"Why is the San Francisco Housing Authority so Afraid of Theresa Coleman?" asks a recent headline of the front page of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, the left-wing San Francisco weekly. The article, based on a series I wrote in the San Francisco Bay View weekly paper in 1998, looks at the policies of the San Francisco Housing Authority.

Specifically, it examines how a drive for a continuation of tenant management of public housing led by Theresa Coleman, a Hunters Point activist, was denied by the powers that be at the housing authority.

The Westbrook development in Hunters Point was an area plagued with crime, and a sense of hopelessness, before Coleman's Ujamaa organization (the word means cooperative economics in Swahili)organized the units to make them responsive to the community where she and hundreds of other people lived. While the people running Ujamaa weren't housing professionals, like the bureaucrats with the SFHA, using the government grants they were awarded, they were able to make payroll, take care of the needs of the tenants and do things that housing authorities before them couldn't do: be accountable.

Over 150 people were working, and the residents of Westbrook were setting up tenant businesses, gardens, and job training. This changed however when the housing authority under Ronnie Davis, came to power, with his big government approach. He felt that Ujamma was a threat to the SFHA. He charged that Ujamaa was spending money carelessly, and he decided to end tenant management.

When the move to tenant ownership and management were first brought into government services under President George H. W. Bush, and his Housing and Urban Development secretary Jack Kemp, projects like Ujamaa were looked at as a way to empower residents of public housing. Progressive and liberal groups and their news organs fought it, and they editorialized against the tenant ownership movement.

They thought this was a way to privatize public housing, one of the last vestiges of government cronyism. But now after the San Francisco Housing authority has come under financial problems, and federal scrutiny, progressive advocacy organs like the Guardian are making arguments for projects like Ujamaa. They are beginning to see the value in letting people lead there own fight, and make there own choices.

But on another issue involving choice, progressives seem to be regressive. The Edison Elementary School is a school that has been on the go ever since the 1998, when the Edison Corporation was awarded a charter to run the school. Before the Edison Corporation came in to run the Edison School, it was an educational hellhole.

Student test scores were abysmally low, parent moral at the school was lower, and the entire teaching staff was reconstituted. Parents were unhappy, but they were hampered by the lack of educational choices available. Things changed after the Edison Corporation began running the school.

Last year, 49 percent of Edison fifth graders scored at or better than the national average on statewide tests, up 17 points from 1997/1998, when the school was run by the San Francisco Unified School district. In reading, Edison 5th graders scored a 35 on the national average, up 11 points from 1997/1998. In fact, test scores were up in all grades under the Edison Corporation.

Thanks to the financial largesse of Gap Founder Donald Fisher, who pumped in $1.8 million into the school, 237 personal computers were provided for students in the third through 5th grades. While there were some problems, relating to teachers who had to work extra hours, more days, and parent/teacher responsiveness (teachers can be reached by phone at home by parents), things were ironed out. Teachers received higher pay than peers at other schools, the school showed dramatic improvement, and parents were happy.

Despite this progress, the San Francisco Unified Board looks like it will vote down the Edison charter. Not because of any unethical actions, or because things aren't improving for the children. But over the cry of education "privatization," due to the fact that the Edison Corporation may make a little bit of money while it improves education at the school.

School Board President Jill Wynns, the ringleader of the anti-Edison faction of the school board, called the charter school a "shameful chapter" in the history of the city. A far more shameful chapter will take place if Wynn leads the charge to overturn the Edison charter, and the move to foster parental choice and improvement in San Francisco schools.

It doesn't matter that test scores are up, enrollment at the school is up, and the school has turned itself around. Edison like Ujamaa, had to be killed because success would have caused an outgrowth of similar programs. This is something that the school board cannot accept. They aren't interested in finding solutions to the educational problems. Instead they are interested in an ideological framework that only works on paper. They may see themselves as being progressive, but they have become something else: oppressors.

Lee Hubbard can be reached by e-mail at superle@hotmail.com for any questions and/or comments.