San Francisco’s Teachers Strike Has Ended. What Comes Next?

San Francisco’s historic teachers strike has ended and schools will reopen next week.

The San Francisco Unified School District and teachers reached a deal around 5:30 a.m. Friday, following a 13-hour bargaining session, according to the United Educators of San Francisco.

The $183 million 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.

Although the contract still needs to be ratified by the union and adopted by the district’s Board of Education, United Educators of San Francisco leaders said it will serve as a “strong foundation” for school stability in future years.

“What we were able to achieve in this strike was an unwavering, long-lasting sense of solidarity that will only benefit every single San Franciscan,” union Vice President Frank Lara told reporters early Friday. “While it was difficult and it is difficult for our members who have gone on strike, we’re ending it with a lot of joy, a lot of excitement.”

The parties reached the two-year agreement after nearly a year of negotiations between the union and district, and a week without school for the district’s 49,000 students. Schools will reopen to students on Wednesday, after planned holidays for Presidents Day and Lunar New Year on Monday and Tuesday.

Superintendent Maria Su called the deal “monumental.”

“This agreement will help us recruit talented educators to work in San Francisco in our public schools,” she said on Friday. “It will help retain our dedicated staff that serves our classroom each and every day.”

The contract includes SFUSD’s commitment to fully fund health care premiums on its lowest-rate Kaiser Permanente plan for educators and their families starting next January.

The benefit package had been the biggest sticking point for the union, which said its members pay up to $1,500 for health coverage.

The district said that starting in July, it will also provide “meaningful relief” to bring premium rates down.

In an email, San Francisco State University labor historian John Logan called the health care coverage a big win for the union, but said that the other two sticking points — wages and resources for special education services — “could perhaps best be described as a ‘score draw.”

When bargaining began, the union asked for 14% and 9% raises, respectively.

The district will give both security guards and paraeducators, who work as school and classroom aides, an 8.5% raise over two years, with hikes of 4% this year and then 4.5% in the year following.

Special education paraeducators will receive an additional 5% salary increase.

Security guards will gain an additional floating holiday, as well as eligibility for full-time employment, which improves their benefit coverage options.

Certificated educators, including teachers, social workers and counselors, will receive 2% raises in each of the next two years.

The union had also proposed transitioning from a caseload model, which allocates workload by student, to a new model that accounts for varying student needs, reducing the burden on employees.

Instead, the tentative agreement calls for the district and union to “collaborate on an educator working group with budget authority to improve special education programs,” and commits to providing “additional supports” for special educators.

On Friday morning, Mayor Daniel Lurie called the contract “a win for our city.”

“It’s a win for our public schools. It’s a win for educators,” he told reporters. “We talk about affordability in this city, and it is far too out of reach for so many.”

Intertwined with the excitement surrounding the deal, though, are looming questions of how the district will pay for the deal.

Throughout negotiations, the district and union had been at odds over how much funding is actually available to cover expenses like raises and benefits. Prior to the deal, the district had already been planning to make more than $100 million in cuts ahead of next fall — and in November, moved to reopen a conversation about merging or closing schools.

Su has repeatedly said the district cannot spend outside its means, as it is under state oversight and, according to Su, “inching out” of a fiscal cliff.

“We are on the right path to fiscal solvency, and so we need to be responsible with the deals,” she told reporters earlier this week.

When asked about the possibility of layoffs or school closures and mergers on Friday, she said, “That has always been on the table.”

The district said it would dip into a “rainy day” reserve fund of about $111 million that it set aside in December to help cover health care costs for the duration of the new contract, which expires in June 2027. But it’s still unclear how much reserve funding it will use, or how it plans to continue to pay for the benefits moving forward.

Speaking with reporters on Friday, Lara said that the district’s budget woes have more to do with management than a lack of funding, citing SFUSD’s significant fund balance, built up after overprojecting how much it would spend in many recent years.

The district ended last year in a deficit.

“That’s a conversation for a different moment,” Lara said. “But I hope that the power, the energy, the love that we’ve received from our city … shows this district management or any district management or any board elected that people have hope and people want to see SFUSD succeed.”

KQED’s Sydney Johnson contributed to this report.