We’re in The Wire, Wendy

"Yeah, Vince. We’re in The f#$king Wire."?

I curse a lot. I think it was all that rap music I listened to growing up.

We just finished up our meeting with San Francisco Mayor Candidate #2.?

TLDR

• First two mayoral candidates understand that public safety is the mandate.
• The CA State Corrections Department uses how many people reach 3rd grade reading proficiency to project prison capacity. Read again slowly.
• One-third of SF students are now in private schools. Rich, white families have opted out. SFUSD's enrollment is declining which means less variable funding against a fixed cost base. We're in a classic downward spiral.
• Our mayoral candidates are not thinking deeply enough about our public school problem but they seem committed.

The Wire | San Francisco-style

Even though we are sitting in a Starbucks in Laurel Heights, we know San Francisco is looking a lot more like East Baltimore these days.

For those who haven't watched The Wire, you're missing out. It's arguably the best television show ever made.

• Season 1: Drugs & City Hall
• Season 2: Unions & the decline of blue-collar work
• Season 3: Open-air legalized drug dens
• Season 4: Schools and the mayor’s race
• Season 5: Implosion of local journalism (which is why you’re hearing about mayoral candidates on my LinkedIn posts)

"If you’re not 5 minutes early, you’re not on time."

Vincent Matthews and I are seated at the corner table waiting patiently for him to arrive. He strolls in 3 minutes late, but promptly apologizes and explains that his dad just had a fall.?

I feel bad he’s taking this meeting instead of tending to his dad but it makes me feel he thinks this is important.

We ask him how much time he has for us. He says an hour. Even better. He’s giving us 30 more minutes than the last candidate did. I don’t think this is because he cares more about us, but this is what experience is all about.

He’s meeting with a co-founder of a known group representing Asian Americans (37% of the city) and the former SFUSD Superintendent. What we think and what we say publicly will matter in a race of inches.

Apparently, even CA Senate candidates are reaching out to get Vince's endorsement these days. I guess when you develop a rep for fixing schools up and down the state, that matters. Vince is a big deal now.

I pull out a list of typed questions

“A list of typed questions?” He’s impressed.

“I’m an Asian woman. I came prepared.”? We all chuckle.

What I don’t say that everyone should know is that I’m running a structured research project. There’s about 10 disciplines underneath marketing and running qualitative / quantitative research is my happiest place.?That and telling my designers, what’s hot or not.

If I don’t ask the candidates the same questions, then how am I going to lay this out in a beautifully designed grid later?

We talk public safety and Asians

The first topic is always the deterioration of our streets and the sad state of affairs.

Vince advises a nonprofit that has an office at 5th & Mission and so can’t avoid the total lack of humanity that’s happening. We have people openly dying on our streets.?

The first two candidates we've spoken to know this is the public mandate. If they don’t fix this problem in their first administration, then game over.

They have differences in their public safety approach which an average citizen won’t understand and requires a series of posts to explain. But they do have substantive plans and that’s great.

Hate crimes against Asians

Candidate #2 proactively brings this up. What is happening is not okay.

That’s my opening.? “What will you do to address this issue?”

He says the mayor needs to be out there denouncing anti-Asian hate very visibly and publicly. The mayor needs to also be denouncing anti-Semitism.?

I appreciate this as the mother of Vietnamese-Jewish kids. The world seems increasingly unsafe for them.

“What else?” Pause.

I offer up that the data out there is incomplete because many hate crimes are not reported, but any keen observer can see that many of these incidents are happening in and around public transportation. And happening to women.

Cases in point: two Asian women stabbed waiting for a bus and 63 year-old Asian woman shoved near Bayview station.

This should be no surprise to anyone. The Asian community in San Francisco relies heavily on public transportation and when you put troubled people in close proximity with others, bad things happen.?

But let’s keep it real. People are sick.

I say, “As much as many Asian activists would make it purely an issue of race, can we please admit that many of these people are mentally ill?”

Heads nod.

“So, we really can’t fix this issue until we fix the issue of mental health on our streets. What’s your answer?”

“Well, I think we should increase the number of psych beds at SF General.”

“As a healthcare person, I will tell you that’s the most expensive place to treat a patient.”

But, let’s talk about schools.

We’re 40 minutes into the meeting and we haven’t talked about schools. And this is exactly the issue. So many pressing, urgent problems that no one can focus on the root causes of structural racism.?

“What’s your education policy?” we ask.

“Most of the power to fix schools rests with the School Board, but I think the Mayor’s office can do a lot more to align with the SFUSD on key goals - like students meeting 3rd grade reading proficiency."?

Vince says, “Do you know that the State Correctional Department uses the % of students who reach 3rd grade reading proficiency to model the capacity needed for prison beds?”

Candidate #2 and I are floored.

Candidate #2 talks about pulling funding from nonprofits to fund the Office of Early Childhood education. This is music to my ears.

We all know that in this City some of the funding of nonprofits is often in service of politicking vs. driving real outcomes for citizens.

He has a list of things his administration is prepared to do that I think are good but won’t fix SF Public Schools.

"Do you think all the things you just listed will result in reversing the decline of student enrollment?"

I say, “Here’s the problem. One-third of SF students are now in private schools like your kids.?

If student enrollment continues to decline, that means less revenue per pupil coming in, which means less money against the fixed cost of the central office.”

Basically, we’re in a classic downward spiral loop.

He understands business, so the light bulb goes off.

“Okay. Let’s brainstorm. How would you go about this?”

I appreciate this response but do I love that I’m explaining the frame of the problem to a mayoral candidate. No, I don’t.?

It makes me worried that no one is thinking deeply enough about a problem that impacts 50,000 kids everyday.?

“It’s going to take a really long time to solve this,” say Candidate #2.

“And in the meantime, there are kids in the system now,” says Vince.

I'm typically not a crier. I have the emotional range of Stringer Bell in the Wire. But the last 6 months have been rough, and I'm now holding back a tear. No one knows because no one knows how to hold it together better than me.

"Wendy, what do you actually do?"

We hit our 1 hour limit, and Candidate #2 has left.?

Vince and I wait until it’s clear before we debrief. We talk about what’s next.

Time for me to set up a meeting with the person who is now in charge.

But before we leave, Vince asks, “Wendy, what do you actually do?”

I find this funny because this is the third time I’ve told Vince. I think he finds it super boring so it doesn’t actually stick.

“I’m the Chief Marketing Officer at Hello Heart. We’re a health technology company focused on heart health. A person gets a blood pressure cuff that connects to an app. If your stats are too high, the app acts like a digital coach to get your blood pressure down. This prevents heart attacks and strokes. We're really good at this.”

“Oh, Yolly had a bit of a scare last week. She was at Kaiser when they took her blood pressure. 12 people rushed into the room. Does Kaiser cover Hello Heart?”

“Vince, I’m sending you a kit tomorrow.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really.”

I then go home and text my upstairs neighbor Graham Walker, MD , who is a medical AI expert and leading the digital innovation team for Kaiser NorCal that this happened and this is the exact clinical workflow Kaiser should have.

All worlds colliding.

Postscript: I know every LinkedIn post requires a photo and I forgot to take one of me and Vince so here's one of me buying the kiddos cupcakes after our meeting. I hope they know that I'm doing this for them because maybe modeling my values is the best thing I can do for them.

Disclaimer: Views are my own, not any org I represent.