San Francisco public school teachers today voted 99.34 percent to authorize a strike, following nearly nine months of fruitless contract negotiations.
Today’s five-hour session at Balboa High School is the first of two required votes that will determine if public school teachers go on strike. If that second vote comes to pass and the teachers and district don’t reach a deal, it would be the first San Francisco teacher strike in 46 years.
The tally is 99 percent of those who voted on Wednesday, not of the union’s total 6,500 members.
From 2:30 to 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, educators sporting union sweatshirts trickled in the courtyard at Balboa High School to cast their ballots.
“Make sure to grab a snack before, because once you vote, you’re out of the building,” a volunteer repeatedly announced over a megaphone.
“We’ve realized that the district is not wanting to approach in a serious manner,” said Frank Lara, vice president of the United Educators of San Francisco. “So it’s pushed us to the edge.”
A long, contentious history between SFUSD and teachers
It’s not the first time: Two years ago, eight days after a 97 percent strike authorization vote, the teachers union won a deal that gave them a $9,000 salary increase and an additional 5 percent raise in 2024. It also gave paraeducators a minimum salary of $30 an hour or an 8 percent raise.
“We are following a process with third-party experts to reach a new agreement with the teachers union,” the district wrote in a statement. The district remains committed to “negotiate in good faith” with the union and the state to achieve “a fair agreement that avoids disruption to student services.”
This year’s strike vote, however, came at an especially troubled time for the school district, as it considers significant cuts to fill a $113 million hole in its budget.
According to early budget proposals obtained by Mission Local, the district is already weighing laying off security guards and school counselors and slashing middle-school health programs, among other cuts.
Right now, the state has authority to “override any decision by the San Francisco Board of Education if it believes that decision could compromise the district’s financial stability,” the district wrote. The district is facing another round of major cuts in the 2026-2027 school year, and “difficult decisions are ahead.”
“Balancing the budget is a core step toward exiting state oversight,” the district wrote.
The teachers union, for its part, said many of its demands are low-cost or even no-cost proposals that the district has not responded to since entering into negotiations in March.
The district has a history of over-budgeting and under-spending, according to Ryan Alias, a teacher at Balboa High School who’s on the bargaining team of UESF, which represents over 6,500 educators.
“We understand that the district doesn’t have money. We get it.”
And just like that, the time came to vote for or against a strike. It was a swift process, unlike the strike vote two years ago when teachers waited in an hours-long line at the schoolyard.
Members who turned out to vote on Wednesday know — better than anyone — that the district is short on cash.
“We understand that the district doesn’t have money. We get it. We live it every day,” said Elaine Harris, who has taught in the district for 10 years. “But this is what we can do to advocate for our students.”
The union is demanding dependent healthcare, pay raises — 14 percent for classified employees and 9 percent for certificated employees over two years — and a special-education workload model that will weigh the time spent on each student, instead of just the number of students served.
Educators also want the district to provide a more robust sanctuary school policy, putting legal legwork into language that can protect both students and staff from federal officials on and around campus.
In October, amid the potential federal deployment and immigration crackdown in San Francisco, educators told Mission Local that they wanted the school district to train school staff on what to do if federal agents try to force their way into schools, and to create safe zones for students.
The union also wants the district to protect and expand current Stay Over programs that provide a sleeping place for unhoused families like the one formerly at Buena Vista Horace Mann K-8 that was relocated to Downtown High School.
During contract negotiations, the union says it sent some 20 proposals to the school district, but “everything we sent was coming back completely rejected or didn’t get responded to,” said Alias.
In September, the district presented a “packaged proposal” that would offer a 2 percent salary increase over two years. But the proposal would eliminate benefits such as paid sabbatical leave, class size limits, and prep time for teachers who teach advanced-placement classes or take on extra responsibilities like serving as department heads.
“The only way that they would bargain with us is if we dug the money out of the things that we have already bargained for and won in previous years,” said Alias. “which was a nonstarter for us.”
After the union rejected the district’s proposal, the school district and teachers were officially at an impasse. They entered the next step — mediation — in October, but that mediation was “unproductive,” Alias said.
Teachers’ motivations
Teachers waiting in line to vote had different reasons for showing up and weighing in. Chad Harada, a fifth-grade teacher at Sunnyside Elementary School, said that he was most concerned about class sizes.
He considers himself fortunate to have a larger classroom for his 29 students, said Harada, but he has seen colleagues struggling to fit enough tables into their classrooms, let alone make space for students to meet in small groups.
Elaine Harris, who teaches second graders at Jose Ortega Elementary School, showed up to advocate for healthcare coverage for her family.
Harris, who has two kids, will have to pay about $1,500 for her family’s healthcare coverage starting next year.
“We’re worried and anxious for our future as a family to continue to live and work here in the Bay Area,” she said.
Harris and her husband, also a public school teacher, already have had to move to South San Francisco because of the cost of living in the city.
What Harris wants to do, she said, is “just to teach kids, and be able to survive as people, and live as humans that are happy and healthy and thriving.”
The next strike vote — depending on the progress of bargaining — would likely take place in January, if it occurs at all.
“The gloves are off. We have seen their inaction,” Alias said. The teachers say they don’t want to strike, “but there comes a point where we have to put the education of our communities and the experiences of our members to the front.”
