By Tali Woodward

VERY SOON AFTER Arlene Ackerman came to town to oversee the city's public school system, it was clear that her administration was going to make public relations a top priority. Within a couple of years, the school district's single spokesperson had been replaced with a team of four who work to package Ackerman's policy initiatives, monitor the flow of information, and stage press events.

The Office of Public Engagement and Information also aggressively manages media coverage. Its staffers push fluffy stories and make it known that any kind of "negative" coverage is frowned upon and, ultimately, a disservice to the district's schoolchildren – to whom, they frequently remind anyone and everyone, the Ackerman administration is completely devoted.

Covering schools for the Bay Guardian, I've grown accustomed to the various tactics the people in the PR apparatus employ: long delays for even basic information, none-too-subtle suggestions that raising any topic they consider unpleasant might compromise future access, and admonishments to district staff not to talk to reporters without their clearance. I've also watched this PR team work relentlessly to cast anyone with questions about how the district is running as a political enemy who's not concerned with "the kids."

Ackerman's defenders have argued that the $400,000-a-year PR effort is necessary if city residents are ever going to regain faith in the San Francisco Unified School District. But the PR office has often seemed more akin to a corporate spin machine working to protect a sensitive CEO than a public service set up to disseminate information – or, for that matter, do anything for kids.

Then again, that's public relations for you. It's all about manipulating information and making your boss look as good at possible. At least Ackerman's PR team never seemed willing to personally attack SFUSD students.

Until recently.

In late May, a 17-year-old on the Student Advisory Council named Alan Wong – one of those unusual kids who attends committee meetings and debates budget priorities while his peers are playing video games or skateboarding – decided to take a stand on two raging district controversies. He drew up a couple of advisory resolutions for the body, which is basically a district-wide student council, to consider. One opposed a method of school reform that involves replacing teachers who work at struggling schools; the other criticized how much of the SFUSD's very limited budget goes into Ackerman's personal bank account. (Last fall Ackerman won a new contract guaranteeing her a $26,000 raise as well as a $375,000 payout should she leave her job, even by her own choosing.)

SFUSD staffers tried – and failed – to convince the students on the SAC to drop Wong's resolutions (see "Learning about Politics," 6/15/05, and Opinion, page 11).

And when Ackerman's administration had run out of ways to stall or blunt the measures – she even tried to postpone the meeting where the SAC was supposed to vote on the resolutions – her PR team swung into action.

They did not address the kids' reports that SFUSD staffers had pressured them to drop their resolutions (I had sent them a dozen questions about those accounts days before and was rebuffed with a statement that didn't even acknowledge the central issues). Instead, on June 13 Ackerman's special assistant Lorna Ho, who runs the PR office, distributed a press packet that sought to deflect questions by entirely reframing the issues. In it, the school district alleged that the SAC representatives were being "used" in some sort of adult conspiracy – not by district staffers, as the SAC members had told me, but by "certain adults ... trying to pursue their own political objectives." In other words, by people they see as enemies of the Ackerman administration.

"The district feels it is unconscionable that adults may be using the SAC as a political tool to embarrass the superintendent and are calling for that activity to stop," the press release read. But the packet – all 30 pages of it – contains little more than wild accusation.

In many ways, it was astounding – and in others, it fit nicely into a consistent and well-worn pattern.

'Facts'

There are some factual problems with the thick press packet. For instance, in a section helpfully headed "Facts," it states that at a June 6 SAC meeting "Jane Kim and other executive board members of UESF [United Educators of San Francisco, the union that represents local teachers] gave public comment in favor of the two resolutions."

Unlike any member of the PR staff, I was at that meeting, which I recorded. Kim – who, incidentally, is not a member of UESF, but a youth organizer who ran for school board last fall – did not speak in favor of either resolution. Instead, she said, in part, "My main purpose in being here is not to advocate for one side or the another, but to advocate for proper procedure and make sure that student voice is being properly heard at the meetings here.... I support whatever that vote may be."

The packet also contained a letter from Ackerman to the members of the SAC. "I have recently seen some very disturbing signs that certain adults are trying very hard to manipulate SAC members in order to pursue their own political objectives," it states. "I think this type of behavior is shameful, and I caution all members of the SAC to guard against being used to promote other people's agendas."

It's an interesting approach for Ackerman to take, given that her staffers were already publicly accused of doing the very same thing. But what makes it even weirder is that members of the SAC never received the letter. It seems it was written entirely for public – or at least, media – consumption.

Of course, this is minor stuff compared to the very ugly message at the heart of this particular press packet:

"We leave it open to public examination if it is plausible that the resolutions were indeed written solely by the student who originally submitted it [sic], or instead with the assistance of adults," the press release stated. The obvious insinuation is that drafting a policy statement – and trying to convince people to support it – is somehow beyond the capacities of a high school student.

