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School board member Alison Collins, alongside board President Gabriela López, waves to supporters in March 2021, before the recall drive.

Joel Engardio speaks Saturday at Carl Larsen Park in the Sunset District during a rally supporting the S.F. school board recall.

Don Huey attends a rally Saturday supporting the San Francisco school board recall at Carl Larsen Park in the Sunset District.

Roger Wong wears a pin Saturday supporting the San Francisco school board recall during a rally at Carl Larsen Park in the Sunset District.

ELECTION UPDATE: San Franciscans overwhelmingly voted to recall three school board members, supervisor Matt Haney will head to the April runoff to become S.F.'s next state assemblymember and Joaquín Torres will remain S.F.'s assessor-recorder.

In the final days of an unprecedented school board recall election in San Francisco, supporters and opponents of the effort blanketed the city with flyers, knocked on doors and rallied to make their final case to voters.

The battle over the possible ouster of board President Gabriela López and members Alison Collins and Faauuga Moliga has been ugly, expensive and divisive — splitting parents, teachers and elected officials — and the vote could to a large degree determine the fate of the school district.

Over the next several months, the school board is expected to select a new superintendent while juggling a $125 million budget deficit and an ongoing pandemic. Despite a regular election in November, there is no time to waste, said Siva Raj, one of the organizers of the recall.

“What started as an effort by public school parents to reopen our schools has now catalyzed an entire city into demanding better leadership for our children,” he said.

This is the first time city voters will consider removing an elected official from office since a failed attempt in 1983 to recall then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein.

As of Saturday afternoon, around 109,800 ballots had been returned, more than 21% of the roughly 508,500 sent out to voters. It’s expected that an additional 50,000 or more ballots could be cast or mailed on election day.

Residents in the eastern half of San Francisco are also voting in a special election to pick their next state Assembly member among four candidates: Supervisor Matt Haney, former Supervisor David Campos, City College trustee Thea Selby and entrepreneur and philanthropist Bilal Mahmood. If no one candidate wins more than 50% of the votes, the top two will advance to a runoff on April 19.

Tuesday will be the final deciding vote on the school board recall. The recall effort kicked off more than a year ago as many in the community grew frustrated by the slow reopening of district schools despite public health authorization to do so, while the board meanwhile pursued the renaming of 44 school sites, the fate of a historic and controversial mural, and the elimination of competitive admissions to Lowell High School.

Organizers questioned the judgment of the entire board, but only López, Collins and Moliga had served long enough to qualify for a recall.

So far, the pro-recall organizers have pulled in more than $1.9 million, a jaw-dropping amount for a school board election. The opposition has raised $86,000, including $47,000 specifically donated to keep Moliga in office.

School board members Gabriela López (center) and Alison Collins attend an event condemning the targeting of elected officials in October 2020, before the recall drive.

The recall campaign has drawn significant support from the city’s well-funded business and real estate community, including $459,000 from Neighbors for a Better San Francisco, a political action committee that has previously opposed progressive candidates and reforms, including those connected to housing, taxes and homelessness.

The PAC also supports the recall of city District Attorney Chesa Boudin, which qualified in November for the ballot and will be decided locally as part of the June statewide primary election.

Venture capitalist Arthur Rock, a supporter of Democratic causes and candidates as well as nonprofit charter schools, has also individually donated nearly $400,000 to remove López, Collins and Moliga from office.

Effort to reach him were unsuccessful.

Pro- and anti-recall factions were out in force Saturday in last-minute efforts to sway voters and encourage people who hadn’t yet voted to cast ballots.

At 11 a.m. in the Sunset, dozens of volunteers in neon yellow shirts lined 19th Avenue, waving yellow signs in multiple languages at passing motorists, encouraging them to vote yes on the recall.

Stephen Lewis (right) holds a sign supporting the San Francisco school board recall during a rally Saturday on 19th Avenue in the Sunset District.

“We wanted to get out the Chinese and Asian Americans and Pacific Islander community because, historically, that group registered in those high numbers and have not voted in those high numbers,” said Ann Hsu, a mother of two San Francisco high schoolers who helped organize Chinese/AAPI Voter Outreach Taskforce in December. “If we can get all of those people to register and then to vote, we can really influence the election.”

