready for high school by eighth grade, and supported from ninth grade through graduation with an individualized plan for their future, paid summer jobs and enrichment activities.

Please list below 3 key messages of your campaign. What are the main points you want voters to remember about your goals for your time in office?

• Invest in students and educators’ social-emotional wellbeing and academics
• Provide budget transparency and accountability
• Promote collaborative decision-making

What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?

I am personally passionate about preparing young people for success in college careers and life. According to the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University, "over the past several decades, the pathway to a good job- one that pays at least $35,000 per year and $57,000 at the median for young workers (ages 25 to 35) nationwide, with adjustments based on cost-of-living differences among states- has become longer and more challenging for young adults to navigate. Today, most young workers do not attain a good job until their early 30s, and only young workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher are consistently more likely than those in the previous generation to have a good job before age 30. Further, the disparities in good jobs by race/ethnicity and gender persist.

To secure a good job, young adults need more education and high-quality work experience than was necessary for previous generations. But three hurdles stand in their way:

the rising cost of postsecondary education,
limited access to high-quality work-based learning, and
the absence of comprehensive counseling and career navigation services."

San Francisco has MANY good jobs, mostly filled by people who move here.

I want SFUSD graduates to be first to be hired and thoroughly prepared to succeed with

high quality college & career counseling
paid summer jobs at leading employers
college access partnerships
dual enrollment
improved career & technical education

credentialing

Who do you look up to? Whose example would you like to follow, and why?

One of my heroes is Frederick Douglass who was born enslaved, escaped with the help of his wife, a free Black woman, and became a leader of the abolitionist movement, author, ambassador, orator, newspaper publisher, government official. Frederick Douglass inspires me because of his relentlessness, courage, and love of humanity and justice.

Is there a book, essay, film, or something else you would recommend to someone who wants to understand your political philosophy?

Shirley Chisholm's memoir "Unbought and Unbossed" expresses my political philosophy. I believe that those closest to the problem are closest to the solution and often furthest from the power to solve the problem. My goal as a public official is to solve problems by sourcing solutions from those most impacted by the problem. My goal is the freedom, safety, and wellness of all SFUSD students, educators and staff.

What was your very first job? How long did you have it?

I was a "beneficiary" of President Ronald Reagan's youth employment program: in areas of high unemployment, employers could pay young people less than minimum wage, at the time, $3.35 an hour. I started working for Wendy's at age 15, making $2.85 an hour, and no tips, when I left at 18, I was making $3.15 an hour. I was never promoted beyond my function of Salad Bar Attendant. My responsibilities included: preparing Salad Bar items, deep frying chicken for chicken sandwiches, stocking condiments and utensils, bussing tables, cleaning spilt beverages and food, mopping and vacuuming floors, cleaning the bathrooms, polishing the brass rail. It was exhausting work and has made me empathetic to all people working in minimum wage jobs and in service.

What is the primary job of a school board member in your view?

The primary job of a school board member is to set the district’s budget, approve union and other key contracts, and recruit, hire and manage the superintendent. The board reflects the values of San Francisco to establish SFUSD's vision, goals for students, and guardrails and holds the superintendent to account for achieving the goals. School Board members need to be accessible, to visit schools and engage the community.

Who are your constituents?

My constituents are the people of San Francisco, and in particular, the young people of San Francisco. As a school board member it is my responsibility to ensure SFUSD is providing high expectations and high support to every student, our facilities and curriculum are excellent, that students are safe and well, and that we are providing them with an excellent education that will prepare them for success in college, careers and life.

How would you support the diverse needs of your district’s students, faculty, staff, and community?

I believe that everyone in San Francisco has a stake in the success of SFUSD students, and we all need to contribute to SFUSD's students' success. My first priority is to invest in our students and educators social emotional wellbeing and academics, beginning by ensuring our educators and staff are paid correctly and their benefits are restored and we fix our payroll system.

