It’s been a tumultuous year for San Francisco public schools. And 2025 ended with all kinds of uncertainty that will spill over into 2026.
The past two weeks, the school board has inched closer — then backed away from — staff cuts and school closures, which was one of 2024’s most divisive subjects. This week, in its final meeting of 2025, the board unanimously refused to approve an interim budget plan, despite California requirements.
It was all the more remarkable because the state took partial control of SFUSD’s finances in 2024 after years of warnings, and Sacramento’s watchdogs want evidence that the district can right its fiscal ship.
“I cannot tell you what the [California Department of Education] will respond to if you don’t give them a fiscal stabilization report or plan,” said the department’s advisor, Elliot Duchon, at Tuesday’s meeting. “The responsible thing to do is to give them a plan.”
School staff cuts are on the table for reducing the budget in 2026. They’re not set in stone, and Duchon encouraged the board that a yes vote would “commit to making the cuts as needed. Not necessarily the cuts in there. You can replace one cut for another.”
The board didn’t heed his advice. “This is the hardest vote that I’ve had to take as a board of education member,” said board vice president Jaime Huling in an interview.
It means that the school district’s path to better standing, or “positive certification,” is delayed. “I know we’ll get positive certification,” board member Parag Gupta told The Frisc. “We just need to take a little longer.”
The teachers union, United Educators of San Francisco, is applying pressure as well. Early this month more than 99 percent of union members participating in a strike authorization vote said yes.
Dozens of students, parents, teachers, and other district staff have shown up at recent meetings to say the cuts would target workers closest to the kids, which would hurt student outcomes.
The fluidity of what might get cut was on full display just before Tuesday’s meeting, when Superintendent Maria Su told school staffers via email that social workers were no longer on the chopping block: “I’m pleased to share we have been able to identify additional restricted sources to ensure a Social Worker at all of our TK-12 sites.”
We knew the money was there.
Guadalupe Elementary social worker Maggie Furey, after sfusd superintendent maria su said social worker jobs would not be part of upcoming budget cuts
Su also emphasized that initial projections included the “most conservative staffing model.”
“We knew the money was there,” said Guadalupe Elementary social worker Maggie Furey in an interview. “Why did [they] have to go the most conservative route and instill fear and panic?”
This is an annual dance: SFUSD announces early budget projections and even sends employees pink slips, then often rescinds them as it updates budget numbers before the June deadline. In the previous budget cycle, with more than $100 million required in cuts, the district avoided school site layoffs by offering teachers early retirement. It also cut 177 central office positions, including 96 vacant jobs that were still on the books.
Potential cuts to school security guards and other wellness staff remain on the table. That makes many people skittish after several incidents in the district this fall, including a shooting at Phillip and Sala Burton Academic High, a bomb threat at Lowell High, and the fatal stabbing of an SFUSD father in front of Commodore Sloat Elementary.
Closures and lottery
School closures cost Su’s predecessor Matt Wayne his job. Taking the reins, Su shelved the effort for a year but made no guarantees beyond. The district made a surprise announcement in October that this would be the final year for The Academy, a 99-student high school, and that its students would move to Wallenberg High, about three miles away.
Meanwhile, the board and Su have laid groundwork to revisit closures. They first crafted a “strong schools resolution” that directed Su to do two things: prepare for potential closures and overhaul the school lottery that determines how kindergarten families get school assignments. (The district committed to an overhaul in 2020 but has continued to put it off.)
The recent interim budget documents also included $3.2 million in cuts by the 2027-28 school year attributed to school site consolidation — closures and mergers.
The board was supposed to vote on the strong schools resolution Tuesday night. Instead they pulled it from the agenda with no word when it would return. “This is not transparency,” Alan Tello, a high school senior at June Jordan School for Equity, told The Frisc Tuesday. June Jordan, with 176 students, was on the closure/merger list in 2024.
Su apologized repeatedly Tuesday for a lack of communication and promised that January would be full of visits to district schools: “All 125 of them.” She also announced a Jan. 8 “school site council summit” to let the public talk with administrators directly.
In February, the district will submit a list of staff cuts to the school board. After punting on the first interim budget plan, despite state watchdog Duchon’s warnings, board members didn’t say when they would adopt it. They are scheduled to review the second interim budget report in March.
