By Tim Redmond

San Francisco school superintendent Arlene Ackerman, who is paid handsomely to be an educator, had a wonderful educational opportunity this month when some members of the district's Student Advisory Council put forward resolutions opposing one of her key policies and questioning her lucrative contract.

What any reasonable educator would have done was to stand back, allow the students to discuss and act on the nonbinding resolutions, then let them know that she disagreed with their decision but respected their right in a democracy to criticize her and her policies.

This is the sort of thing the school district ought to be encouraging, with every tool at its disposal: High school students care so much about the public schools that they volunteer the time to get active in district politics. So what if they blast the superintendent? Bright, committed students everywhere criticize the administration.

It happens that in this case, the students are absolutely right. Ackerman's $250,000-a-year contract, which allows her to walk out at any time with 18 months' severance, is a scandal, approved by a lame-duck board in a Friday-evening special meeting with inadequate public input. Students who are seeing schools closed, programs cut, and teachers leaving because of poor pay have every right to wonder why the top officer of the district gets so much money in such tough times.

They also have every right to question "reconstitution," the policy of shaking up failing schools by forcing all the existing teachers to reapply for their jobs. This has been tried in the past in San Francisco, and it hasn't worked. We're not entirely opposed to every aspect of Ackerman's Dream Schools plan, but this element is, at the very least, problematic, and deserves exactly the kind of constant debate the SAC is trying to stir up.

But even if we thought the students were completely wrong, Ackerman's recent actions – which are clearly aimed at shutting up the SAC – are about as bad as anything the superintendent has done in her San Francisco career – and that's pretty damn bad. As Tali Woodward reports, Ackerman has tried to postpone the SAC's meeting, and when the students decided to meet anyway, one of her staffers had a custodian remove the podium from the room. Her public relations office has put out a bizarre press packet that alleges some sort of Nixonian conspiracy between the SAC members, unnamed "adults" with unspecified anti-Ackerman "agendas," the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, and the Bay Guardian. The evidence for this consists of a private e-mail between Bruce Wolfe, a member of the task force, and SAC member Alan Wong. Wong approached Wolfe to ask how to handle the superintendent's efforts to cancel the meeting; he responded by advising Wong that he thought the meeting should go forward.

That seems a few cloaks and daggers short of a conspiracy to us.

In a June 13 letter to the SAC, Ackerman argues that "the SAC is better off focusing on issues that are directly related to student concerns and perspectives, such as the important work students have done regarding the condition of the student bathrooms." Enough with the grown-up politics, kids; go back to gussying up the toilets.

Ackerman has manufactured a crisis here, and it reflects horribly on her administration. The school board needs to tell her, immediately, to back off, let the SAC meet when it wants and pass resolutions at will, and show some respect to the people whom she so loves to say she's serving.

The board should also pass a resolution of its own, directed at the SAC, and saying: Good for you. Standing up to authority isn't easy when you're in high school, but it's a great San Francisco tradition, and the whole community is proud of you.