Her group, she said, has registered 560 new voters, including noncitizens eligible to vote who are parents of San Francisco Unified School District students.

“It’s energizing a community that hasn’t been energized yet,” said John Trasviña, the former dean of the University of San Francisco’s law school and former president of the Lowell Alumni Association, who was also waving signs in support of the recall.

Unlike many of the volunteers, Trasviña is not a parent, he said, but that doesn’t mean the school board recall vote should be any less important to San Franciscans like him. He said he was frustrated with the school board’s inability to help alleviate racial and economic disparities among kids in public schools and said the name-change incident in particular highlighted a lack of substantive action.

“Our schools must do better,” he said.

On the other side of the city, school board member Moliga said he was joined by more than 60 volunteers — including parents, teachers and native San Franciscans — canvassing in Potrero, the Mission and Bernal Heights for the morning. They put up door hangers on residences and engaged with voters, he said.

“We feel really good about where we’re at currently, and we’re going to be out there every day until the polls close on Tuesday,” he told The Chronicle by phone Saturday afternoon.

He said that during his time in the community over the past several months, voters have communicated to him that they are “very supportive” of not recalling him, saying that he has been grouped in with other people and “falsely accused” of initiating issues that spurred the recall.

Moliga, a social worker, previously defended himself by saying that it was up to the school board’s leadership to determine which priorities — such as rechristening schools named after figures linked to racism, sexism and other injustices — came before the board. He has emphasized his work on mental health, social services and the budget as a board member, and stressed he is the first Pacific Islander elected in the city.

Faauuga Moliga, one of the three targets of the San Francisco school board recall, speaks after being sworn by Mayor London Breed in October 2018.

Opponents of the recall have cast the campaign as a ploy by wealthy individuals to privatize schools.

“Everyone who is following this campaign knows that billionaires are trying to buy out public education outright,” Frank Lara, vice president of the United Educators of San Francisco labor union, which has opposed the recall, said in a social media ad.

Collins said she believes the recall is an effort by “right wingers, Big Tech and Trump supporters.”

“People need to follow the money,” she said. “Many of the backers of this recall don’t even have kids in public schools, and this is clearly an attack on democracies.”

Pro-recall volunteer Marie-José Durquet, whose children went through district schools, said she is offended by the characterization of the recall effort, which she said teachers, parents and city residents worked days, nights and weekends to make happen.

“They’re ignoring so many people on the ground who have put their heart and soul and money into this,” said Durquet, who has worked as a public school teacher, in San Francisco in the past and in Palo Alto currently, for 30 years. “People from all walks of life desire a school board that behaves responsibly and delivers quality education for children.”

If a majority of voters support the recall, Mayor London Breed would appoint replacements, giving them an edge as incumbents if they opt to run in November for four-year terms.

If a majority of voters support removing any or all of the three board members from office, they would continue to serve until 10 days after the Board of Supervisors officially accepts the election results. Elections officials probably won’t certify results until Feb. 24, with the supervisors voting on March 1 at the earliest.

Breed has endorsed the recall of all three, saying the board’s priorities have been “severely misplaced.”

“If the voters recall all three members, it’s obviously a mandate that they want change at the school district,” said David Ho, a political consultant. “The stakes are elevated to the point where Mayor Breed has to make a very bold decision to appoint very competent Board of Education replacements.”

Jill Tucker, Danielle Echeverria and Mallory Moench are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: jtucker@sfchronicle.com, danielle.echeverria@sfchronicle.com, mallory.moench@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Jilltucker, @DanielleEchev, @mallorymoench

Mallory Moench is a San Francisco City Hall reporter. She joined The San Francisco Chronicle in 2019 to report on business and has also written about wildfires, transportation and the coronavirus pandemic.

She previously covered immigration and local news for the Albany Times Union and the Alabama state legislature for the Associated Press. Before that, she freelanced with a focus on the Yemeni diaspora while studying at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism.