Candidate Name: Virginia Cheung
Phone Number: 415.508.3459
Website: virginiacheung.com
E-mail: i.am@virginiacheung.com
Name of Campaign Manager: De'Marea Brandy and Sakura Martin
How much do you expect to spend in this contest: $40,000
Major Endorsements:
United Educators of San Francisco (UESF)
SF Building and Construction Trades Council
Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club
CA Working Families Party
SF League of Pissed Off Voters
New American Leaders Action Fund
Assemblymember Matt Haney
Supervisor Connie Chan
Supervisor Chyanne Chen
Supervisor Jackie Fielder
Supervisor Shamann Walton
Board of Education Commissioner Matthew Alexander
Board of Education Commissioner Alida Fisher
Former Supervisor Aaron Peskin
Former Supervisor Jane Kim
Former Supervisor John Avalos
Former Supervisor Eric Mar
Former Supervisor Gordon Mar
Former Board of Education Commissioner Mark Sanchez
1. What lessons did you take from the recent strike? What would you have done differently than the incumbents, if anything?
The UESF strike reinforced that stable schools depend on a stable workforce. Educators were fighting not only for competitive wages, but also for healthcare, manageable workloads, and the conditions necessary to properly serve students.
As a public school parent, I helped organize support at my son's school and coordinated communication between families and educators. Nearly 140 parents joined our group to bring food, supplies, and encouragement to teachers on the picket line. Educators and parents were heartbroken that negotiations had reached a strike.
We cannot wait until negotiations reach a crisis to listen. As a Board member, I would engage labor and families earlier and examine both the fiscal cost of proposals and the hidden costs of vacancies, turnover, burnout, and instability. Competitive compensation, healthcare, manageable workloads, and meaningful collaboration are essential to recruiting and retaining educators.
Fully staffed and stable schools must be our baseline.
2. What is your stance on school closures for budgetary reasons?
I do not support school closures as a first-line budget strategy. Closures are deeply disruptive, costly to implement, and can accelerate enrollment loss - potentially reducing revenue rather than solving our structural deficit.
Before considering consolidation, I would require a transparent cost-benefit analysis examining actual savings, transition costs, enrollment and revenue impacts, transportation, staffing, facilities, and student outcomes.
If consolidation ever becomes necessary due to sustained enrollment decline, communities must be meaningfully involved. Receiving schools must be fully staffed and offer strong academics, transportation, and before- and after-school care before any students are relocated.
Underutilized properties should remain public assets and be evaluated for early childhood education, educator housing, community schools, family services, or other educational purposes.
Our objective should be stronger schools, not simply fewer schools.
3. What is your stance on pandemic safety in the schools?
School health decisions should be based on scientific evidence and guidance from public health authorities, not personal opinion. If public health experts determine masking, vaccination requirements, or temporary changes to in-person learning are necessary to prevent serious harm, I would evaluate those measures based on the evidence and circumstances.
During COVID, I worked at Wu Yee Children's Services, where early educators were frontline workers and my son was in preschool. We implemented masking, vaccination, testing, distancing, and improved air filtration while continuing to support children and families.
That experience taught me that prevention, communication, and trust matter. We must also recognize the academic, developmental, and mental health consequences of prolonged school closures.
Our responsibility is to protect students, educators, school workers, and families while preserving safe in-person learning whenever possible. Families deserve transparent explanations of the evidence behind major public health decisions.
4. How would you like to see AI used in the classroom and curriculum?
Students need skills to understand AI, but access should be developmentally appropriate and must not come at the expense of foundational learning.
Before relying on generative AI, students need literacy, critical thinking, inquiry, research, and media-literacy skills. They must learn to ask good questions, evaluate sources, identify bias and misinformation, distinguish fact from opinion, and independently verify AI-generated information. Without those skills, children may not have the discernment to recognize inaccurate or manufactured information.
We should teach how AI works, where it fails, and how to challenge and verify its outputs.
