MEET SUSAN
Susan Solomon was born and raised in San Francisco, and recently retired from a career in education, beginning as a daycare provider and culminating as President of United Educators of San Francisco and Vice President for Political Activities of the San Francisco Labor Council, leading San Francisco educators safely through the first 15 months of the pandemic and unprecedented attacks on public education. She is currently a Vice President of CFT: a Union of Educators and Classified Professionals.
Susan attended public schools in the Bay Area from kindergarten through college, and thanks to union-financed affordable housing, she has lived in the Fillmore District for most of her life. She and her husband, Fred Pecker, raised their two children much like she and Fred were raised: in a politically active, pro-union family, attending civil rights and anti-war marches and union picnics, parties, and picket lines from an early age. Her children proudly graduated from SFUSD schools, as did her mother, aunt, uncle, cousins, and siblings, and she looks forward to her two grandchildren having the same opportunity.
Susan attended the University of California at Berkeley, where she was a pre-med student with a major in genetics. During the last quarter of her senior year at U.C. Berkeley, she took an education class, which consisted of helping out in a third-grade class, and that's when she realized she wanted to be a teacher, not a doctor. Her Master’s degree in Early Childhood Education began with a Child Development class at City College, and she spent a few years working as a teacher's aide, substitute teacher, and teacher in various early education settings. She also worked as a tutor in a community college writing center, where she first encountered the negative impact of high-stakes metrics on students from historically underserved populations.
Susan received her Master's in Early Childhood Education in 1980, and taught PreK and kindergarten until 2006, when John Swett Alternative Elementary School, her beloved school site, was closed. She transitioned to working full time for United Educators of San Francisco, where she served as a staff representative and elected union Secretary, followed by being elected to be Executive Vice President and then President.
In the spring of 2022, City College of San Francisco laid off many classified staff and faculty members, resulting in a diminished class schedule and loss of good union jobs. Several people whom Susan trusts and admires suggested that she consider running for the City College Board of Trustees. After seeing a decade of the harmful effects of the forced accreditation crisis, the downsizing of City College, and harmful austerity measures, those layoffs made her realize that it was time to act. Susan is excited and honored to be running for the Board with two other like-minded candidates, Anita Martinez and Vick Chung. The combined experiences and expertise of these three candidates is what the Board of Trustees needs to maintain the opportunities and the power that City College has to make a real difference in people’s lives.