A handful of parents at Frank McCoppin Elementary School in the Richmond District are celebrating a hard-fought win this week: a full-time teacher for some of the school’s youngest students.
The school’s transitional kindergarten classroom is one of five in the San Francisco Unified School District that didn’t have a teacher for its four-year-olds the entire first semester. It’s not what parents had expected, especially after district officials began the school year boasting that they’d addressed years-long staffing woes by filling 95 percent of all classroom roles.
McCoppin and one of two classrooms at the Mission Education Center (MEC) now have a full-time transitional kindergarten (TK) teacher. SFUSD’s classes are now 97 percent staffed, Superintendent Maria Su said at last week’s school board meeting, while acknowledging some families’ frustration: “If you are part of the unfortunate 3 percent of classrooms, of course this doesn’t feel good for you.”
A relatively new offering in SF’s public schools, transitional kindergarten is not just daycare for four-year-olds. It has key learning objectives, like language development and early math skills. Research shows that kids who get this opportunity do better in the long run. And since 2021, they’re legally entitled to it in California.
SFUSD offers TK classes in 65 schools. Five of those classrooms have had a revolving door of substitutes this year. In the three classes that remain without a teacher, parents are threatening a walkout at the end of January.
“This is not an experience that I would recommend to another family,” said Mariel Reed, a parent at McCoppin. “I believe in our institutions, and I want them to work. But I’m not sure yet if we will keep our child in public school.”
As of Jan. 15, the TK classes at Junipero Serra Elementary and Francis Scott Key Elementary, plus the second TK at Mission Education Center, remain unfilled, according to district spokesperson Katrina Kincade.
The district “has been working diligently to fill any vacant positions since before the school year began” with an accelerated hiring process, said Kincade, who also shared an infographic. “In the meantime, we’re making sure every classroom has consistent coverage from qualified substitutes or long-term staff, supported by instructional coaches to maintain continuity for students.”
Parents report that one TK classroom at Junipero Serra Annex Early Education School also lacks a full-time teacher due to maternity leave, which the district doesn’t count as a vacancy.
Expansion and surge
In 2021, California lawmakers made it mandatory for public schools to offer TK for four-year-olds. Districts had to fully roll it out by this year, and the state allotted about $1 billion a year to cover costs. In the 2025-26 school year, SFUSD spent more than $12 million on universal TK and pre-K expansion.
Families aren’t obliged to use it, but it was widely expected to be a carrot, in part as a way to defray rising child care costs.
“Childcare is our biggest expense right now,” said Justin Appold, a San Francisco father of three who has followed the issue closely. “TK is kind of a light at the end of the tunnel. The kids are going to get in school, they’re going to start getting acclimated to a classroom environment. It’s going to be paid for as part of their public education.”
SFUSD began its rollout in the 2022-23 school year. It seems to be helping reverse an enrollment decline that worsened during the pandemic. In 2024-25, 1,135 students enrolled in TK classes, with a nearly 60 percent increase this year, in part due to more four-year-olds becoming eligible under California’s new Universal Transitional Kindergarten program, Kincade said via email.
Statewide, TK enrollment has more than doubled the past two years. But there’s also a statewide shortage of these teachers, and it’s obvious the shortage was coming: The Learning Policy Institute estimated in 2022 that California would need to find up to 15,600 additional teachers to meet the demand by this year.
What’s the holdup?
State requirements are part of the staffing problem, according to SFUSD. Starting this year, the California Department of Education requires an adult-to-student classroom ratio of 1-to-10, down from 1-to-12. (Some classes, like special education, have different requirements.)
The CDE also tightened credentialing regulations. In August, it began enforcing a rule that TK teachers have special qualifications beyond the average elementary teacher. Most need 24 extra unit credits or extra professional experience with the age group.
Credentialed teachers who were in transitional kindergarten classrooms before 2015 are exempt from these requirements. But SFUSD offered early retirement to nearly 400 teachers last year to cut costs, kneecapping this option. San Francisco also recently cut back on teacher training and recruitment with a hiring freeze in May of 2024.
“We cut all of our teacher pipeline and pathway programs a couple of years ago,” said school board member Alida Fisher at a Dec. 9 meeting. “So now we are paying a lot of money that we don’t need to pay for non-public agencies, for under-credentialed folks who are costing us a lot.”
The district paused its Pathway to Teaching program in the summer of 2024, citing budget constraints. In 2021, the University of San Francisco pulled out of its teacher residency program with SFUSD amid fraud allegations on USF’s side. (The district still runs a program with other local universities.)
While the advocacy surrounding TK classrooms is valued and understandable, there are other vacancies that also require focused attention.
sfusd associate superintendent of human resources amy baer, in an email to tk parent mariel reed
This makes it hard to recruit for all classes, not just transitional kindergarten. The district’s human resources team has told TK parents that they’re only one of several priorities.
“While the advocacy surrounding TK classrooms is valued and understandable, there are other vacancies that also require focused attention, including special education and several schools in the southeast part of the city,” associate superintendent of human resources Amy Baer told Reed in a Jan. 7 email that Reed shared with The Frisc. “Our human resources team is working on all of these priorities at the same time.”
Baer also told TK parents on a Jan. 9 Zoom call that they couldn’t provide weekly hiring updates that the parents thought they were promised: “We have one position that recruits for all district positions.”
Spokesperson Kincade acknowledged there is “only one staff in the recruiter role” but added that other HR employees “participate in job fairs, educator hiring events, and programming to recruit educators to fill open positions.”
Kincade did not respond to questions about the impact of central office cuts that the district used in previous years to temporarily balance its budget.
‘It’s been really frustrating’
While SFUSD scrambles for qualified teachers, they’ve relied on substitutes, paraprofessionals, and volunteers to make sure someone is minding the students. Substitutes don’t need extra credentials to teach TK, but they can only stay in a class for 30 days at a time.
“It’s been really frustrating because it also means that as soon as the kids have bonded with anyone, they’re basically gone,” said Reed. “That’s just really tough for the age group.”
Reed said that kids at McCoppin have been fortunate to have an engaged group of families, including some grandparents helping out.
The issue has some families reconsidering SFUSD. “We love San Francisco. I’m a big surfer. My wife works in tech,” said Appold. “But do we want to send our kids to a district that can’t complete even the most basic of tasks, filling a classroom with a permanent teacher or even a permanent sub?”
More classes coming
Spokesperson Kincade did not answer follow-up questions about the “accelerated hiring process” she said SFUSD is using. The district can apply to the state for emergency teaching permits. The process takes at least three months, and right now the state is still processing applications submitted before November.
On Dec. 9, the school board voted to “declare the need” for several types of educators, including 10 emergency TK teachers, allowing the district to apply for the emergency permits. They requested 12 emergency TK teachers through the same process in Sept. 2024.
In November, school board president Phil Kim helped initiate a relationship with TeachStart, a nonprofit placement organization. The teachers union president Cassondra Curiel told The Frisc she took issue with the district “paying a service to put in a temp employee” when her union members are working under an expired contract. Negotiations for a new one are contentious.
District staff told parents on Dec. 3 that TeachStart had referred two candidates, but neither were under consideration for the roles, according to Reed.
Meanwhile, SFUSD is expanding transitional kindergarten to five more school sites next year, including Mission Bay Elementary, the district’s newest school opening in August. The plan to staff these new classrooms remains uncertain.