As Schools Face Cuts, California Teachers Unions Band Together on Demands

Updated 3:45 p.m. Tuesday

Bay Area teachers unions joined a statewide bargaining campaign Tuesday, kicking off coordinated negotiations with more than 30 school districts across California.

Traditionally, teachers’ unions negotiate individually with their districts. This statewide campaign, dubbed “We Can’t Wait,” aims to align the bargaining sessions for more than 77,000 educators — including in San Francisco, Oakland and San José — to demand smaller class sizes, more resources, better wages and benefits for teachers and improved mental health support for students.

“For us to be coordinating our fight at the same time right now is a unifying effort and a really powerful statement that we represent what the community of California needs, what students and families need,” said Cassondra Curiel, the president of United Educators in San Francisco.

She said that during the COVID-19 pandemic, unions across the state saw that they faced similar challenges, such as understaffing and frequent changes to curriculum and school resources.

“It really also allowed us to see where and how many of our issues in our districts are so similar and what the benefit would be for us to put ourselves together on it. That’s essentially when we decided” to unify bargaining timelines, Curiel told KQED.

In both San Francisco and Oakland, budget shortfalls spurred plans to close or merge some schools last fall — proposals that were scaled back, delayed or called off amid intense controversy.

While the unions are mostly aligned on their overarching demands, how that looks in each district will be different, according to Curiel. She joined parents and other UESF members who traveled by motorized cable car to schools across the city to speak about their demands — like having Chinese-speaking parent liaisons, full-time school site nurses and dedicated social workers — at campuses from Chinatown to Hunter’s Point on Tuesday morning.

“I chose Gordon J. Lau for my students because of their teacher retention, strong leadership and low turnover rate,” said Brittany Cuartelon, a parent of three students at the elementary school. “I also chose Lau because of the access to enrichment programs and specialty teachers like arts, teachers, special ed teachers, speech pathologists and others … but we are seeing less and less of this as teachers are being let go, and these programs are being cut.”

UESF has sparred with the San Francisco Unified School District in recent years, accusing it of incompetence in hiring, botching a payroll system, and sowing confusion and fear as it considered closing schools.

At the start of this school year, there were about 100 classrooms across the district without permanent teachers. In 2022 and 2023, many educators went without proper pay and had insurance and tax-filing issues after the district introduced a new payroll system that proved a failure.

SFUSD is now preparing its 2025–2026 budget in the face of a massive deficit. While it shelved the controversial school closure plan in the fall, officials have said that without consolidations, school services will be pared down.

Last month, officials shared a version of a sparse new staffing formula with school principals.

“It doesn’t look like the school sites we all work at, the school sites that our families and students expect,” Curiel said.

Independence High School Principal Anna Klafter asked SFUSD board members last week to address why there were no mental health providers, social workers, nurses or counselors included in the plan. Other speakers on Tuesday’s UESF school tour noted that assistant principals weren’t budgeted in the model.

The district also announced a buy-out option for some staff, aimed at reducing layoffs and saving money spent on higher salaries for more experienced teachers, in December. The deadline for educators to take the deal is Feb. 21, but if fewer than 314 sign up, it will be voided. Curiel said if that’s the case, the union expects union members to receive pink slips this spring and is prepared to fight layoffs.

UESF has called for necessary funding cuts to come from the district’s administration, pointing to high-salary positions in what it calls a “bloated” central office. But SFUSD said it has made the cuts it can away from children.

Darcie Chan Blackburn, an English learning specialist at Sheridan Elementary School, said the draft staffing formula includes cutting one teacher and adding a third combined class from her campus. She doesn’t know if her position will be budgeted for at all.

Sheridan already has combined second-third grade and fourth-fifth grade classes and will add a kindergarten-first grade combo next fall.

“The third-grade students who are getting second-grade English language arts curriculum now are going to go up to a fourth-fifth class [next year],” Chan Blackburn said. “Well, the fourth-fifth is looping to the fifth-grade curriculum next year, so this third grader is going from second-grade English language arts to fifth-grade English language arts.”

“That just pushes our enrollment lower because what family really wants their child to be in a split grade level?” she asked.

Oakland is in a similar situation, facing a $150 million budget deficit while its board refuses to vote on a school consolidation plan. Last month, it certified a negative budget for the first time in more than 20 years.

“These districts are in these positions because they didn’t listen to us in the first place,” Curiel said. “We’ve been saying that central offices should prioritize spending on students — really centering families and students at school sites — and if they were doing that, then they wouldn’t be sitting on the millions and millions and millions of dollars in reserve that they currently have in their bank accounts right now.”

Oakland Educators Association said it is seeking livable wages for the Bay Area, more paraeducator and mental health support, and keeping community schools open.

OEA and UESF leaders will join Berkeley and West Contra Costa union members and Jeff Frietas, the president of the California Federation of Teachers, for a rally in the East Bay on Tuesday afternoon.

“We’re really hoping that this campaign … will bring a light to the circumstances that we work under to achieve what is the foundation of our democratic society every day,” Curiel said. “And what it needs to survive moving forward and how that represents what the families and the citizens of one of the biggest states in the country should really be expecting in public schools.”