AI should never replace educators, creativity, independent thinking, or human relationships. SFUSD also needs clear, age-appropriate guidelines, privacy protections, educator oversight, and academic-integrity standards.
Our goal should be to foster students who know when AI is useful, when it is wrong, and when to think for themselves. While I support students learning about AI and how it works, I do not support unguided AI use in classrooms.
5. Do you have practical ideas on how SFUSD can be adequately funded?
SFUSD cannot cut its way out of a structural deficit. We need to address both revenue and expenses.
Enrollment, retention, and attendance are central. Families stay when schools are fully staffed and offer strong academics, safe facilities, transportation, before- and after-school care, dual-language programs, arts, STEM, Special Education, and other programs they value.
We also need operational discipline: transparent contracts and consultant auditing, bringing appropriate core work in-house, fixing HR and payroll, and directing resources toward classrooms.
ADA funding penalizes districts when students facing health, housing, transportation, or other barriers miss school. We must work to reduce chronic absenteeism while advocating for more equitable state funding models.
ADA funding penalizes districts when students facing health, housing, transportation, or other barriers miss school. We should reduce chronic absenteeism while advocating for more equitable state funding.
My career has involved building and scaling services for children and families. I know sustainable systems require both responsible budgeting and investment.
We also need City partnerships, strategic use of district property, fully funded Special Education, and statewide reforms to adequately fund public education.
6. How are you currently involved in SFUSD - or how were you involved in the past?
I am an SFUSD public school parent, active volunteer, and board member of Parents for Public Schools of San Francisco. I regularly engage with families and educators and attend the Board of Education, Parent Association, School Site Council, and community meetings.
During the UESF strike, I coordinated communication between families and educators and helped mobilize parent support for teachers on the picket line.
Professionally, I spent more than seven years at Wu Yee Children's Services, one of San Francisco's largest Head Start and family-service providers. I helped expand early education and family supports across San Francisco and worked on kindergarten readiness, family engagement, and early intervention.
I also helped build coalitions supporting Baby Prop C, which expanded investment in early childhood education and its workforce.
For more than 20 years, my work has focused on building systems that give children and families stronger foundations from cradle to college and career.
7. How do you feel about the current school assignment system, including Lowell?
The current system creates significant uncertainty for families already balancing transportation, work, child care, language access, and specialized programs.
I support greater predictability and neighborhood stability, but assignment policy cannot be separated from program quality. Programs must be planned before boundaries are drawn. Families may leave SFUSD if programs they need are inaccessible within their zone, costing the district years of enrollment and revenue.
We should analyze impacts on enrollment, budget, transportation, diversity, and program access before implementation. Dual-language and specialized programs need protection, with appropriate pathways for students with IEPs, newcomers, siblings, and others with specialized needs. Before- and after-school care and transportation must be part of the plan.
Lowell should be part of a broader commitment to academic excellence throughout SFUSD. Rigorous opportunities should not exist at only one school.
Parents, students, teachers, educators, and school staff must meaningfully shape this implementation.
8. Are you concerned about inequality in parent fundraising between schools?
Yes. Public education should not depend on the wealth of a neighborhood or the fundraising capacity of its parents.
As a nonprofit fundraising professional, I also know that we should not discourage families from contributing their time, relationships, or resources. Instead, we can use philanthropy to leverage greater equity.
One idea is a districtwide matching fund. Major donors, foundations, and philanthropic partners could match money raised by school communities, with matching dollars directed toward schools with fewer fundraising resources - a "raise one, give one" approach.
I have spent much of my career raising resources for children and families and building partnerships between philanthropy, government, and community organizations. We should bring that same creativity to SFUSD.
Every school should have qualified educators, adequate materials, arts and enrichment, safe facilities, and the supports children need regardless of their ZIP code or their parents' fundraising capacity.
9. Are SFUSD schools currently in compliance with Williams?
Williams established essential protections for students' access to qualified teachers, instructional materials, and safe, adequate facilities. I do not believe we should assume every SFUSD school consistently meets those standards.
