I’ve lived in San Mateo now for over 10 years. San Mateo is the place I bought my first house. It’s the place where I had my two children. It’s the place where I built an incredible community and formed lifelong friendships that I will never forget. San Mateo is the place where I committed to — and got deeply involved in — local politics. It’s the place where I ran for office for the first time and where I was elected — twice — as a trustee for the San Mateo-Foster City School District board.
San Mateo is an unforgettable community with phenomenal people. It’s also the place where I realized my two daughters would never see themselves reflected and celebrated in ways they deserve, leading to the difficult decision to resign from the school board, leave San Mateo, and move someplace where they would have opportunities to be immersed in a vibrant Black community.
Before I leave San Mateo, I have a few words for my fellow residents and for the elected officials who serve this community. I recently rewatched some of the footage from the Black Lives Matter rally and protest that took place in San Mateo in 2020. Almost every single elected official in San Mateo County attended the protest. Almost every one of those individuals stood up in support of Black lives and marched alongside me and my daughter Kaiya and proclaimed to support the sanctity of people of color. Since then, very few elected officials in our county have implemented policies and practices that have actually changed outcomes for Black families in their respective communities. The SMC All Together Better disparities dashboard showcases that across virtually every single metric Black residents in this county fare worse and have more adverse outcomes. We. Must. Do. Better.
Despite cheering when I said to sit down so that other people can stand up — you have not sat down. Instead, you have run toe-to-toe with the first Latina county supervisor. You have attempted to recall elected officials of color trying to change systems that continue to oppress Black bodies. You have entered back into the political arena with power and status, blocking out the possibility of more diverse representation amongst the elected officials in this county. That’s not what it means to sit down. That is not what it will take to change outcomes in this community.
Our school board, executive cabinet, district leadership, teachers and staff have never been more diverse. These diverse experiences and perspectives have brought an equity lens and dramatically changed outcomes for kids in this community — it is not a coincidence. We have created five community schools that authentically center the voices and perspectives of families and students who have never had a seat at the table to meaningfully shape their school experience. We have increased access to algebra and have the highest number of eighth grade students meeting and exceeding math standards, and the most diverse set of students in algebra, than we have had in recent history. We have seen significant decreases in suspendable offenses, disproportionate discipline, and entry into the school-to-prison pipeline. This is what it takes to change outcomes.
Just weeks ago, a San Mateo Union High School District trustee questioned the validity of antiracist training, feeling attacked as a white person, and targeted communities based on the “breakdown of the family structure.” This is not some other place. This is here. This is not some other time. This is now. WE. MUST. DO. BETTER.
Our schools have the power to challenge racism, to build students who question the systems and structures in which we live, and to fight bigotry at every level of the system. Don’t be the status quo, don’t vote for the status quo, don’t play the political game. Speak data, change systems, support Black people and people of color to move the needle. And sit down.
Shara Watkins is a former member of the San Mateo-Foster City School District Board of Trustees.
I'm sorry you feel the need to leave this community, despite your contributions and the positive changes you mentioned.
However, I don't see us moving forward as a community and creating more racial harmony when you tell, and expect, an entire race of people to "sit down" (and presumably "shut up".) No, I won't do that, and I won't raise my white kids to do that. Every person, regardless of skin color has the right to stand up, speak out, express their opinions and try to make change the way they feel is best.
I disagree vehemently with Noelia Corzo (the supervisor you mentioned) for example, not due to her skin color, but due to her far-left ideas and policies that I believe will hurt our county. Any citizen can and should speak out and even run against or try to recall public officials they believe are hurting our community, not "sit down" because that public official is a "person of color".
As for the SMUHSD trustee questioning the wisdom of paying millions to "anti-racist" consultants, it is a good thing that taxpayers have representatives who won't just rubber stamp every bloated program with the tag "anti-racist" for fear of being attacked (just as you are doing.) If you or anyone else find these programs valuable and worth spending millions on, show us your evidence that they have improved student outcomes or decreased racial tension in the schools (I would argue they often do the opposite.)
Wonderfully, thoughtful description of the current situation we all should work to improve . I sincerely hope all of San Mateo & San Mateo County take this seriously and begin the necessary work to make our county a welcoming place for everyone.
