Candidate for
Board of Education; County of San Francisco

JILL WYNNS

EDUCATOR, CHILD ADVOCATE, COMMUNITY ACTIVIST

Jill Wynns grew up in New York City and its nearby rural areas in the fifties and sixties and was educated in New York City public schools. She attended the "Famed" High School of Performing Arts for a year and was admitted to New College at Hofstra University after her junior year in high school. She spent a college year in Sweden and moved to San Francisco in 1969 after earning her degree in Humanities. She worked for several years as a costume designer and costume shop manager.

When her three children started to attend public school in San Francisco she became increasingly involved, particularly in political issues related to education. For six years she was the President of San Francisco Parents' Lobby, a city-wide political organization for public school parents. She was a founding organizer of a local education coalition, San Franciscans Unified. Jill was instrumental in organizing the school community to pass four bond issues, a facilities parcel tax, a ground-breaking local school sales tax and the recent charter amendment to set aside $60 million a year of city money for schools and pre-school. These school funding measures have collectively raised an estimated $1.5 billion of local tax dollars for San Francisco schools.

She was first elected to the San Francisco Board of Education in 1992, was re-elected in 1996 and in 2000 with the highest number of votes. She was elected President of the School Board in 2001 and 2002. She has also served as Chair of the Budget Committee for five years, and is well-known in the community as the voice of fiscal responsibility. Jill has the broad-based support of parents, teachers, students, administrators and community leaders. As a Board member she has championed the causes of student representation and parent involvement and has become nationally recognized for her opposition to the commercialization and privitization of public schools and her unwavering advocacy for increased resources for public education. She is the author of the district's recently implemented healthy foods policy.

She is a member of the national board of CUBE, the Council of Urban Boards of Education of the National School Boards Association, made up of over one hundred of the largest school districts in the nation. For five years Jill was a director of the California School Boards Association, was the Chair of CSBA's Urban School Districts Council and a member of their Charter Schools Task Force. From 1994 to 1996 she was President of the Association of California Urban School Districts. She served as a Working Group member for the California Education Master Plan. Currently she serves on the California Title I Committee of Practitioners and the State Attendance Review Board.

From 1994 through 1997, Jill was the Director of the Children and Families Action Network of Alameda County, a family advocacy organization. Since that time she has worked as a consultant specializing in education issues, community organizing, and local ballot initiatives. Locally she is also known as a leader of a coalition to keep the de Young Museum and the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park, as well as a progressive leader on other issues.

124 Brewster Street, San Francisco, 94110, (415) 824-8560, fax (415) 695-0357 SFUSD, 555 Franklin Street, Room 106, San Francisco, 94102, (415) 241-6427, fax (415) 241-6429 jwynns@muse.sfusd.edu