We have schools dealing with lead and other environmental hazards, inadequate heating, classrooms without adequate cooling during extreme heat, and insufficient air filtration. These are educational issues as well as facilities issues.
My career in early childhood education taught me how profoundly a child's environment affects development. Exposure to lead and other environmental toxins can harm brain development and health, while unhealthy learning environments can contribute to absenteeism and poorer academic outcomes.
Children should not experience vastly different environmental conditions based on the school they attend or the neighborhood they live in.
The Board must regularly monitor facilities, environmental hazards, teacher vacancies, instructional materials, heating, cooling, ventilation, and air quality and require transparent timelines for remediation.
A safe and healthy classroom is a basic condition for learning.
10. What is your position on JROTC in public schools?
I have concerns about the role of military programs in public education, but I also recognize that some students value the leadership, structure, community, and career skills JROTC can provide.
Participation must always be voluntary, and students should also have meaningful access to non-military leadership, civic engagement, career, and extracurricular opportunities.
Participation must always be voluntary, and students should have meaningful access to nonmilitary leadership, civic engagement, career, and extracurricular opportunities as well.
Programs should be evaluated based on whether they advance students' educational and career development, respect student choice, and avoid contributing to the militarization of our schools.
Our responsibility is to provide young people with many pathways to discover their interests, develop leadership skills, serve their communities, and prepare for college and careers. No student should feel that a military-affiliated program is their only pathway to those opportunities.
11. Would you support district elections for School Board members?
Yes. I support district elections.
The current at-large system creates barriers for working-class candidates and people from underrepresented communities because campaigning citywide requires significant money and organizational resources.
I experienced this firsthand running citywide. District elections could make campaigns more accessible, strengthen neighborhood representation, and create clearer connections between Board members and the communities they serve.
Representation matters because different San Francisco neighborhoods face different challenges involving transportation, housing, environmental conditions, language access, child care, and school enrollment. The Board benefits from leaders with direct relationships across these communities.
At the same time, School Board members must represent every SFUSD student. Any district-based system should combine stronger geographic representation with a clear citywide responsibility to provide excellent and equitable public schools for every child.
12. Should noncitizen parents and caregivers vote in School Board elections?
Yes. I support allowing noncitizen parents, guardians, and caregivers of SFUSD students to vote in School Board elections.
I am the daughter of refugees and immigrants and have spent much of my career working alongside immigrant and multilingual families. I know that citizenship status does not determine how deeply a parent loves their child or how much they care about their school.
Families who live in San Francisco and send their children to our public schools have a direct stake in the education system. They should have a voice in decisions affecting their children.
Throughout my career, I have supported policies and programs that ensure immigrant families have language access, meaningful opportunities to participate, and representation in systems affecting their children.
Including noncitizen caregivers strengthens family engagement and makes our public institutions more representative of the communities they serve.
13. What are your thoughts on nonprofits that partner or contract with SFUSD?
I have spent more than 20 years working in nonprofits serving children and families, so I have seen how valuable community organizations can be. They provide early education, mental health, legal services, tutoring, arts, family support, and after-school programs, often with deep cultural and linguistic connections to communities.
I strongly support community schools, where schools coordinate with nonprofits, healthcare providers, and family services to meet families where they are and remove barriers to engagement.
However, strategic partnership is fundamentally different from outsourcing core district responsibilities. We should bring essential student-facing work in-house when permanent SFUSD employees can provide it effectively.
But partnership is different from outsourcing core district responsibilities. We should bring appropriate core and student-facing work in-house when permanent SFUSD employees can provide it effectively.
Contracts should have transparent costs, measurable outcomes, oversight, and accountability. Community organizations should fill gaps, contribute specialized expertise, and build trusted connections but do not replace a stable public workforce.
The strongest systems combine accountable public institutions with the expertise and trust of community partners.
14. What is the role of the School Board compared with the superintendent?
The School Board establishes vision, policy, priorities, budget guardrails, and measurable student outcomes. The Superintendent implements those policies and manages day-to-day operations.
