San Francisco Teachers Will Strike Next Week

San Francisco teachers will go on strike Monday for the first time in half a century.

The United Educators of San Francisco gave formal notice to members and the San Francisco Unified School District on Thursday that they will be on the picket lines next week as 11 months of contract negotiations come to a close without a deal.

“We did not come to this decision lightly,” UESF President Cassondra Curiel said at a press conference on Thursday morning. “We want to be in our classrooms and our school sites with all of our students.”

The union, which represents 6,000 teachers, paraeducators and other school staff, has been negotiating a new two-year contract with the district since last March. Educators are currently working under a deal that expired in June.

The parties are set to resume bargaining Thursday evening for the first time since declaring an impasse and entering mediation in October, and could still avert a work stoppage through a last-minute agreement.

“It is up to the district to come [to the bargaining table] with a serious proposal to solve the stability crisis,” Curiel said. “If not, it will be up to the thousands of educators of UESF to do what few of us have done before and take the next step onto the picket lines on Monday morning.”

The strike, which would be the city’s first since 1979, comes as teachers’ unions across the state gear up for their own shutdowns: the Los Angeles Unified School District authorized a strike last weekend and San Diego will hold a one-day work stoppage later this month. Oakland’s union has indicated it is not far behind.

Last year, more than 30 California unions launched a coordinated bargaining focused on stabilizing schools through smaller class sizes, special education changes and better wages and benefit coverage meant to attract and retain educators.

UESF has requested full benefit coverage for educators and their dependents and wage increases ranging from 9% to 14% for teachers and paraeducators, respectively.

“The district can’t not afford to invest in stabilizing staffing,” said Teanna Tillery, UESF’s vice president of paraeducators. “With almost 400 educator vacancies and health care increasing by 20%, the writing’s on the wall. SFUSD needs to invest in all of its educators or risk losing most of us.”

The district has maintained that it’s hamstringed by a financial crisis and remains under state oversight. It said meeting the union’s wage and benefit demands is unfeasible and would be rejected by fiscal advisors.

Before the impasse, the district had proposed a 2% raise for each of the next three years, with concessions from educators. Superintendent Maria Su has repeatedly said that the district has also offered a “creative” way to fund health care, but hasn’t shared details.

In a statement to families after the strike was called, Su said that she wants to avert a strike, and that the district plans to present a proposal that “meets many of our educators’ requests.”

It’s not clear what that offer contains. Earlier this week, a neutral panel released a “fact-finding report” — the final step of mediation — that included recommended compromises on the union’s top demands. That suggested 6% raises over two years and fully funded family health care for three years using temporary parcel tax money.

The district has not said whether it would agree to the report’s recommendations, but Curiel said they “do not go far enough.” Paraeducators need more significant raises, and health care funding should be permanent, the union said in a written dissent following the fact-finding report.

If a strike goes forward on Monday, campus operations will be significantly impacted, and Su said schools could be forced to close. To operate, schools need an administrator and custodial services, along with staff to supervise and provide instruction for students, and food service workers to distribute meals.

“The reality is, if I determine that I cannot open school safely because we do not have the staff to open school safely, then we cannot,” Su said Tuesday.

SEIU 1021, which represents custodians, clerks and lunchroom helpers, has announced its members will hold a sympathy strike and won’t cross the picket lines. The United Administrators of San Francisco is voting through midday Friday to determine if it will do the same.

Closed campuses could leave families of SFUSD’s 50,000 students scrambling to find alternative child care come Monday.

“It’s a really hard moment for families,” said Meredith Dodson, who heads the nonprofit San Francisco Parents Coalition. For parents who “are working jobs where they don’t have flexibility, they’re trying to figure out alternative plans for where their kids will be on Monday.”

She said about a quarter of the 700 families that the organization surveyed this week said they would have to miss work if their kids’ schools close. Just 4% said private childcare would be an option.

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“It’s most worrying for those who are living paycheck to paycheck,” Dodson said. “We’re also hearing a lot of concerns, especially from families with children in the special ed system. Especially the ones with one-on-one paraeducator support. It’s really hard to get those needs met without our schools open.”

Su said that she’s working with after-school care providers to extend services for a small number of the district’s most vulnerable students, and would prioritize extremely low-income and unhoused students, as well as those receiving special education services.

But she estimated that might only cover a couple of hundred and up to 1,000 kids, a fraction of the number of SFUSD students who might be in a vulnerable position during a strike.

“About a third of the students experience housing insecurity or food insecurity,” said Nelson Barry, the president of Urban Angels SF, which serves unhoused and at-risk youth. “They come from families that are living at or near the poverty level, so when there’s a strike, it’s going to affect these children in great numbers, not just a few.”

Mayor Daniel Lurie said Wednesday that he has been in contact with the union and district and urged both sides to return to the bargaining table and avoid a work stoppage. He’s also said he’s in contact with city partners to prepare to support families if schools close.

“It is crucial that our schools remain open,” Mayor Daniel Lurie said on social media. “Our working parents can’t afford to stay home if schools are closed. Our special needs students can’t afford to lose access to vital services that help them succeed. Schools are the foundation that makes daily life possible and helps every family in San Francisco thrive.”

The last time San Francisco saw an educator strike was September 1979, when teachers took to picket lines for more than six weeks, delaying the start of the school year.

That strike, which was sparked by mass teacher layoffs in the wake of Proposition 13, shuttered some schools for more than two weeks and threw the city into chaos. Then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein was integral in striking a deal between the parties, which resulted in a 15.5% pay raise and a promise to rehire hundreds of teachers.

San Francisco State University labor historian John Logan said Thursday that he still believes the parties could come to an agreement before Monday, “even if it defers a real solution on some issues [especially health care] for the future.”

“Of course, if there’s little or no possibility of an agreement, it might only take one meeting to determine that,” he wrote via email.

Curiel said the union is willing to hear a proposal from the district, but the clock is ticking.

“It’s 11:59 p.m,” she said, and “the homework is due at midnight.”

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