Nora Hylton served on the San Francisco Youth Commission for three years \u2014 from 2018 to 2021. The District 5 resident, who was appointed to the body by Mayor London Breed, knows the benefits private school brings: She attended Lick-Wilmerding High School, and then Yale.<\/p>\n
But when she heard that all of the six appointees selected by Mayor Daniel Lurie to serve on the Youth Commission attended private school like her, she balked.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s important that the Youth Commission is getting as diverse an experience of being young in San Francisco as possible,\u201d Hylton said. The role of mayoral appointees, she said, is \u201cto make up any deficits in representation on the commission.\u201d The city charter<\/a>, in fact, stipulates that five of the mayor\u2019s appointees must be \u201cfrom underrepresented communities.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGoing to private high school speaks to some kind of experience of privilege, even if you\u2019re on financial aid,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The San Francisco Youth Commission is made up of 17 members who are between the ages of 12 and 23. Each of the 11 city supervisors gets to appoint one member, and the mayor gets to appoint six.<\/p>\n The commission is not wholly symbolic: The Board of Supervisors is required<\/a> by the city charter to seek the Youth Commission\u2019s input on any matters that affect children and youth. Its members helped implement the Free Muni for Youth program, which was expanded to all people 18 and under in 2021, and<\/a> worked with community groups and supervisors to vote on closing juvenile hall in 2019. (Supervisors approved the closure, but juvenile hall is still open.)<\/a><\/p>\n Lurie\u2019s appointees were sworn in on Sept. 9. He had a sufficient number of public school youth to pick from: Of the 12 applicants recommended by Youth Commission staff to the mayor\u2019s office this year, three attend public high schools, seven attend private schools, and two had already graduated from SFUSD, according to Joy Zhan, the commission\u2019s acting director.<\/p>\n The mayor, however, picked six from private schools. By contrast, six of the 11 members appointed by supervisors attend public schools. Overall, that means 11 of the 17 youth commissioners now attend private school.<\/p>\n This also marks the first time since the 2016-17 term that none of the mayoral appointees has been from a public school, according to a decade of appointment records provided by the Youth Commission and the Office of the Clerk of the Board of Supervisors.\u00a0<\/p>\n In a statement<\/a>, Lurie\u2019s spokesperson, Charles Lutvak, said that though the mayor\u2019s appointees all go to private schools, they have diverse backgrounds. \u201cWe are proud to have appointed a slate of youth commissioners who come from different backgrounds and walks of life \u2026 The Youth Commission does not oversee SFUSD.\u201d<\/p>\n Joshua Rudy Ochoa, who is on staff at the Youth Commission, confirmed the mayor\u2019s appointees come from different city districts, bring a wide range of racial representation, and include at least one who receives financial aid to go to private school.<\/p>\n All of the former commissioners and city officials who were part of the appointment process concur that the commission\u2019s makeup should represent San Francisco youth \u2014 some 70 percent of whom<\/a> attend public schools \u2014 if not skew more toward public school students.<\/p>\n The appointment is a resume booster for aspirational young people, after all, that should not only be awarded to those from a more privileged background, critics of Lurie\u2019s said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt says a lot about the mayor being out of touch with those folks that are in public school,\u201d said Sunny Angulo, a former longtime legislative aide who was previously involved in picking youth commissioners. Angulo now runs a progressive advocacy group<\/a> that has been critical of the mayor.<\/p>\n The right thing is \u201cto focus on those young people that are most impacted by the challenges that everyday families are facing in their communities,\u201d she added. In the 2024-25 school year, for example, SFUSD recorded 2,794 homeless<\/a> students.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think people realize how many people under the age of 24 were literally living and doing their homework and applying for schools and college out of homeless shelters \u2026 every one of these children are our children and our responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n Apart from communicating the needs of young people to City Hall policy makers, many of the former commissioners have gone on to attend top universities<\/a>, and some have embarked on political careers as city officials.<\/p>\n Being a commissioner \u201creally sets up young people in San Francisco for success within politics, local government\u201d and in community organizing, said a former youth commissioner, who went to Lowell High School. It is \u201ca very important intentional place for young people.\u201d<\/p>\n Crystal Chan, a former commissioner who went to Lowell, said that in organizing for Free Muni for Youth, for example, it was important to have more commissioners who understood transit \u201cfirsthand\u201d rather than those who were \u201cmore well off\u201d and did not ride public transit.<\/p>\n Still, the private-school trend may continue: In recent years, a position on the Youth Commission \u2014 whose members aren\u2019t compensated<\/a> and receive no stipend \u2014 seems to have become more appealing to private school students.<\/p>\n A lot of public school students nowadays really want a paying job, said Zhan. About 55 percent of the 156 applications received this year were from students in private schools, she said, though the commission\u2019s staff has tried to focus more on public schools in its outreach process.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI do applaud those who were selected and wish them and our city tremendous success,\u201d said Vanessa Pimentel, a political strategist and former youth commissioner who went to Galileo Academy of Science and Technology.<\/p>\n \u201cBut we have to ask: Who precisely gets access to these opportunities? Who else gets a seat at the table?\u201d<\/p>\n