Farewell, Shara Watkins. I appreciate your enthusiasm in burning bridges with your colleagues and San Mateo/Foster City residents before you leave. Do you include yourself when you say “WE. MUST. DO. BETTER.”? Using racism to address racism will never be a winning tactic. Regardless, if you don’t like it here in San Mateo, where do you plan on moving to? I can’t imagine a place on the Peninsula that’s more inviting than San Mateo. If there is, be sure to include yourself in “WE” the next time. Good luck to you and your family.
Westy, thanks for lashing out. But how can we take you seriously? I’ve asked you several times to explain how starving horses or people of alfalfa would solve our water crisis. You’ve been unable to even though you took a class on it. Not only that, you haven’t provided a volume of water that would be saved and how it compares to the amount of water used.
But, here’s a chance for you to dazzle us (I’d say another chance but I’m still waiting for the first instance). Why don’t you explain to us what racism is and why using racism to address racism is a winning tactic? Perhaps you can begin with BLM and explain why nobody else’s life matters?
"School Choice" is just another name for School Segregation and corruption.
San Mateo School district is segregated, BECAUSE it's school board members insisted on having Magnet Schools to provide "choice" for the rich. Ask San Mateo luminaries where they send their kids and they will either tell you a Magnet School or a Private School. I'm sure some got a doctor's note so the district can pay for their private school including transportation. Basically that is a secret voucher system right there.
Is there even one school district with voucher system that could be used as a showcase that this nonsense works? Research in Indiana, Ohio, Michigan says no.
San Mateo has plenty of choice with public, private, homeschooling, charters. Within SMFCD there are elementary schools, middle schools (segregation tool), community schools. They have magnet programs, which can help to desegregate, but most importantly they have full-blown and expensive Magnet Schools (aka Segregation Schools). They schools with names like "Montessori", "International", "Language Immersion", "Academy", "Lead"- all more expensive Magnet Schools. According to CA data, they run 10 Magnet Schools - and again Magnet Schools are all about creating segregation. They also have enrollment of 10,000 and shrinking, but how many schools and campuses do they run? They are not running a school district, they are running a little real estate empire. Make them pay property tax and they start consolidating.
And while Shara praises here "community schools", by creating 4 more Magnet Schools, she and her board friends at SMFCD just made all their problems bigger. "Choice" isn't the solution, "choice" is the problem.
You're running on generalizations without knowledge of the facts. Bayside "Academy" is 53% Latinx, 6% Pasifika, 35% English language learner, and 45% low income. So explain to me again how this is an expensive Magnet school serving the elites?
School Districts are a completely made-up and superfluous construct. When you create something like this, the district leaders feel the need to "do something", so nobody would notice. Most chose "Fighting School Segregation" after first creating it of course.
According to US Census Data, San Mateo has a poverty rate of 6%, Foster City has a poverty rate of 3.2%. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the "Percentage of families whose income in the past 12 months is below the poverty level" isn't too different either. It's basically the poverty rate of families with school aged kids in the district's jurisdiction or area of influence: this number is 5% within SMFCSD. The district poverty rates in Belmont (5%), San Carlos (1%), Menlo Park (1.4%), and Redwood City (7.5%) are comparable to San Mateo. And yet three districts would be rated "good" and two districts here would be rated really bad and really segregated.
When done right middle school programs and and magnet school programs were invented to shuffle the deck and foster integration. They are however more expensive. And when done wrong they lead to good old School Segregation by "Choice" or "Schools of Choice" or "Choice Schools" etc. And that is exactly what SF, LA, OAK, NYC, and our two local districts have been doing for the last 30, 40, or 50 years. Nothing they do is accidental, it is done by "school choicers". Trustees are not victims, if something looks wrong in your district, it's most like the "choice schoolers" and their superidts that are to blame.
Shara - Thank you so much for this thoughtful essay. Your leaving is a huge loss for the community. Thank you for your service on the school board and the positive impact on the kids - and for your work in the community.
And you are right that we need to be aware of the unique issues faced by people of color which may not be faced by White people. Our systems overall have a racist impact intentional or not. I remember when you co-hosted an event on data in policing, trying to look at various data sources.
In San Mateo County, Black people are 9 times more likely to be arrested than White people, and Hispanic people twice as likely. The jail is disproportionately people of color and virtually all the kids in juvenile hall are children of color. As a community we need to be aware of this and try to understand why.
1. This is from awhile back but was first one I saw - the race arrest charts are p 38 here https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/1218mlr-appendix.pdf Table D2 says that in 2016 the arrest rate in SMC was White 2,296, Hispanic 5,029 2x White, Black 21,290 9x White
2. Jan 2024 - https://www.ppic.org/publication/arrests-in-california/ “Among the 15 largest counties in the state, the largest Black/white arrest disparity in 2022 was in San Mateo, where the Black arrest rate was 9.1 times higher than the white arrest rate.”
3. County’s dashboard for Oct-Dec 2023 https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/f941acef8b2d4c6c99a74309897415df/page/Home/?views=Crimes%2FArrests
Black people are 2% of the population, 14% of arrests
Hispanic people are 25% of the population, 51% of the arrests
White people are 36% of the population, 32% of arrests
Hey Nancy - check with the Dept. of Social Services for an answer: "In San Mateo County, Black people are 9 times more likely to be arrested than White people, and Hispanic people twice as likely. The jail is disproportionately people of color and virtually all the kids in juvenile hall are children of color. As a community we need to be aware of this and try to understand why." They are disproportionately committing more crime. Race baiters like Shara have not done much to help out and continue to blame the Whites for all evil here. Goodbye!
Oh Dirk, you are so so wrong and your blinders are so tightly on. People of color are disproportionately arrested and charged in our county, they are not disproportionately committing crimes. Just as an example (sorry I can't remember the names and dates), I have seen many examples of white people involved in vehicular deaths and charged only with a misdeamer, while people of color are charged with felonies and emprisoned for decades, for essentially the same crime. Our San Mateo DA disproportionately jails youth of color and disproportionately charges them as adults.
Consider also Chinedu Okobi, who was killed by San Mateo deputies for refusing to stop an talk to them when they accused him of jaywalking. I would venture to say that white people almost never get accused of jaywalking (I jaywalk all the time), let alone killed for not responding appropriately to the police.
Westy - your typical unsubstantiated anecdotes. In a traffic class that I had to attend for not yielding to a pedestrian, the (Hispanic) instructor told us that white middle aged women and white men were more likely to get ticketed because they had the means to pay the fines. Perhaps a coincidence, but all forced attendees were white. So, we have one case of Okobi and that sets the stage for all prejudicial arrests of colored folk? Ask any enforcement officer, of any ethnicity or gender, and ask who is pushing the envelope in traffic violations, speeding, shoplifting, public drug use and dealing. I was involved in a delinquent minors assistance program and I can assure you that many of these kids in Juvi Hall are hardened criminals by the time that they are 14. The main reason? No parental guidance, whatever. And yes, the vast majority is of color so it seems we are dealing primarily with a cultural issue that you and Shara do not want to face or correct. I will put my blinders back on, now.
It isn;t because of more crime. And I answered above (it is not social services that does arrests, I shared the DOJ and Sheriff data). This is one rare study I saw that looked at the neighborhood level and they found "Black people are more than four times as likely as white people to be stopped for biking and walking infractions in San Diego, according to data from the San Diego Police Department.
In some neighborhoods such as Pacific Beach and Del Mar Heights, Black residents are 10 times more likely to be stopped. And the trend holds no matter where you are in the city — whiter and wealthier neighborhoods or historically redlined communities with higher Black populations." https://www.kpbs.org/news/race-social-justice/2023/06/05/black-san-diegans-more-likely-stopped-biking-walking-infractions
Nancy - statistics can be misleading. One would still have to ask the question; are these Black residents more prone to being stopped because of traffic violations or is it simply because they are Black. As I have said before, ask the enforcement community for that honest answer. They know.
Profound gratitude to you, Shara Watkins, for your exceptional leadership and contributions to our community. You will be missed but your reasons for leaving the area resonate loudly. I share your discouragement that after so much lip service was paid in 2020 to addressing racial disparities locally, we seem to be back to business as usual. Despite being one of the most immigrant-rich counties in the state and having significant racial diversity, our public officials do not reflect that diversity.
