As Deficit Looms, SF Public School Teachers Threaten Strike Over ‘Fair Contracts’

San Francisco teachers and the public school district are at an impasse after 8 months of contract negotiations have garnered very little movement toward an agreement.

The parties on Thursday jointly requested that the California Public Employment Relations Board officially declare a deadlock and appoint a mediator to intervene in their bargaining process.

The move is an escalation toward a strike from United Educators of San Francisco, and comes after the union flatly rejected the San Francisco Unified School District’s contract proposal that would have given educators a 2% raise on Monday. The union said the deal would have required more cuts and concessions than benefits for its members.

“That’s when we started really being concerned about the state of negotiations,” said Nathalie Hrizi, who is coordinating UESF’s bargaining. “We really felt we were so far apart in terms of our highest priorities that we had to declare an impasse, and the district declared jointly with us.”

Contract negotiations have been ongoing since March, and UESF’s existing contract expired June 30. It remains in place for the most part as the parties work to finalize a new contract for the next two years, according to Hrizi.

Throughout negotiations, the biggest sticking points for the union have been: an agreement that the district will cover healthcare for educators’ dependents; development of a workload model aimed at improving working conditions for special education teachers; pay increases for certificated and classified positions; and a few “low-to-no-cost” demands, including reaffirming the district’s sanctuary status and committing to use district resources to provide shelter for the most vulnerable students.

UESF’s initial proposal for the pay increase in March was 14% for classified employees and 9% for certificated employees over two years. UESF president Cassondra Curiel said that in the months since, there’s been no back-and-forth negotiations bringing that percentage down. The district had not proposed any raise until the 2% offer, she told KQED.

“They have at each turn either delayed, rejected or dismissed our conversations at the bargaining table in such a way that it has made it impossible for the two of us parties to have a constructive conversation about the realities of the finances and the realities of the needs of our members,” Curiel said.

Hrizi said the union was “ready and willing” to move on a number of its demands, but that the district’s proposal would have required them to drop many of their demands to gain the small raise.

SFUSD proposed the salary hike in exchange for undoing existing agreements that give high school teachers who take on extra work — as department heads or teachers of Advanced Placement courses that enroll a certain number of students — an additional “prep” period. Stipends that are awarded to schools based on the number of AP exams their students take would also be cut.

Additionally, the deal would have ended a program that allows educators to apply for semester-to-year-long sabbaticals after serving in the district for a minimum number of years and increased class sizes on some campuses.

“What we saw was a 2% raise created by cuts and a denial of some of the things that are most important to our students,” Hrizi said.

SFUSD granted teachers a historic $9,000 raise in 2023, and an additional 5% salary increase the following year. The same deal gave classified educators a significant bump, to a minimum wage of $30 an hour.

Hrizi said those raises have been integral to hiring and retaining teachers, and “at the time, the district had the financial wherewithal to fund that package.”

She said that times are different now — SFUSD is in the midst of a multi-year budget crisis, and received a negative budget certification in spring of 2024 for the first time in recent memory. It made $113 million in cuts last year, including 100 layoffs of central office staffers and early retirement buyouts of about 350 other employees.

The district implemented a stricter staffing model this year that leaves many schools’ former supplemental positions, like educators on special assignment or class-size-reducing teachers, vacant.

And in the 2026-2027 year, SFUSD said it will have to make further budget reductions. It remains under a negative budget status.

“SFUSD is committed to a budget process that prioritizes decisions benefiting students while ensuring long-term financial stability,” district spokesperson Laura Dudnick said in a statement. “The [California Department of Education] continues to closely monitor our finances, and we must address deficit spending to meet our obligations.”

Any raises the district does give teachers, she said, would need CDE approval.

“We’re not coming back saying we need to do what you did two years ago,” Hrizi told KQED. “We’re saying, given the current context, here are things that we think would make a big difference in the lives of educators and students and that are pretty doable and we’re happy to negotiate about them.

“And we have not had a partner in those negotiations,” she said.

Next Tuesday, the union is prepared to rally outside the district’s school board meeting, where it will deliver a petition signed by more than 75% of UESF’s 6,000 members declaring that they are willing to strike if necessary to “win a fair contract.”

Declaring an impasse is a step in that direction, but the district and union will go through a mediation and, if necessary, another third-party-led “fact-finding” period to try to reach an agreement first.

If they are unable to find common ground at the end of that process, the district will have a chance to provide a “best and final” offer, and the union will legally be able to initiate a strike.

“We want an agreement,” Curiel said. “UESF members do not want to strike. It’s not the goal.

“What I do know is that over 4,000 of my members are willing to strike if the district makes us. And that is the motivation for getting the agreement,” she said.