Three San Francisco school board members could soon be recalled as the same voter focus on education that helped elect a Republican governor in Virginia earlier this month finds an outlet on the other side of the country.

School Board President Gabriela López and commissioners Alison Collins and Faauuga Moliga will face recall elections in February. Supporters of the recall say that the board spent too much time on social justice issues during the Covid-19 pandemic and not enough on ending one of the nation’s longest suspensions...

Three San Francisco school board members could soon be recalled as the same voter focus on education that helped elect a Republican governor in Virginia earlier this month finds an outlet on the other side of the country.

School Board President Gabriela López and commissioners Alison Collins and Faauuga Moliga will face recall elections in February. Supporters of the recall say that the board spent too much time on social justice issues during the Covid-19 pandemic and not enough on ending one of the nation’s longest suspensions of in-person learning.

Opponents have attempted to frame the recall, one of the most contentious political disputes in years in this overwhelmingly liberal city, as driven by right-wing Republicans. Mayor London Breed, a Democrat, has endorsed it.

San Francisco’s last recall election occurred in 1983, when then Mayor Dianne Feinstein, who currently serves as senator from California, remained in office with 81% of the vote in her favor.

Across the country, attempts to recall school board members are growing, reflecting voter frustration with how long schools were closed during the pandemic, masking and testing policies, and conservative criticism of curricula they say are influenced by critical race theory.

More than 240 recalls have been launched against school board members in 2021, nearly three times as many as the number last year, says Joshua Spivak, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Hugh L. Carey Institute for Government Reform who studies recall elections.

The San Francisco Board of Education has faced criticism on multiple fronts in the past year. Its nearly 50,000 students started returning to the classroom this past April after one of the longest periods of online-only instruction in the nation.

Dianne Feinstein Elementary School in San Francisco.

Photo: Jeff Chiu/Associated Press

In addition, declining enrollment has contributed to a $125 million budget shortfall and the San Francisco Unified School District has proposed cutting hundreds of jobs in an effort to avert a state takeover. SFUSD attracted nationwide scrutiny when it pushed an initiative to remove the names of historic figures including George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Sen. Feinstein from buildings for alleged ties to white supremacy and oppression, even as those campuses remained closed.

The board set aside the renaming debate in February with the recall effort looming, saying it would focus solely on reopening schools.

Siva Raj, a recall organizer with children in fourth and 10th grades, said the renaming campaign is one of several social justice issues the board focused on while schools remained closed. Board members also changed the admission policies of an elite public high school in an attempt to diversify its student body and rejected a gay father seeking to join a volunteer parent advisory board because he did not qualify as a diverse member.

“We are trying to take a school system that has fallen to rock bottom and lift it up to a better place,” said Mr. Raj.

Alison Collins, seen in 2018, is one of the members who will face a recall election in February.

Photo: Liz Hafalia/Associated Press

Ms. López said she tried to speak for Latino and Black students who feared reopening too soon because of Covid-19’s impact in their communities.

“Every single day…everybody was on the ground trying to get these schools reopened,” said Ms. López.

Mr. Moliga said in an email, “If people felt unseen during that time, I personally would just like to say we could have done better.”

Ms. Collins didn’t respond to a request for comment but said in a recent interview that she was proud of the work the board had done. “Our number one priority was opening schools safely, not opening schools at all costs,” she told radio station KQED.

The election, slated for Feb. 15, will ask voters whether each of the commissioners should be recalled. If a majority agree, that member would be recalled and Ms. Breed would appoint a replacement for the remainder of their term, which ends in January 2023.

The school board’s other four members had not been in office long enough to qualify for a recall by the time proponents began their effort.

A February poll by private pollster EMC Research found that 60% of San Francisco voters—and 69% of the city’s public school parents—support recalling the school board members. More than 60% of those polled in May had an unfavorable opinion of the San Francisco Board of Education, compared with 33% a year earlier.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed has endorsed the recall of three school board members.

Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Efrain Barrera, a nonprofit executive with two children in SFUSD schools, said he opposes the recall because he believes it is being driven largely by affluent parents. He said the school board has worked to improve outcomes for Latino students, in particular.

“When folks were yelling and screaming at the board meetings for schools to reopen, the reality is many of these families who were essential workers weren’t,” said Mr. Barrera.

Christine Pelosi, daughter of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and mother to a seventh-grader in the district, said she is undecided on the recall but wants to hear the school board members acknowledge that they failed students.

“A lot of parents felt extremely unheard,” she said, “and to be told that our concerns are just because we’re not politically correct or that we’re being partisan or elitist does a disservice to what’s actually happening here.”

David Thompson has served as the recall campaign’s unofficial mascot as “Gaybraham Lincoln,” a character who sports a rainbow beard, tie-dye faux fur and silver pleather pants at campaign events in a satire of the school renaming debate.

“This is not about being anti-woke,” said Mr. Thompson, whose 10-year-old son is Black and attended a largely Latino school in the Mission neighborhood until late last year. “It’s just waking up to the fact that the board has an ideological agenda which is completely out of sync with most San Franciscans.”

Write to Christine Mai-Duc at christine.maiduc@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications
David Thompson’s son attended a public school in the Mission neighborhood until late last year. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said he was currently attending the school. (Corrected on Nov. 27)