I would like to see SFUSD establish consistent behavior expectations that apply to all students, faculty and staff and to use restorative practices to uphold the behavior standards. I would like to see SFUSD provide experiences for faculty staff and parents to learn how to relate across differences as equals, and to unlearn beliefs and behaviors that harm our students, including racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, Islamophobia, anti-semitism, and other harmful beliefs and behaviors. I would like to see safe positive excellent diverse schools in every neighborhood.

How will you build relationships with members of the broader community? Which groups, organizations, stakeholders will you specifically target?

Through the campaign I have met so many great people and organizations with whom I will work closely to heal the relationships between communities in San Francisco in the interest of serving our young people. These organizations include:

Parents for Public Schools
San Francisco Education Fund
Japanese Community Youth Council (JCYC)
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People San Francisco Chapter (NAACP)
Coleman Advocates
D4 Youth and Families Network
Chinese for Affirmative Action
League of Women Voters of San Francisco
American Indian Cultural Center
Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC)
San Francisco Beacon Initiative
Asian American Administrators Association
The Association of Chinese Teachers
San Francisco's Immigrant Parent Voting Collaborative (IPVC)
Bayview YMCA
San Francisco Rising
Young Women's Freedom Center
LYRIC Center for LGBTQQ+ Youth

This is not an exhaustive list, I will continuously reach out.

Do you believe it is important to intentionally recruit with the aim of diversifying the district’s faculty, staff, and administration? If so, what would be your policy to achieve this?

I am a diversity equity and inclusion educator and am strongly committed to diversifying SFUSD's faculty, staff, and administration. Research tells us that representation matters, when students see people who look like them at all levels of the hierarchy it gives them pride and a sense of belonging and confidence. Educator diversity positively benefits all students. My policies to achieve this:

1) Provide financial, emotional, and time support and partnerships with universities so that people who work for SFUSD in various capacities (as paras, as afterschool staff, and in other roles) can earn their credentials to become educators while working and for educators to become administrators. I went to law school at night while working full time and believe this is a great path to develop a diverse workforce from within,

2) Make SFUSD THE place to teach nationwide because we offer safety and freedom to educators to be themselves, and we teach the truth about US history. Build educator and staff housing, pay our educators better. Our neighboring district, Jefferson Union High School District, is fully staffed because they built housing and could offer all their educators a place to live.

What issues get in the way of quality education? How would you address these obstacles?

What gets in the way of a quality education is adult beliefs and behaviors. Adults who believe some students are more deserving of a quality education than others, and who concentrate resources and opportunities for those students. Adults who believe only some students are capable of high expectations, and only some students are deserving of high support. Adults who over punish and over refer Black and Brown students to special education while extolling white and Asian children as being the best.

What constitutes good teaching? How will you measure this? How will you support advanced teaching approaches?

Good teachers develop the strengths and address the growth areas of every student. Good teachers love young people and love teaching. Good teachers are able to relate with students of all races genders and sexualities with kindness and respect and have the same behavior expectations of all students. Good teachers understand that children learn in different ways. Good teachers apply the science of learning to ensure that their teaching methods are evidence based. Good teachers assess students regularly to ensure no student is falling behind. They never shame students, they make every student feel welcome and that they belong and are valued. I will trust the Superintendent to know how to measure this. I will support advanced teaching approaches by asking the Superintendent to provide our educators with the professional development, evidence-based curriculum, and assessment tools they need to teach excellently.

What will you do to build a relationship with parents in the district? What plans do you have to be inclusive of parental involvement?

I am an SFUSD parent myself and regularly attend games and other school events. I will visit schools at pickup and drop off, and attend events at schools that parents attend. I will work with the various Parent Advisory Councils, and advocate for the formation of an LGBTQQ+ Parent Advisory Council and a Latinx Parent Advisory Council.

54% of SFUSD students have at least one immigrant parent and we need to engage immigrant parents in their languages and with cultural competence.

We need to go to parents, not expect them to come to us. I will advocate for holding School Board meetings in schools so that more parents may attend and become familiar with our work.

Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.

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