The data doesn't lie - we do not treat all people with equality. As one example, the enduring and pervasive pattern of racial profiling in police stops that has been reported in the past continues even today, here and around the state. ABC7 News, PBS, the Chronicle, and many other news outlets have reported extensively on this issue just in 2024.
It's up to all of us in this county to be responsible for the fair and equal treatment of our neighbors regardless of race or other demographics. Before people express their discomfort with the truth that Ms. Watkins named, perhaps they should dig into the data and ask themselves what they are doing to accept that truth and do something about it.
Heartfelt thanks Shara for the decade of caring and perceptive wisdom you gave us in San Mateo County - not just the City. Your even-handed decision-making and deep understanding of family and neighborhood dynamics, people's'situations - even during the early difficult days of Covid - gave us confidence with you at the helm of our schools.
My husband and I moved here to have our children, we of markedly different skin colors, my saying "California is the one place in the U.S. we can have children grow up in a healthy environment". It hurts to realize how far we still have to go, how easy it is to be blind to others' lives, and to know deep down how much more we need to listen, ensure everyone a seat at the table, and question our own assumptions.
My family and I are so sad to lose you, wish you the best in your new surroundings, and hope you hear of from us, then see for yourself - the increasing balance and representation you strove for in our beautiful San Mateo County.
What a huge loss for Foster City, San Mateo, and all of San Mateo County. Shara, thank you for your leadership and courage. As an elected official, I hear you and I commit to doing better. You will be missed. Wishing you all the best in this next chapter for you and your family.
Redwood City has the most segregated School District on the peninsula - and this isn't an accident.
Redwood City has one of the richest, but also most mismanaged School Districts on the peninsula - and that is on purpose.
Redwood City and its school district celebrate an Anti-Semite by naming a school after Henry Ford.
Redwood City has constantly redirected bicycle funding towards car projects - the most recent being Roosevelt Ave - which should have been a Safe-Routes-To-School project.
But Redwood City politicians only pay lip-service to Safe-Routes-To-School.
Redwood City has over 20 schools that have no bike lanes leading into them..
Redwood City's major youth sports park has no bike lanes leading into them.
... and the list goes on and on.
When Shara calls out San Mateo County politicians, she definitely talks about you too, Chris.
Keep the discussion civilized. Absolutely NO
personal attacks or insults directed toward writers, nor others who
make comments. Keep it clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd,
racist or sexually-oriented language. Don't threaten. Threats of harming another
person will not be tolerated. Be truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone
or anything. Be proactive. Use the 'Report' link on
each comment to let us know of abusive posts. PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK. Anyone violating these rules will be issued a
warning. After the warning, comment privileges can be
revoked.
Please purchase a Premium Subscription to continue reading.
To continue, please log in, or sign up for a new account.
We offer one free story view per month. If you register for an account, you will get two additional story views. After those three total views, we ask that you support us with a subscription.
A subscription to our digital content is so much more than just access to our valuable content. It means you’re helping to support a local community institution that has, from its very start, supported the betterment of our society. Thank you very much!
(32) comments
I'm sorry you feel the need to leave this community, despite your contributions and the positive changes you mentioned.
However, I don't see us moving forward as a community and creating more racial harmony when you tell, and expect, an entire race of people to "sit down" (and presumably "shut up".) No, I won't do that, and I won't raise my white kids to do that. Every person, regardless of skin color has the right to stand up, speak out, express their opinions and try to make change the way they feel is best.
I disagree vehemently with Noelia Corzo (the supervisor you mentioned) for example, not due to her skin color, but due to her far-left ideas and policies that I believe will hurt our county. Any citizen can and should speak out and even run against or try to recall public officials they believe are hurting our community, not "sit down" because that public official is a "person of color".
As for the SMUHSD trustee questioning the wisdom of paying millions to "anti-racist" consultants, it is a good thing that taxpayers have representatives who won't just rubber stamp every bloated program with the tag "anti-racist" for fear of being attacked (just as you are doing.) If you or anyone else find these programs valuable and worth spending millions on, show us your evidence that they have improved student outcomes or decreased racial tension in the schools (I would argue they often do the opposite.)
