Ann Hsu：A new community leader rising from the school board recall campaign

（SAN FRANCISCO) Ann Hsu is an entrepreneur and electrical engineer, but she has never got involved in political events until a month ago in December 2021. The San Francisco school board recall movement has motivated Hsu to lead an effort to register new voters who are citizens and non-citizens.

During the pandemic, Hsu has seen her twin sons impacted in the remote learning in San Francisco. She is worried about the future of her sons and determined to start a brand new volunteer-based organization, Chinese/API Voter Outreach Taskforce, to help sign up more new voters and non-citizen voters for the February 15 Recall the School Board Election.

The Taskforce has been in operation for only a month. Hsu called for a press conference on January 14 in front of the Asian Art Museum to announce their record number of signing up a total of 228 new voters in San Francisco, with 78 non-citizens among them.

While the data of the Department of the Elections indicates that there were only 65 and 36 new non-citizen voters signing up for the November Election in 2018 and 2020 respectively.

The Board of Supervisors passed a charter amendment in 2016 to allow the non-citizen residents of San Francisco to vote in the school board elections. The non-citizens who are eligible to register as voters must be parents or guardians of any child who is under the age of 19 at the time of the voting.

There are three measures for the Recall Election on February 15. Measure A is to recall School Board Member Alison Collins, Measure B for recalling Board President Gabriela Lopez, and Measure C for recalling Board Vice-President Faauuga Moliga.

The speakers in the press event included Siva Raj and Autumn Looijen, the co-organizers of Recall the School Board Petition Campaign, Man Kit Lam, parent volunteer of the campaign, Bayard Fong, President of the Chinese American Democratic Club (CADC), Eddie Chin, Former School Board Member, Joe Engardio, Former candidate of District 7 Supervisor and organizer of the drive-through recall petition, David Lu, a Chinatown activist who is a new citizen and has registered as a new voter, Thea Selby and Bilal Mahmood, candidates of the Assembly District 17 candidates.

All speakers who support recalling the school board members reminded the voters that early voting of the Recall Election would begin on January 18.

Hsu agrees with all the speakers in the press event that the current school board members have failed to do their job to put the education as the top priority above politics.

Hsu came to U.S at age 11

Hsu was born in China and immigrated to the U.S. with her parents and older brother at the age of 11. Her father was a professor at Tsinghua University in China specialized in automotive engineering. He was hired by the General Motors as an engineer after he came to the U.S.

Growing up in Pennsylvania as a teen and going to college on the East Coast, Hsu moved to the San Francisco Bay Area when she enrolled at the UC Berkeley for graduate school.

For the past three decades, Hsu was an engineer in Silicon Valley. She also started her own high tech firm and Greek yogurt food company. She had worked, lived and traveled between San Francisco and Shanghai, China.

About four years ago, Hsu quitted all her professional jobs and moved back to San Francisco to take care of her aging parents, husband who suffered from strokes, and two young twin sons. Presently, her twin sons are both attending Galileo Academy of Science and Technology, a public high school in North Beach.

Hsu always has confidence in the public education system. She sent her twin sons to the regular schools in Shanghai instead of international schools when they lived there.

Recall the School Board petition campaign began in April 2021. Hsu did not participate in the signature gatherings. She decided to get involved only after she became the PTA (Parent-Teacher Association) President at the Galileo High School in August last year.

Hsu supports recalling school board members as a concerned parent. One of her twin sons is a typical good student who studies hard. Another son is a more active youth not paying much attention to studying. During the remote learning in the midst of the pandemic, Hsu found that her son spent more time on other activities and had poorer grades. Then Hsu has started homeschooling for her sons.

"The school board can change names of the public schools, but not at this time," said Hsu. She was very disappointed by the performance of the current school board after she learned more about the public school system in the city as a PTA President.

"I have known nobody and nobody knows me," said Hsu. She believes in effectiveness to be one of the key factors for running a successful company. She decided to start a new group to support the school board recall election. "Turnout is very critical for all elections. We can help to register more new voters including the non-citizen voters," Hsu stated.

After Hsu decided to form the Chinese/API Voter Outreach Taskforce on December 14, she reached out to Bayard Fong, the President of Chinese American Democratic Club (CADC).

Four days later on December 18, Hsu and a group of mostly Chinese American parents were out in Chinatown to join the Christmas toy drive street fair and started their first event to register new voters.

"In just three hours, volunteers registered 50 new voters, both Asian American citizens who have never registered to vote before and Asian non-citizen parents who are eligible to vote in School Board elections in San Francisco, " Hsu wrote in her first press release. It was already a record number for the Chinese community.