SFUSD Teachers Strike Ends After 4 Days With Tentative Deal

After days at a stalemate, San Francisco’s teachers union announced early Friday it had reached a tentative agreement with the city’s school district, ending a four-day strike — the first in nearly 50 years.

The United Educators of San Francisco announced that the San Francisco Unified School District reached the deal around 5:30 a.m. following a 13-hour bargaining session. The union has been negotiating a new contract for 11 months and has been working under an expired agreement since July.

The two-year agreement includes fully employer-paid family health care benefits — the union’s main sticking point throughout negotiations — as well as wage increases, revisions to special education workloads, and sanctuary and housing protections for district families.

“By forcing SFUSD to invest in fully funded family health care, special education workloads, improved wages, sanctuary and housing protections for San Francisco families, we’ve made important progress toward the schools our students deserve,” UESF President Cassondra Curiel said. “This contract is a strong foundation for us to continue to build the safe and stable learning environments our students deserve.”

More than 100 San Francisco schools have been shut down since Monday as UESF members and other district employees took to picket lines. Schools will reopen to students Wednesday, after planned holidays for President’s Day and Lunar New Year on Monday and Tuesday.

“This agreement enhances our efforts to recruit and attract talented educators to work in San Francisco public schools and reflects our commitment to invest in educators,” Superintendent Maria Su said in a statement. “I know it has been a hard week, and I want to extend my heartfelt appreciation to our students and families. We cannot wait to welcome you back to school.”

The new contract includes major wins for the union, which has been pushing for fully funded health care, raises and an overhaul to the district’s special education work mode. The agreement, which still must be ratified by union members and approved by the Board of Education, will be retroactive to July 2025.

Throughout negotiations, UESF demanded that the district cover 100% of premiums on the least expensive plan for educators with two or more dependents, which currently costs teachers about $1,500 a month.

“That amount of money is life-changing to us,” Ryan Alias, an English teacher at Balboa High School, said during a press conference Thursday. He and his wife are both public school teachers, and he has two children in SFUSD schools.

“If we had that in our pocket, we would be able to save for retirement,” he said. “We would be able to save for college funds. We’d be able to save for student loans. We’d be able to pay for art classes for our kids. This is the thing that is going to keep educators in the city.”

Beginning in January 2027, SFUSD will cover the full cost of premiums on its lowest-rate Kaiser Permanente plan.

In the interim, it will also begin to provide some relief funding to educators with dependents in July, according to UESF Vice President Frank Lara.

As for wages, the district will give paraeducators — who work as school and classroom aides — an 8.5% raise over two years, with hikes of 4% this year and 4.5% next.

Certificated educators — including teachers, social workers and counselors — will receive 2% raises in each of the next two years. When bargaining began, the union asked for 14% and 9% raises, respectively.

Special education paraeducators will receive an additional 5% salary increase, and classified employees, including security guards, will gain an additional floating holiday.

Security guards will also be offered full-time employment, which improves their benefit coverage options.

Details about the special education workload changes are sparser. The district said it has committed to providing “additional support” for special educators, adding that the parties will “collaborate on an educator working group with budget authority to improve special education programs.”

The union had requested that the district move from a caseload model, which allocates workload by student, to a workload mode, which factors in the work associated with the needs of each student, to reduce the burden on employees.

In a statement Friday morning, Mayor Daniel Lurie thanked the bargaining teams.

“As San Francisco becomes increasingly out of reach for so many, we all understand that it is absolutely essential that our educators and their families feel truly supported. We should all be proud of how we’ve done that in this agreement,” he wrote via email.

The district said it signed the tentative agreement at 5:30 a.m. Friday, after more than 13 hours of bargaining that began Thursday afternoon.

Prior to the afternoon session, negotiations had hit a stalemate, as the district repeatedly said it was infeasible to fully cover health care, and the union refused to back down.

SFUSD has repeatedly cited a massive budget deficit, expected to be about $102 million this year, and said that because it is under state oversight, it cannot spend outside of its means.

“We do not have a lot of money,” Su told reporters Wednesday. “We do not have enough funds to pay for this year and the next two years.

“We’re slowly inching out of that, we are on the right path to fiscal solvency, and so we need to be responsible with the deals,” she continued.

Until this week, the district had offered all educators a 6% raise over three years, with concessions. It also had said the union’s ask for fully funded health care, which will cost an estimated $14 million a year, was impossible.

Lara, the UESF vice president, said Friday’s deal reflects a different reality.

“We wish it had not taken 11 months for the district to take us as seriously as they did,” Lara told reporters Friday morning. “The money that has been presented was money that we knew they had.”

Still, he said the new contract was a significant win and reflected a strong showing of support from the city over the last week.

“While it was difficult … for our members who have gone on strike, we’re ending it with a lot of joy, a lot of excitement,” he said.

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