Best of luck to you in your new location.
Shara,
Wonderfully, thoughtful description of the current situation we all should work to improve . I sincerely hope all of San Mateo & San Mateo County take this seriously and begin the necessary work to make our county a welcoming place for everyone.
You will be missed!
Jim Lawrence
Farewell, Shara Watkins. I appreciate your enthusiasm in burning bridges with your colleagues and San Mateo/Foster City residents before you leave. Do you include yourself when you say “WE. MUST. DO. BETTER.”? Using racism to address racism will never be a winning tactic. Regardless, if you don’t like it here in San Mateo, where do you plan on moving to? I can’t imagine a place on the Peninsula that’s more inviting than San Mateo. If there is, be sure to include yourself in “WE” the next time. Good luck to you and your family.
TY, you have not the slightest grasp of what racism is. You prove that over and over and over and over and over again.
Westy, thanks for lashing out. But how can we take you seriously? I’ve asked you several times to explain how starving horses or people of alfalfa would solve our water crisis. You’ve been unable to even though you took a class on it. Not only that, you haven’t provided a volume of water that would be saved and how it compares to the amount of water used.
But, here’s a chance for you to dazzle us (I’d say another chance but I’m still waiting for the first instance). Why don’t you explain to us what racism is and why using racism to address racism is a winning tactic? Perhaps you can begin with BLM and explain why nobody else’s life matters?
We need choice in education.
Vouchers is a great start.
"School Choice" is just another name for School Segregation and corruption.
San Mateo School district is segregated, BECAUSE it's school board members insisted on having Magnet Schools to provide "choice" for the rich. Ask San Mateo luminaries where they send their kids and they will either tell you a Magnet School or a Private School. I'm sure some got a doctor's note so the district can pay for their private school including transportation. Basically that is a secret voucher system right there.
Is there even one school district with voucher system that could be used as a showcase that this nonsense works? Research in Indiana, Ohio, Michigan says no.
Maybe that's why "vouchers" would give the people of color choice and a better opportunities... get it?
San Mateo has plenty of choice with public, private, homeschooling, charters. Within SMFCD there are elementary schools, middle schools (segregation tool), community schools. They have magnet programs, which can help to desegregate, but most importantly they have full-blown and expensive Magnet Schools (aka Segregation Schools). They schools with names like "Montessori", "International", "Language Immersion", "Academy", "Lead"- all more expensive Magnet Schools. According to CA data, they run 10 Magnet Schools - and again Magnet Schools are all about creating segregation. They also have enrollment of 10,000 and shrinking, but how many schools and campuses do they run? They are not running a school district, they are running a little real estate empire. Make them pay property tax and they start consolidating.
And while Shara praises here "community schools", by creating 4 more Magnet Schools, she and her board friends at SMFCD just made all their problems bigger. "Choice" isn't the solution, "choice" is the problem.
You're running on generalizations without knowledge of the facts. Bayside "Academy" is 53% Latinx, 6% Pasifika, 35% English language learner, and 45% low income. So explain to me again how this is an expensive Magnet school serving the elites?
The "choice" is about where you send your education dollar, not your child. think GI Bill.
As John Horgan pointed out the other day in this very publication, San Mateo County has too many school districts, doing too many weird things:
https://www.smdailyjournal.com/opinion/columnists/a-glut-of-local-school-districts/article_872acb50-38cc-11ef-a7d8-0797a7e7e459.html
School Districts are a completely made-up and superfluous construct. When you create something like this, the district leaders feel the need to "do something", so nobody would notice. Most chose "Fighting School Segregation" after first creating it of course.
According to US Census Data, San Mateo has a poverty rate of 6%, Foster City has a poverty rate of 3.2%. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the "Percentage of families whose income in the past 12 months is below the poverty level" isn't too different either. It's basically the poverty rate of families with school aged kids in the district's jurisdiction or area of influence: this number is 5% within SMFCSD. The district poverty rates in Belmont (5%), San Carlos (1%), Menlo Park (1.4%), and Redwood City (7.5%) are comparable to San Mateo. And yet three districts would be rated "good" and two districts here would be rated really bad and really segregated.
When done right middle school programs and and magnet school programs were invented to shuffle the deck and foster integration. They are however more expensive. And when done wrong they lead to good old School Segregation by "Choice" or "Schools of Choice" or "Choice Schools" etc. And that is exactly what SF, LA, OAK, NYC, and our two local districts have been doing for the last 30, 40, or 50 years. Nothing they do is accidental, it is done by "school choicers". Trustees are not victims, if something looks wrong in your district, it's most like the "choice schoolers" and their superidts that are to blame.
Curious where is this more perfect place?
Oakland, Richmond, Baltimore, St. Louis, Memphis, Compton, Chicago, but certainly not San Mateo
Shara - Thank you so much for this thoughtful essay. Your leaving is a huge loss for the community. Thank you for your service on the school board and the positive impact on the kids - and for your work in the community.
And you are right that we need to be aware of the unique issues faced by people of color which may not be faced by White people. Our systems overall have a racist impact intentional or not. I remember when you co-hosted an event on data in policing, trying to look at various data sources.
In San Mateo County, Black people are 9 times more likely to be arrested than White people, and Hispanic people twice as likely. The jail is disproportionately people of color and virtually all the kids in juvenile hall are children of color. As a community we need to be aware of this and try to understand why.
We will miss you!
Can you share the 9 times more likely study?
1. This is from awhile back but was first one I saw - the race arrest charts are p 38 here https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/1218mlr-appendix.pdf Table D2 says that in 2016 the arrest rate in SMC was White 2,296, Hispanic 5,029 2x White, Black 21,290 9x White
2. Jan 2024 - https://www.ppic.org/publication/arrests-in-california/ “Among the 15 largest counties in the state, the largest Black/white arrest disparity in 2022 was in San Mateo, where the Black arrest rate was 9.1 times higher than the white arrest rate.”
3. County’s dashboard for Oct-Dec 2023 https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/f941acef8b2d4c6c99a74309897415df/page/Home/?views=Crimes%2FArrests
Black people are 2% of the population, 14% of arrests
Hispanic people are 25% of the population, 51% of the arrests
White people are 36% of the population, 32% of arrests
Hey Nancy - check with the Dept. of Social Services for an answer: "In San Mateo County, Black people are 9 times more likely to be arrested than White people, and Hispanic people twice as likely. The jail is disproportionately people of color and virtually all the kids in juvenile hall are children of color. As a community we need to be aware of this and try to understand why." They are disproportionately committing more crime. Race baiters like Shara have not done much to help out and continue to blame the Whites for all evil here. Goodbye!
Oh Dirk, you are so so wrong and your blinders are so tightly on. People of color are disproportionately arrested and charged in our county, they are not disproportionately committing crimes. Just as an example (sorry I can't remember the names and dates), I have seen many examples of white people involved in vehicular deaths and charged only with a misdeamer, while people of color are charged with felonies and emprisoned for decades, for essentially the same crime. Our San Mateo DA disproportionately jails youth of color and disproportionately charges them as adults.
Consider also Chinedu Okobi, who was killed by San Mateo deputies for refusing to stop an talk to them when they accused him of jaywalking. I would venture to say that white people almost never get accused of jaywalking (I jaywalk all the time), let alone killed for not responding appropriately to the police.
Westy - your typical unsubstantiated anecdotes. In a traffic class that I had to attend for not yielding to a pedestrian, the (Hispanic) instructor told us that white middle aged women and white men were more likely to get ticketed because they had the means to pay the fines. Perhaps a coincidence, but all forced attendees were white. So, we have one case of Okobi and that sets the stage for all prejudicial arrests of colored folk? Ask any enforcement officer, of any ethnicity or gender, and ask who is pushing the envelope in traffic violations, speeding, shoplifting, public drug use and dealing. I was involved in a delinquent minors assistance program and I can assure you that many of these kids in Juvi Hall are hardened criminals by the time that they are 14. The main reason? No parental guidance, whatever. And yes, the vast majority is of color so it seems we are dealing primarily with a cultural issue that you and Shara do not want to face or correct. I will put my blinders back on, now.