The Board hires and evaluates the Superintendent. Its job is not to micromanage individual operational decisions, but neither should it simply accept administrative recommendations without scrutiny.
Board members must ask hard questions, monitor outcomes, ensure responsible stewardship of public dollars, and intervene when the district is not meeting clearly established goals.
My professional experience has involved working across boards, executive leadership, programs, finance, government, philanthropy, and communities. Effective governance requires clear roles, good information, accountability, and trust.
The Board also has a democratic responsibility to ensure students, families, educators, school workers, and communities are heard before major policies are adopted.
Good governance should keep everyone focused on what matters most: whether our decisions are improving outcomes and opportunities for students.
15. Would you ensure all San Francisco students have access to free public pre-K?
Yes. Early education has been central to my career. At Wu Yee Children's Services, I helped expand Head Start, Early Head Start, and family services across San Francisco, and I helped build coalitions supporting Baby Prop C.
San Francisco already has strong foundations through Baby Prop C, the Department of Early Childhood, Head Start, community providers, family child care businesses, and expanded Transitional Kindergarten.
Universal access requires coordinating these systems rather than allowing them to compete with or destabilize one another. Programs must be high quality, fully staffed, accessible to working families, and integrated with before- and after-school care.
We must also invest in the early-education workforce. Seats mean little if we cannot recruit and retain qualified educators.
Early childhood is where we can identify developmental and learning needs before gaps widen. I have seen what early intervention can mean for families. Every child deserves that strong foundation before entering elementary school.
16. What lessons should SFUSD take from Diane Ravitch's work, and what role should charter schools play?
A central lesson from Diane Ravitch's work is that high-stakes testing, closures, privatization, and competition do not by themselves build strong public education systems.
Sustainable improvement comes from investing in educators, strong curriculum, early intervention, student supports, and stable school communities.
My own life reinforces that lesson. I entered kindergarten without speaking, and an educator helped me find my voice and a pathway through public education. Children need adults and systems that recognize their potential, not systems that simply sort them according to test scores.
Strong public schools are foundational public institutions and should be our priority.
Charter schools can play a limited role, but they should not undermine public-school funding, equity, accountability, or stability. They should meet strong standards for transparency, inclusion, student services, fiscal accountability, and outcomes.
Our goal should be a public education system families trust and want to choose.
17. What are your thoughts on SBAC and standardized testing?
SBAC can provide useful information about academic progress and systemic disparities, but standardized testing should never be the sole measure of a student, teacher, or school.
We need data. We should know whether students are reading at grade level, developing strong math skills, and making progress and disaggregate results to identify where systems are failing particular groups.
But children are more than a test score. My own educational path depended on a teacher recognizing potential in a child who entered kindergarten without speaking. Good educators see strengths and needs that standardized assessments cannot fully capture.
Assessment should help educators improve instruction, identify students who need intervention, and direct resources, not to label students or schools.
Academic success also includes creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, communication, social-emotional development, health, financial literacy, and preparation for college and careers.
We should measure what matters without allowing what is easiest to measure to define a child.
18. How can public schools better address Special Education students and English learners?
Early intervention is personal to me. I entered kindergarten without speaking and benefited from educators who helped me find my voice. My brother did not receive the interventions he needed and eventually left school. Those different experiences shaped my belief that children should not have to depend on luck to get support.
Students with disabilities and English learners need meaningful access to the curriculum through fully staffed classrooms, Special Education teachers, paraprofessionals, language specialists, differentiated instruction, and strong Tier I and II supports.
We must identify needs early rather than forcing families to fight for years to receive services. Fully funding Special Education can improve student outcomes while reducing conflict, litigation, and long-term costs.
We must identify needs early rather than forcing families to fight for years for services. Fully funding Special Education can improve outcomes while reducing conflict, litigation, and long-term costs.
English learners and newcomer families also need multilingual programs, culturally responsive instruction, language access, and family navigation.
My early-childhood work reinforced that when we design systems around students furthest from opportunity, we create stronger schools for everyone.