You get what you pay for – please pay these professionals who are willing to work in those conditions!
Teachers aren’t striking because they want to. Things are at the breaking point.
For all of Su’s tough talk what has actually been done to avoid this?
Ask yourself SF, how do you feel living in a city where the teachers’ salary schedule ends where the police officers’ starts? New cops (no degree needed) start at ~120k. Teachers (credential and college degree required) who have worked 26+ years and have max postbac credits max out at ~130k. And of course teachers don’t have overtime like the cops. How did we get to this situation?
I’m not anti union and I think it’s fine for the teachers to strike. I do get annoyed at quotes like “But this is what we can do to advocate for our students,” however. The union doesn’t advocate for students, it advocates for teachers. You can tell this is true because the demands are increased pay and benefits for teachers, and making a sanctuary policy that is already in place harder to get rid of by adding it to the contract for students.
There’s nothing wrong with this. The union is advocating for its members. That’s its job. But we shouldn’t pretend like the teacher’s union is advocating for students, because that’s at most its secondary goal.
The union advocates for students by advocating for what will help attract and retain quality teachers in the district. High teacher turnover doesnt help students.
Advocating for sanctuary schools is advocating for students. Advocating for changes to sped case management helps students.
I didn’t say that the union is completely unaligned with students! Students absolutely benefit if “Teacher for SFUSD” is a great career. But it’s inaccurate to say that the union is doing this to help students. They’re doing this to help teachers. That’s good for the same reason that it’s good for a defense attorney to only be interested in defending their client. But it’s also good for the rest of us to understand who the union is there to support, and that it is not students.
It was explained to me years ago, by school board member, Mark Sanchez, that the union is suppose to advocate for teachers,and the school board is suppose to advocate for students. The teachers union in both San Francisco and Oakland are not very good, and that’s why teachers in both cities, receive very little. Years ago, I read about a BART janitor, who with over time made, $100k a year, and that was with only having a GED.
This comment, +100. I’m not anti union either. But based on my own experience as a product of SFUSD schools, it’s really hard for me to take UESF seriously when they say their agenda has anything to do with advocating for students. If UESF was serious about advocating for students then they wouldn’t make it so absurdly difficult for school administrators to hold terrible teachers accountable. 20 years ago my SF high school had some of the worst math teachers in the district. To give you an idea of how bad things were, in my freshman year I got 9/30 questions right on a math quiz and still got an A+ because the teacher graded on a curve! It got so bad with this particular teacher that the principal resorted to sitting in the front row of the class to stare at him with a dirty look on his face for the entire period just to shame him into accepting an early retirement package. After four years of this caliber of math teaching I had to take remedial algebra classes at City College before I was eventually able to transfer to a UC school.
$1,500 in health insurance premiums to cover a four person family by US standards is still an extremely good deal. I can’t fault anyone for being upset about having to pay more for health insurance. But if your way of making a point about this kind of deal not being good enough is to disrupt the education of your students, I’m sorry but you don’t get to say that you’re advocating for students.
Unions have an important role to play in protecting the interests of working people in one of the world’s most expensive cities. If this was a dispute between labor and a private business then I’d be cheering labor on. But my support stops short when labor advances their interest at such a great expense of our children’s education.
“The union doesn’t advocate for students, it advocates for teachers.”
You’re dead wrong. Teaching is a calling. Their struggle is their students’ struggle. Same with healthcare workers demanding higher pay and better staffing. There’s no other way to improve community service.
Not saying they should not strike, but if they were going to go on strike, they should have done it in the beginning of the year, due to the fact, that the school district, will take advantage of the up coming 2 weeks off for, winter break. What a crazy world we live in where police, while in the academy make $85K and teachers, who have your child, for 6 hours a day,make a fraction of that-Go Figure!
they do this every few years and they never actually go on strike . nobody believes they will. the union leadership will take whatever scraps Maria Su throws at them
What part of “budget crisis” and “service cuts” do these teachers not understand?
The part that reallocates money to corporate welfare and tax cuts for the rich.
Chaz, what tax cuts has the City given to successful people?
Will doesn’t like unions or educators so this is a double-win for him.
“The only way that they would bargain with us is if we dug the money out of the things that we have already bargained for and won in previous years,” said Alias. “which was a nonstarter for us.” Yes, and Teamsters negotiated large pay increases for members at UPS and shortly thereafter UPS laid of 12,000 workers and more recently 20,000 job cuts and facility closures. You want a job or an unemployment check?
Teachers deserve more pay
Also truancy laws must be enforced
What is wrong with persons who dont support education?
Turning out more youth who are not showing up and school and wasting their live hanging out is not ok
Increase the penalties for parents and kids if they dont go to school and behave
We have enough troubled youth in SF
The blame goes to them and their families .
Tired of having to babysit them and bail them out
Mature a little
No they don’t! They got historic raise in 2023, $9,000 flat for each teacher and additional 8%, stipends and bunch of benefits. They deserve zero increase until budget is balanced and SF goes into positive revenue!
Blame the juveniles! They’re responsible for the USD budget!
TAX THE KIDS!
It is time to replace these teachers with AI
tRUMP and co. are thinking about it. They already got rid of the Dept.Of Education, so teachers will be next.
How much further do you want to take the dumbing down of America?