Early this morning, San Francisco teachers ended their first strike in nearly 50 years, with the school district agreeing to use rainy-day reserves to cover boosts in pay, health benefits, special education staff, and more.
The agreement came after four days of shuttered schools as union members picketed and held rallies around the city. The two sides finished with an all-night marathon negotiating session after publicly sniping at each other about a sense of urgency.
San Francisco Unified schools will reopen on Wednesday, after holidays for Presidents’ Day and the Lunar New Year.
“We wish it had not taken 11 months for the district to take us as seriously as they did,” said United Educators of San Francisco vice president Frank Lara at a morning press conference. The two sides began negotiations last spring, and UESF has been working without a contract since mid-2025.
Lara said that the money to pay for the new contract “was money that we knew they had.”
That money — the district today called the deal a “$183 million package” — will be used for raises, fully funded health benefits for dependents, and revamping special educator caseloads, among other things.
“After consulting with our board, we agreed that we should dip into… the reserve to help pay for this tentative agreement,” Superintendent Maria Su told reporters this morning. She was referring to a $111 million “rainy day” fund that SFUSD’s deputy superintendent of business operations Chris Mount-Benites said in December was important in the event of an emergency, like a delay in state dollars. The state provides 70 percent of the district’s total revenue.
When Mount-Benites said the fund should have $111 million, union members said their situation qualified as a reason to spend those reserves. “It’s raining now,” Balboa High English teacher Ryan Alias told The Frisc.
The deal appears to include several compromises between the two sides’ initial positions, and there are still hurdles to surmount. The union rank-and-file and the school board must approve it, and — perhaps the biggest wild card — the state Department of Education (CDE) must give its blessing.
Because of the district’s years-long precarious financial situation, the state has veto power over its financial decisions, including labor contracts. Su said today that her fiscal team would work with CDE to certify the contract.
Elliott Duchon, the state’s lead advisor overseeing SFUSD finances, declined to comment.
After touting the deal, Su underscored the extra burden it would place on the district’s $1.4 billion annual budget.
We absolutely have to make sure the school district is on a path to fiscal stability.
MAYOR DANIEL LURIe
Like many districts across the state, SFUSD faces declining enrollment that saps its funding. Last year, it leaned on early teacher retirement and central office layoffs to close a budget deficit, but still projects a $102 million deficit over the next three years. In recent months, Su has said that school closures or mergers could be part of the future solution.
When asked Friday morning if closures or more layoffs were on the horizon, Su said, “That has always been on the table.”
Gains and compromises
The tentative agreement includes 2 percent raises each year for two years for certificated employees (most teachers) starting no later than April 15, plus an extra paid work day on the calendar.
Classified employees, including paraeducators, clerks, and technicians, will get an 8.5 percent increase over two years. Paraeducators who provide specialized medical services will also receive an additional 5 percent raise, and classified employees will get an extra floating holiday.
The union began by asking for 4.5 percent annual raises for teachers and 7 percent for paraeducators.
The 2 percent annual raise for teachers is what the district first proposed — and less than the district’s revised proposal of 3 percent annually, which was based on the recommendation of the state’s labor board.
The raises over two years are retroactive to July 1, 2025.
The union got much more of what it wanted with health benefits. Other California teacher unions have recently won fully paid benefits for dependents; SFUSD only provided 53 to 65 percent in the previous contract.
“This is truly momentous,” said Su. “For the first time in our school district’s history, we are providing full family health benefits.” The district will pay for 50 percent of Kaiser family healthcare for educators starting July 1, and will cover 100 percent starting July 2027.
However, the district insisted on covering the increases with existing parcel tax funds that SF voters approved in 2008 and 2018 to boost teacher pay and working conditions. UESF had called this fund shift a “take-back” but apparently relented.
The union also accepted the district’s proposal to save money by pausing paid sabbaticals for the 2027-28 year. These leaves, when added to department head and Advanced Placement (AP) teacher prep periods, cost the district $13.4 million a year, according to the Chronicle. AP benefits were not axed in this agreement, according to Su.
Special workloads
A third sticking point was special educator staff workloads. UESF’s Lara said the new agreement provided “immediate relief” as well as a longer-term commitment to change the work model.
The agreement sets caseload goals for special-ed staff, who often work with students with severe physical and behavioral challenges. A joint committee will assess workloads. For staff who need relief, the committee will assign more specialized staff such as psychologists or speech pathologists, or a $1,000-per-semester stipend for each student over the caseload goal, “provided that the unit members’ caseload is not more than two students over the goal,” according to the agreement.
Special education changes will start in the 2026-27 school year. That leaves less than six months to work out how to recruit extra staff; statewide shortages in this area have proven challenging.
“There’s a ton of vacancies, as far as para[educator]s, teachers, service providers,” Kristina Altmayer, a special educator at The Academy High School, told The Frisc. For the district’s roughly 7,500 students with disabilities, Altmayer said, more staff are badly needed.
Earlier this week the two sides said they agreed to reduce SFUSD’s reliance on non-union contractors for this work. KQED reported in June that the district expected to spend $42.1 million on nonpublic schools, independent agencies, and consultants for special ed in 2025-26. It’s possible eliminating around half of those could fund the union’s initial proposal, which a neutral fact-finding report released by the state Public Employee Relations Board estimated would cost an additional $22 million.
The two sides also reached agreement earlier this week on two other major UESF demands. The first was immigrant student support that includes a sanctuary promise and staff training to deal with ICE agents. The second is a commitment to expand the shelter program for homeless students and their families.
City Hall provides about 25 percent of SFUSD’s budget through parcel taxes and other funding. The city is facing a budget crunch of its own. Even with the emergency of the strike this week, city departments would not promise extra funds for afterschool programs and other student services.
It’s unclear if SFUSD can lean on the city for more near-term funding to help pay for the new contract. When asked this morning, Mayor Daniel Lurie directed reporters to his staff, simply saying, “Today is a moment of unity and people coming together. We absolutely have to make sure the school district is on a path to fiscal stability.”
The two sides will be back to negotiations relatively soon. A new contract needs to be — or should be — in place for the 2027-28 school year.
With school populations in decline across the state, Su and other superintendents want Sacramento to revamp how it funds public education. She said she will press for a new funding model, which would require big bureaucratic change in the state capital. That’s a lot to hope for before SFUSD and its unions hit the bargaining table again.
“The realities of our budget situation have not changed,” said district spokesperson Laura Dudnick this morning. “There will have to be difficult conversations down the road, but right now, we want to focus on the fact that we have come to a tentative agreement.”