Vidrale Franklin, the former longtime principal of Dr. Charles R. Drew College Preparatory Academy, used last Monday’s graduation ceremony at the Bayview elementary school to openly challenge the school district for forcing her to resign after a lengthy investigation into how she managed school funds.
“The world needs to know how you don’t value us, how you under-resource us,” she said in reference to the district. “And then when we start to do well. How you shut us down. Yeah. The world needs to know. Yeah. The world needs to know that in this progressive city we call San Francisco. How racist this city is,” Franklin said to roughly 120 parents gathered at Drew for the graduation ceremony. Drew has a majority Black student body.
Five of those in attendance spoke to Mission Local about the speech and two offered video. The quotes come from those videos…