SIO Update: Dr. Erin Evans Oct 2026

SIO Update Dr. Erin Evans

Trustee, SD County Board of Education, District 4

Our growing movement is opening electoral opportunities at every level of governance. I am the first DSA San Diego member to get elected to public office as an openly and proudly endorsed democratic socialist—the first of many more to come. Candidates across the country are winning elections because of DSA’s platform, not in spite of it, including in school board races like mine. As a teacher in our under-funded public schools, I both experience the effects of economic exploitation and I witness the effects on my students, which feels worse. All teachers are in this structural position. We are also in a structural position to elect our own bosses, and we’re electing more DSA-ers.

This is a long overdue update and so much has happened over 2 years as a SIO. I’m going to briefly highlight two of the most timely items for you here.

Supporting and uplifting grassroots work for social justice is an important role for SIOs. DSA SD and the Ecosocialism Working Group often work in coalition with SD350. Jaidacyn Madrigal is a marketing and fundraising coordinator at SD350, and once a year, on her own time, she runs Fright for Future—a free, family-friendly, DIY haunted maze featuring the horrors of corporate exploitation, environmental destruction, and animal-abuse. Last year it occurred to me that one of the COE's juvenile court and community schools-- 37ECB—could be a great venue for the maze and a cool experience for students. With the support of COE leadership and JCCS Principal, Dr. Floyd North, 37ECB hosted Fright for Future last year and is going to keep hosting it every year! Don't miss it on the last two weekends of October! More information on the event is at frightforfuture.org.

The policy area that has been most important to me since I joined the board is the need for guardrails on corporate-dominated, generative A.I. technologies in education. It was an incredibly slow process that started over a year ago with a special board session, but the first of what will likely be multiple iterations of our Artificial Intelligence Board Policy was passed by the board meeting this month.

For this short update, I’ll emphasize a statement in the policy about prioritizing "students' data and digital rights," as opposed to the more common language of compliance to FERPA and other federal laws on student’s digital privacy. As higher courts continue to hear cases related to youth interaction with digital technologies, including those using large language models for generative AI, these five words may build impactful regulatory meaning. Specifically, I’d like for students to have more agency in choosing how they engage in online learning, maybe even whether or not they engage in online learning at all.

The accelerating onslaught of corporate-driven cheerleading for AI technologies is incredibly hard to challenge, especially without the support of teachers’ unions at the national level. So I’m celebrating every single policy that challenges the growing entrenchment of BigTech in public institutions, especially in California! After the board passed the AI policy, I asked that an information item be included in our next agenda about the moratoriums on the use of any AI in education enacted by New York Public Schools and Los Angeles Unified School Districts. Stay tuned.

*This is written on my own behalf, not on behalf of the SDCBOE, and I publicly

support the official decisions made by the SDCBOE in their entirety. I am grateful to

our administration for working with me in a spirit of trust and mutual commitment to

our students, first and foremost.