Board president Kim is up for reelection this June, and three board seats (including Kim’s again) will be up for next November.
The price of abstenteeism
SFUSD has committed to cut spending by $51 million this school year and a total of $103 million over three years.
State funding, which makes up 70 percent of the district’s budget, is a moving target. The state Legislative Analyst’s Office said last month that the annual increase to local districts might be lower in 2026 than in previous years.
Another reason SFUSD might get fewer state dollars than expected is chronic absenteeism. Since the pandemic, more city students than the state average have stayed away from classes. It’s bad for kids’ education, and it’s bad for SFUSD finances, costing the district more than $60 million because state funding is tied to enrollment and attendance.
It’s unclear how much absenteeism is related to immigration enforcement, but the fears are real. School staff said earlier this year they needed more guidance and help in case ICE agents show up at schools.
“You don’t want to lose your kid,” parent Roberto Guzman Rivera told The Frisc in October. “It’s better to just not come to school.”
Labor negotiations
The United Administrators of San Francisco, the union representing principals and other school site administrators, reached a deal in October to give members a one-year salary bump of $7,521 and 2 percent raises for the next three years. The school board approved this agreement on Dec. 9. However, labor relations made the board put off approval of raises for about 160 administrators.
Those employees, some of whom work in the central office, are non-union. With ongoing negotiations at a critical point with the teachers union, whose roughly 6,000 members have been working on an expired contract since June, the board didn’t like the optics of giving non-union workers a bump. “It is problematic to treat it as a given that we would approve raises, including to our highest paid employees, while we have our biggest bargaining table still open,” said board vice president Jaime Huling.
It’s unclear when the non-union administrators will get a raise.
The teachers union, United Educators of San Francisco (UESF) voted on Dec. 3 to authorize what would be their first strike in nearly 50 years. Mediation with the district has been unsuccessful. It’s the first of two votes they’d need to fully strike; the second is scheduled for mid-January. Among their demands are raises, especially for employees who do specialized work.
The district must pay for raises while remaining “budget neutral,” according to Christopher Mount-Benites, the deputy superintendent of business operations. The money might only be available if they cut expenses, perhaps through layoffs, in the same departments.
The union doesn’t agree. Guadalupe Elementary social worker Furey, who is also on the union’s bargaining team, said it “knows the district’s finances better than they do,” and believes the money is available elsewhere. “We are getting ready to escalate.”
If a strike disrupts classes in 2026, SFUSD’s academic reform goals, already in jeopardy, might become even harder to reach. In 2022, the district set a goal of improving three key student outcomes by 2027: third-grade reading levels, eighth-grade math levels, and 12th-grade college and career-readiness. In year three of the plan, the chances of hitting the top-line marks seem gloomy.
But there are bright spots. SFUSD’s graduation rate increased nearly 2 percent this year to 85 percent. Earlier this year, 66 percent of 10th graders were on track to graduate – only four points shy of the 2027 goal.
Kindergarteners, especially African American and Pacific Islander, have made huge strides in reading this year. But the goal to have 70 percent of all third graders reading at grade level by 2027 is seeming more and more out of reach. Less than half of SFUSD’s third graders were reading proficient in the 2024-25 school year, a drop from when the initial goal was set. This year it’s back up to 53 percent, which suggests the district’s new reading program is helping, but more slowly than hoped.
Similarly, eighth grade math scores took a step in the right direction (from 43.3 percent to 43.6 percent proficient this year) but won’t meet the goal of 65 percent proficiency by 2027 at the current rate.
SFUSD brought back algebra for middle schoolers last year, and this year it debuted a new K-8 math curriculum.
Another curriculum reform was far hastier. After complaints about ethnic studies in its first year as a required course, SFUSD administrators scrambled this summer to find a replacement for the homegrown material. They settled on a textbook called Voices, but the school board had no time to review it before voting to approve it. It’s only a one-year trial, and SFUSD was supposed to give an interim progress report by now. The report has been delayed until February — yet another high-profile issue for the district early next year.
“January is going to be a busy month,” said teachers union vice president Frank Lara at Tuesday’s board meeting. One might easily add: And the rest of the school year too.