"It hurts me that the district doesn't believe in our writing abilities, and has to think that somebody else is writing for us," SAC said president Theresa Muelhbauer.

In all 30 pages there was absolutely no evidence that Wong got help writing the resolutions – he also adamantly denies the charges. I asked several school board members, activists, and union leaders if they were involved in the drafting. All of them said no, although several said they later offered advice when Wong contacted them about the pressure SAC members were feeling from district staff.

The true conspiracy

The June 13 press release also included a suggestion to "note the e-mail correspondence regarding strategy between an adult and a SAC student member to gain additional press coverage, including plans to involve a Bay Guardian reporter who has written numerous negative articles about the superintendent's administration."

The attached e-mail, a personal message from Sunshine Ordinance Task Force member Bruce Wolfe to Wong, is largely about how to hold the meeting despite Ackerman's order to postpone it, not about a media "strategy." But after eight sentences about how to hold the gathering, Wolfe wrote, "Contact Talie [sic] Woodward about this when you have confirmation that the superintendent is making the order to cancel the meeting." Wong had also made a comment in the e-mail appended beneath about the "excellent press coverage" he expected Ackerman to get.

Now, one of my main duties as a reporter is to get people to let me know if something interesting is going on. Sometimes people contact me. Sometimes I even – gasp! – encourage them to contact me. But when I asked Wolfe about the e-mail, he said he mentioned me because I'd been the only reporter at the June 6 meeting.

How this could possibly be construed as evidence of a vast conspiracy is beyond me. The real mystery: How did the SFUSD press department get a copy of a personal e-mail from an adult who's not affiliated with the school district to a student representative who was not using an SFUSD e-mail address?

On the night of the student vote on these resolutions, Wong trolled through his e-mail and found a record of the one time he'd forwarded the e-mail from Wolfe. He'd sent it to a SAC member, who says she didn't pass it on, and to two people who work for the nonprofit contracted to help run the SAC.

There's been a long-running controversy over whether Ackerman has placed a "gag order" on her district staff, admonishing them not to talk to members of the Board of Education or the press without getting clearance from her office. Though Ackerman has taken issue with the "gag order" term, she has repeatedly confirmed that she wants staffers to let her office know before they speak to the press. She has characterized it as a "courtesy."

Whatever you want to call it, restricting employees' speech is one thing. Having them collect information on political opponents – including those that aren't yet old enough to vote – and turn it over to what is, essentially, your propaganda operation? It's a whole new level.

Handling the press

As implied in the SFUSD's press release, I haven't had a particularly good relationship with the Office of Public Engagement and Information, which hasn't been happy with a lot of things this paper has reported.

Spokesperson Ho has called my editors to complain about my coverage of the school district, quibbled with facts even when she can't offer any reason to doubt them, and tried to get me to disclose how I've gotten specific information. I've done my best to navigate the whole thing – after all, it's part of my job. But no amount of following procedure seemed to help, as long as I was inquiring about something they'd rather the public not know about.

In case you're wondering why there's no comment from Ho or anyone else from the district in this story, it's because her office has chosen not to talk to us.

And though this paper has had a particularly rocky relationship with Ackerman's PR team, other journalists also say the PR department has tried to intimidate them and has complained to their supervisors that coverage is too "negative." Fearing that the working relationships will only worsen, these journalists are unwilling to talk about their experiences on the record.

But the PR team hasn't used these approaches only with professional journalists. They've also worked to intimidate student journalists from Lowell High School's paper.

In the fall of 2003, Nicole Hui, then an 11th-grader at Lowell, was looking into whether Ackerman had established a gag order. Hui told us Ackerman initially didn't return her calls. But once Hui got a copy of an e-mail from former assistant superintendent Winnie Tang describing the instructions given to staffers, Ackerman "decided to come to Lowell to be interviewed."

When Hui's story ran – under the headline "Superintendent Denies Placing Gag Order on District" – Ackerman and her staff complained about the reporting and the illustration that ran with it (a cartoon of Ackerman gagging someone with a piece of cloth). At least one PR staffer visited the school to register criticism. Like the SAC representatives, these students had raised issues that were politically uncomfortable for the superintendent.

"I didn't feel like we did anything wrong," Hui told us. "I thought, this is how people felt working under you – and we gave you the opportunity to refute [the allegations]."

Hui had to deal with the PR department again when she called a district teacher and was asked if she had gotten "permission" from the PR office to do the story. "I was like, I need permission? What about the First Amendment?" Hui said. She called Ho, who said she indeed wanted a "heads up" on any story involving the district. "Every time you call anyone at the district, they just forward you to Lorna Ho," Hui said. "I got kind of annoyed.... The media has its own right to actually go and interview people."

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