San Francisco, CA
San Francisco schools chief ripped for ‘crocodile tears’ during strike as her salary and kids’ education revealed
San Francisco schools chief Maria Su was blasted for shedding “crocodile tears” while discussing school closures because of the teachers’ strike — as it was revealed she rakes in $385,000 a year while sending her kids to private school.
Su came under intense scrutiny this week as Bay Area public school teachers hit the picket lines over pay increases and better benefits. The strike ended Friday.
The schools chief — who earns five times more than a 10-year teacher with tenure — choked up Feb. 6 while discussing the impending strike and its impact on students “with the greatest needs.”
But she also dodged questions about making significantly more than her teachers — and also refused to answer a question about her own kids attending private school, KTVU reported.
“I’m a mom, I have kids, I know the importance of education,” Su replied.
“I know the importance of our teachers having fair and competitive and livable wages,” she said. “It is expensive to be here in the city.”
Su sat on her pile of cash while teachers stood on the San Francisco picket line for nearly a week before they landed a 5% raise for teachers over two years on Friday. The teachers also got their healthcare demands approved, receiving fully funded healthcare contributions for dependents.
Teachers didn’t have much sympathy for Su during the process of the strike — one picket sign on a wet day Tuesday said, according to the San Francisco Standard, “Is this rain or Maria Su’s crocodile tears pretending she cares about our kids?”
An eighth-grade science teacher in the area, Jennifer Erskine-Ogden, held the sign.
“Give me a break,” she told the San Francisco Standard about the tears. “It’s just fake.”
Su wasn’t the only San Francisco pol virtue-signaling about public education while sending her own kids to private schools, which can cost upward of $60,000 per year.
Saikat Chakrabati, a lefty candidate for Congress and tech multimillionaire, campaigned on behalf of the teachers union in a series of attention-grabbing videos — but sends his own child to a pricey private school, The Post is told.
Christine Pelosi, daughter of Rep. Nancy Pelosi and candidate for state senate, was shown on the picket lines as her own children enjoy an expensive private education.
San Francisco, CA
18-year-old dies in crash on I-80 near SoMa district
(KRON)– An 18-year-old is dead, and several others are injured after an early morning crash on eastbound I-80, near the 7th street off ramp in San Francisco’s SoMa district, according to California Highway Patrol San Francisco (CHP SF).
The crash occurred around 1:00 a.m. between a tractor-trailer, a Recology truck semi, and a grey Chevrolet Camaro, according to CHP officials.
Police said the Camaro was traveling eastbound just west of 7th Street when it made an illegal lane change to the right, colliding with the tractor-trailer as it was approaching the off-ramp.
Both vehicles crashed into the sand barrels at the top of the 7th Street off-ramp, officials said. The tractor-trailer continued onto the offramp, where it came to a stop, blocking all lanes.
After hitting the sand barrels, the Camaro continued, launching over the off-ramp bridge railing, where it dropped 25 feet and landed in the San Francisco Police Department Impound parking lot beneath the off-ramp and hitting several vehicles in the impound yard, police said. The Camaro landed upside down on top of another car.
Police said four people were inside the Camaro. The driver, an 18-year-old man, had moderate injuries and managed to get himself out of the car, police said. The right front passenger, a 17-year-old male, suffered moderate injuries as well.
The two rear passengers, both 18-year-old men, suffered major injuries. One is being treated at a local hospital, and the other was pronounced dead at 1:50 a.m. at the scene of the crash, police said.
The other three passengers in the Camaro were wearing seatbelts, and the 18-year-old who died was not wearing a seatbelt.
CHP SF officials do not believe alcohol or drugs were a factor in this crash.
San Francisco, CA
A 1906 fire burned 200,000 books. More than a century later, one was returned | CNN
Inside a charred book, pages dotted in soot stains tell the story of how San Francisco rose to the epicenter of a gold rush. Barely escaping the 1906 earthquake, this book should’ve burned completely.
The city’s oldest continually operating library presumed it did. After all, almost 200,000 volumes inside the Mechanics’ Institute did. That was until Randall Schwed donated the book to the library in December. Fumbling around an online marketplace, Schwed found “Echoes of the Foot-Hills” listed for $35.
“What’s interesting about this book is that it’s a survivor,” Schwed told CNN. “I needed to send it home.”
Fires heavily damaged the city during the 1906 earthquake and other fires followed. While no one knows which fire the book survived, here’s what we know about the mystery around it.
Library Manager Myles Cooper has been racking his brain for an explanation of how the book found its way home. In a fire after the earthquake that destroyed 200,000 volumes, how could this book emerge more than a century later?
Was it checked out? Was it rescued from the rubble of another fire? Was it hidden somewhere?
Cooper is certain the book is from the institute in San Francisco, evident by a stamp and a date: Dec. 10, 1874. Schwed, a collector, said his first instinct was to research the owner.
Agnes Quigley is inked at the top of the book’s first page.
In 1898, a woman by the name Agnes Quigley posted an advertisement in the San Francisco Call and Post newspaper, Schwed said.
The advertisement is about a young woman and reads, “From East, wishes situation as chambermaid and carer of children.”
There’s no way to prove whether the two Quigleys are the same person, Schwed said. But he has two theories as to how Quigley could have gotten hold of the book. She could have checked the book out. Or Quigley somehow stumbled upon the charred book and inscribed her name inside.
Both theories are plausible, Cooper agreed. He added another theory: There was a “lot of looting in San Francisco during the 1906 earthquake.”
“Echoes of the Foot-Hills” isn’t the sole survivor, though. Other volumes, like archival and reference materials, were in a safe at another location during the earthquake, Cooper said. Another book, “Marriages, Rights, Customs and Ceremonies,” survived and was in circulation until 2001.
Now, the soot-spotted book is unavailable for checkout. It is locked in a display case beneath an 1854 map of San Francisco that also survived the earthquake. Nearby, an oversize atlas bears drawings of the earthquake’s activity created by pendulums.
“It’s really kind of like a library fantasy,” Cooper said. “It’s really magical.”
In San Francisco’s Financial District, the Mechanics’ Institute stands two stories tall. The membership organization is home to the nation’s longest-running chess club, writers’ groups and classes.
In the 1850s, the institute was established to provide gold miners with an education. Decades later, in January 1906, the institute merged with the Mercantile Library to form what was the city’s largest library. Three months later, the Institute lost that title.
“Our library was destroyed in ways that many other buildings were not. I mean, it completely fell down,” Cooper said. “There’s only one remaining wall and really only one brick story left, and everything was burned.”
The institute, like San Francisco, began discussing a plan to rebuild, Cooper said. They collected thousands of dollars and books in donations. Many of those books are related to architecture, mining and railroads – the things San Francisco needed to rebuild.
“It’s definitely part of the DNA of San Francisco to rebuild and rethink things, and that we always have a place to save history, and people’s stories won’t be lost,” Cooper said. “We will be a place that can have the capacity to contain those stories.”
As a longtime San Franciscan, Cooper said the earthquake’s story is kept alive through word-of-mouth. Today, no witnesses of the earthquake and fire are alive.
The institute plans to put acid-free cardstock inside the book to explain its story. It’s common practice for an owner to write their name inside an old book. “Echoes of the Foot-Hills” has had three owners in its more than 150-year lifespan: Quigley, Schwed and the institute.
San Francisco, CA
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