SFUSD Teachers Got a Big Contract Deal. Not All Are Happy With It

While thousands of San Francisco public school teachers are voting this week on a tentative contract agreement that the union has touted as a major win, some educators have complicated feelings about the deal.

For many, the biggest win was the San Francisco Unified School District’s agreement to fully fund health care costs for educators and their families. That came late in the night after the fourth day of a strike that shut down city schools for a week.

“I broke down,” said Ryan Alias, a Balboa High School teacher who was on the bargaining team for the United Educators of San Francisco, the city’s teachers union. “A good friend of mine who’s a teacher who’s also on the bargaining team, we just kind of held each other, hugged each other and realized that there’s stability for our families.”

Alias has taught English at Balboa for the last five years. His wife is also an SFUSD teacher, and their two daughters are enrolled in elementary and middle schools in the district. Right now, he said, about 15% of his annual pay goes toward health care coverage.

“That money represented an inability to save for retirement, an inability to put much away for college for my kids,” he told KQED.

This week’s ratification vote by UESF’s 6,000 members, one of the final steps in securing the deal, is expected to pass.

But while the tentative agreement secures funded health care and significant wage hikes for classroom aides, along with commitments to support unhoused and immigrant students, it doesn’t meet the salary demands the union put forth for classroom teachers and other credentialed employees, or their plan to change special education workloads.

“It’s complex,” said Todd Albert, who teaches science at Buena Vista Horace Mann Middle School. “Big picture, [I’m] really happy that our classified staff is getting like a 9% raise, very happy that a lot of my colleagues are getting fully funded health care.”

“But selfishly, [I’m] feeling like I didn’t get as much as I would have liked,” he continued.

Contract wins

Since reaching the tentative agreement on Feb. 13, UESF has called the contract a “massive win” for members.

“What we were able to achieve in this bargain with this contract is truly the ability for us to stabilize our school staffing and for our members to be able to improve our ability to afford living and working in San Francisco,” union President Cassondra Curiel told KQED.

A big part of that is health care coverage, which will save some educators with families up to $1,500 a month.

“That was an incredible burden,” said Alias, who had worries about being able to keep his family in San Francisco. “There’s also housing instability. We rent a place nearby the school, which is fantastic, but having access to that $1,500 of our paycheck that we never see would give us so much more ability to feel safe, feel stable.”

Paid premiums will be especially impactful for paraeducators, said Teanna Tillery, who has been a para in SFUSD’s central office for more than two decades.

The positions are some of the lowest-paid in the district, but Tillery said she and other paras pay the same amount as other educators for their current plans.

“For our paraeducators who have two or more dependents, they’re paying upwards of $700 per paycheck, which is almost 40% of their take-home [pay],” Tillery told KQED.

Celeste Rivera, a district paraeducator, said during the strike earlier this month that during the first two years of her job, she wasn’t able to afford coverage for her kids.

“I had to pray that they wouldn’t get sick,” she told KQED, adding that she knows many coworkers who are in the same position.

Rivera said the coverage will offer her peace of mind that she can take her children to the doctor.

In addition to the health coverage, SFUSD has also agreed to a 9% raise for paraeducators over two years, plus an additional 5% wage bump for those who work in special education.

“Many paraeducators in our school district are working two and sometimes three jobs, just to be able to afford to live in the city where they work,” Tillery said.

Wages for instructional aides who work in SFUSD classrooms and one-on-one with students who have special education services started at $31.52 per hour as of January 2025. Generally, paraeducators work 30 hours a week.

“Being able to recoup that money is going to change their lives… Some paraeducators are talking about possibly going on vacation for the first time,” Tillery said. “It makes me smile to think that people can think of doing something special for themselves, outside of just paying bills.”

‘It’s a give and take’

But not all union members are as pleased with the final contract terms.

For classroom teachers and other credentialed staff, like social workers and counselors, the deal doesn’t include a huge wage hike. They’ll get a 5% raise over the next two years, compared with their initial ask for a 9% pay bump in that time period.

“I really would have wanted and needed that,” said Albert, the science teacher at Buena Vista Horace Mann.

The 5% raise comes out lower than the federal cost-of-living adjustment for 2026.

“We are not keeping up with the cost of living, and I think ‘raise’ is a misleading term,” Albert continued.

Because his wife also has her own health coverage, and they don’t have kids, the deal’s health care component also won’t affect him, Albert said. SFUSD already covers premiums for employees.

“At the end of the day, you can’t make everybody happy,” he said. “This time, I think we really focused on health care. When the [next] contract is due in two years, I really hope that they focus on a raise.”

And, just a week after the union and district signed the tentative agreement, SFUSD revealed plans to issue more than 40 preliminary layoff notices to a handful of teachers and about 30 paraeducators.

The number is lower than it has been in previous years; last year, SFUSD sent hundreds of preliminary pink slips in March. But it likely doesn’t reflect additional cuts the district will need to make, accounting for the new contract costs.

Before the tentative agreement, the district already planned to make about $100 million in budget reductions this year, and Superintendent Maria Su has said that layoffs and potential school closures are on the table.

“We stretched our resources to the limit to get this agreement done,” Su said after signing the tentative agreement. “We still have a long way ahead of us where difficult choices remain. So while we have a deal today, we still need more support in the future.”

After the union’s ratification vote this week, the tentative contract will still need to gain school board approval before it becomes final.

KQED’s Juan Carlos Lara contributed to this report.