It isn;t because of more crime. And I answered above (it is not social services that does arrests, I shared the DOJ and Sheriff data). This is one rare study I saw that looked at the neighborhood level and they found "Black people are more than four times as likely as white people to be stopped for biking and walking infractions in San Diego, according to data from the San Diego Police Department.
In some neighborhoods such as Pacific Beach and Del Mar Heights, Black residents are 10 times more likely to be stopped. And the trend holds no matter where you are in the city — whiter and wealthier neighborhoods or historically redlined communities with higher Black populations." https://www.kpbs.org/news/race-social-justice/2023/06/05/black-san-diegans-more-likely-stopped-biking-walking-infractions
Nancy - statistics can be misleading. One would still have to ask the question; are these Black residents more prone to being stopped because of traffic violations or is it simply because they are Black. As I have said before, ask the enforcement community for that honest answer. They know.
Profound gratitude to you, Shara Watkins, for your exceptional leadership and contributions to our community. You will be missed but your reasons for leaving the area resonate loudly. I share your discouragement that after so much lip service was paid in 2020 to addressing racial disparities locally, we seem to be back to business as usual. Despite being one of the most immigrant-rich counties in the state and having significant racial diversity, our public officials do not reflect that diversity.
The data doesn't lie - we do not treat all people with equality. As one example, the enduring and pervasive pattern of racial profiling in police stops that has been reported in the past continues even today, here and around the state. ABC7 News, PBS, the Chronicle, and many other news outlets have reported extensively on this issue just in 2024.
It's up to all of us in this county to be responsible for the fair and equal treatment of our neighbors regardless of race or other demographics. Before people express their discomfort with the truth that Ms. Watkins named, perhaps they should dig into the data and ask themselves what they are doing to accept that truth and do something about it.
Thank you especially for your last paragraph. Such a helpful way to think of the way forward.
Heartfelt thanks Shara for the decade of caring and perceptive wisdom you gave us in San Mateo County - not just the City. Your even-handed decision-making and deep understanding of family and neighborhood dynamics, people's'situations - even during the early difficult days of Covid - gave us confidence with you at the helm of our schools.
My husband and I moved here to have our children, we of markedly different skin colors, my saying "California is the one place in the U.S. we can have children grow up in a healthy environment". It hurts to realize how far we still have to go, how easy it is to be blind to others' lives, and to know deep down how much more we need to listen, ensure everyone a seat at the table, and question our own assumptions.
My family and I are so sad to lose you, wish you the best in your new surroundings, and hope you hear of from us, then see for yourself - the increasing balance and representation you strove for in our beautiful San Mateo County.
Hugs,
Elsa
What a huge loss for Foster City, San Mateo, and all of San Mateo County. Shara, thank you for your leadership and courage. As an elected official, I hear you and I commit to doing better. You will be missed. Wishing you all the best in this next chapter for you and your family.
Such a helpful path forward Chris, thank you.
Redwood City has the most segregated School District on the peninsula - and this isn't an accident.
Redwood City has one of the richest, but also most mismanaged School Districts on the peninsula - and that is on purpose.
Redwood City and its school district celebrate an Anti-Semite by naming a school after Henry Ford.
Redwood City has constantly redirected bicycle funding towards car projects - the most recent being Roosevelt Ave - which should have been a Safe-Routes-To-School project.
But Redwood City politicians only pay lip-service to Safe-Routes-To-School.
Redwood City has over 20 schools that have no bike lanes leading into them..
Redwood City's major youth sports park has no bike lanes leading into them.
... and the list goes on and on.
When Shara calls out San Mateo County politicians, she definitely talks about you too, Chris.
Thank you for your feedback. I’d like to talk more about bike lanes. Please email me at csturken@redwoodcity.org
There is no wrong way to do bike lanes or as Nike puts it: Just Do It!
All the best Shara. Thank you for all of your work here to make San Mateo County better. Your new home will be very lucky to have you.
Welcome to the discussion.
Log In
Keep the discussion civilized. Absolutely NO personal attacks or insults directed toward writers, nor others who make comments.
Keep it clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language.
Don't threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated.
Be truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything.
Be proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts.
PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
Anyone violating these rules will be issued a warning. After the warning, comment privileges can be revoked.