At Tuesday’s San Francisco Unified School District school board meeting, the teachers union presented a “strike ready” petition that nearly 80 percent of members have signed. To drive the point home, they papered the walls of the meeting room with the signatures.
The union, United Educators of San Francisco, has been on an expired contract since the end of June. In an interview last week, UESF president Cassondra Curiel told The Frisc that a strike isn’t imminent. “We’re still pretty far away, at least from the likelihood,” said Curiel, adding that a strike would be the school district’s fault — “if the district makes us.”
Since that interview, SFUSD has said it would join UESF in asking the state’s labor relations board to step in with mediation. Both sides now acknowledge there’s an impasse.
The stalemate comes at a delicate time for San Francisco public schools. The district is working through a series of post-pandemic problems, including budget cuts, a years-long enrollment decline, and academic reforms.
The district’s budget adds complexity to the sticky negotiating situation. Tuesday night, new deputy superintendent of business services and school operations Chris Mount-Benites underscored that SFUSD must fix its budgeting process.
In what he called a postmortem of last year’s budget, Mount-Benites showed that SFUSD wound up with $429 million more than it expected at the start of the year, which it will carry over to this current school year.
Before leading a rally Tuesday, Curiel highlighted the spending discrepancy. She disputed SFUSD’s assertion that it can only approve raises by taking money away from other parts of the union contract, such as AP test preparation time and sabbaticals.
“If the [school] board has only authorized that, then they really don’t have a full picture either,” Curiel told The Frisc. “What we can see is that the district vastly underspent what they had budgeted to spend.”
Mount-Benites acknowledged that SFUSD needs better budget forecasts. But he also said it’s risky to turn the carry-over funds into raises. “You can’t give ongoing raises out of one-time money. That’s the problem,” said Mount-Benites in an interview.
The state took partial control of SFUSD’s finances in 2024 after years of warnings. Now those regulators have de-facto veto power over SFUSD’s spending decisions, which will continue until the district shows it’s stabilizing its finances.
After cutting $113 million, nearly 10 percent of its budget, earlier this year, SFUSD says it must cut another $59 million by the end of this school year.
“We gave raises thinking we would make cuts quickly enough to accommodate for getting ourselves [out of] the hole,” said Mount-Benites. In 2023, the union and SFUSD struck a deal that gave teachers a $9,000 raise in year one and a 5 percent raise in year two.
This time around, the union is asking for a 4.5 percent raise in each year of the two-year contract for its certificated members — classroom teachers and others whose job requires a credential.
But across-the-board teacher pay isn’t the main sticking point this time, according to Curiel and others. Other priorities are more support for special education staff, healthcare benefits for dependents, sanctuary schools for immigrant students, and more overnight shelters on school campuses for homeless families.
Special education demands
Like all California public school districts, SFUSD is legally required to provide special education services. But staff and families have long said the money available doesn’t match the level of service needed to make a difference.
SFUSD currently has more than 6,800 special education students, about 14 percent of the student body. But staff shortages have left substitutes, paraprofessionals, and aides like Alex Schmaus to fill classroom gaps when fully credentialed teachers aren’t available. “You have mostly instructional aides trying to provide education, which is not entirely legal,” said Schmaus, who works at Francisco Middle School and is on UESF’s bargaining team and executive board.
For special-ed aides like Schmaus and other “classified” employees, UESF wants a 7 percent raise each year of the contract, plus 3 to 5 percent more for a subset who do specialized work. Aides like Schmaus earn between $31.52 and $36.87 an hour — very low income by Bay Area standards, according to state calculations. Beyond the dollars, the union also wants new rules to lighten special educator workloads.
Many special-ed students with individualized education plans (IEPs) also spend time in general classrooms. The shortage of staff to accompany those kids is also affecting the broader school population. George Washington math teacher Jodie Sheffels says her two blended classes should be about 33 percent special-ed students, but “because of how strained the special-ed system is,” they’re up to about two-thirds special-needs kids.
The district has faced multiple lawsuits over alleged IEP failures, including three cases the school board discussed in closed session on Tuesday.
Rosa Mendoza, a parent of a former Glen Park Elementary student, said at a recent board meeting that her special-needs daughter injured herself “almost daily” after her physical therapy was cut. “Now my daughter is in sixth grade. She doesn’t know how to read or write in English and [knows only] a little bit in Spanish,” said Mendoza. “She has difficulty speaking and difficulties walking as well as for concentration. This is the result of not having enough special education teachers.”
SFUSD’s Dudnick did not respond to specific questions last week about special education and the union’s demands.
Shelter for homeless families
For nearly seven years, SFUSD has hosted an overnight shelter for homeless families on the campus of Buena Vista Horace Mann (BVHM) in the Mission District. The shelter was serving roughly two dozen families as of May.
UESF wants more. “Housing insecurity is a huge problem in San Francisco, especially among SFUSD students,” said Schmaus, who added that the contract is “their most powerful tool” in securing additional shelters.
SFUSD counted nearly 2,500 of its students as homeless in 2024, according to city homelessness data. (More than half have homes but are living “doubled up” temporarily with friends or family.)
The union argues that the shelter’s only cost to the district is a higher utility bill. City Hall pays for it via a tax-boosted fund that voters approved in 2022. (The shelter has moved temporarily to Downtown High while BVHM’s campus undergoes extensive renovation.)
UESF wants at least two more sites; it’s asking to create an exploratory committee. “There is money for it,” said Laurance Lee, a member of the Citizens’ Bond Oversight Committee, which tracks how SFUSD spends money on facilities and other projects. He added that the political will to create shelters, competing with all the district’s other priorities, will be a challenge.
More broadly, the union wants language in its bargaining agreement declaring SFUSD a “sanctuary district,” matching existing policy at the district and city levels.
SFUSD has pushed back against the request, saying it’s not a core issue for employee work conditions. “While immigration issues are important, this issue falls outside the scope of the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) between SFUSD and UESF. Immigration is a broader societal and policy matter,” said Dudnick.
George Washington math teacher Sheffels disagreed, saying some of her students sit in class “wondering if, when they go home today, their parents will still be there. Of course that’s part of my working conditions.”
The union also wants teacher training that prepares them for ICE encounters and an attorney to address immigration-related concerns, both of which could cost money. The ICE threat is also top of mind for school administrators, who would be responsible for turning away agents who show up at their schools.
The United Administrators of San Francisco (UASF), the union representing principals and other staff, is also in the midst of negotiations. UASF has cited the deal the teachers got in 2023 as their goal. Like the teachers, UASF wants state mediators to intervene in negotiations.
“As a principal for 16 years I can say without hesitation that the workload has more than doubled,” Sheridan Elementary principal Dina Edwards said in public comment at Tuesday’s meeting. “Principals are the heart of our schools and the district’s success.”
UASF announced it would boycott a mandatory meeting at Burton High on Oct. 29 and rally on the sidewalk outside instead.