S.F. teachers are back to school today, feeling hopeful after a tough year

Across San Francisco this week, public school teachers will pin posters to their walls and make seating charts in preparation for the start of school on Aug. 18. They’ll sit through meetings with the district and their principals, talk about bathroom policies and catch up with colleagues they haven’t seen since June.

Some might exchange a sense of cautious optimism — after last year, when the threat of budget cuts and shuttering schools loomed constantly, this year will have to be better, right? 

Let’s see. 

San Francisco Unified School District is home to 50,000 students and 3,000 teachers across 122 schools. 

The district faced a $114 million budget deficit last year, which led to early retirement packages and potential layoffs. It released a proposed list of school closures, to “organize our investments” and contend with decreasing enrollment. The superintendent responsible for that list was forced out; the new one, Maria Su, promised no closures last school year. But this year, the school district needs to find another $59 million to cut. 

Those missing millions are keeping teachers on edge. 

“There hasn’t been a year where I’ve felt confident that I’ll be there the next year,” said Carolina Samayoa, who teaches social studies to freshmen and sophomores at Lowell High School. Samayoa nearly lost her job in 2022 when Lowell had to cut $3.6 million from its budget. A last-ditch fundraising effort saved her position. 

“It doesn’t feel like we’re being valued,” she said.

This year, teachers are also wary of the district’s new payroll system, since the transition to the EmPowerSF payroll platform in 2022 was a costly, $40 million debacle that underpaid or mispaid employees and also led to funds not being placed in retirement accounts or workers being disenrolled from insurance policies. 

Santiago Gonzalez, a teacher entering his seventh year at Rooftop School, a K-8 near Twin Peaks, was underpaid on two occasions in 2022. He had to pick up second jobs to make up the difference. Later that school year, he learned he needed to pay back the district for overpayments. The result was anxiety-inducing, he said. 

“Every year before this year, it was hard not to just focus on the negatives,” he said. But this year, “I’m trying to be more optimistic.”

Dishearteningly, the school district’s new payroll system has had an inauspicious debut, with educators set to protest today regarding more than 100 documented payment issues in the last payment cycle alone.

Each of the five educators interviewed for this story expressed a sense of excitement and optimism, despite the district’s challenges. Gonzalez has taken on coaching jobs that he said help him connect more with students. Samayoa said her close relationships with her colleagues supported her through difficult days, and she looks forward to seeing students grow each year. 

Brendan Fong is entering his second year teaching ethnic studies at June Jordan School for Equity. He was more tired at the end of last year than he anticipated. But he’s refreshed and ready to see his students again. 

“I love it when they laugh. They’re really funny,” he said. 

Still, Fong and Samayoa, like other teachers in the ethnic studies department, spent some of the summer worrying that their classes, which are required for freshmen, would be canceled and their curricula changed at the last minute. The district reversed a proposal to pause ethnic studies in June after uproar from teachers and administrators. Instead, it opted to spend a year on a newly purchased curriculum instead of the one developed in San Francisco. 

Fong and Samayoa worry that their classrooms will be under particular scrutiny: The subject is divisive for San Francisco parents and students, as well as political groups. 

“All the ethnic studies teachers are going to have to think about what we’re teaching and how we’re teaching it and whether we’re going to get put under the microscope again,” Fong said.

Contracts for both the teachers’ union and the administrators’ union expired at the beginning of the summer. Both unions are still in the bargaining process with the district. 

For teachers, pay increases are a high priority, as is fully funded healthcare. About 100 teaching positions are open across the district, from prekindergarten to high school, according to Cassondra Curiel, president of the teachers’ union. 

Teachers also hope to protect their jobs from being replaced by AI and have additional training around protecting their school communities from being targeted by ICE. 

“What we’re worried about is whether or not the district can retain us,” said Curiel. “We cannot allow this level of instability to be what this generation of San Francisco students receive.” 

Teachers’ union representatives will return to the bargaining table next Monday, the first day of school.  

Administrators, meanwhile, are reeling from central office layoffs, many of which directly impact school sites. Several schools will share a school nurse this year after having their own dedicated employee last year. Anna Klafter, president of the administrators’ union and the principal at Independence High School, said Su told her and other administrators that they should prepare to work even harder this year. 

“We’ve been making a joke since COVID, like, oh, it can’t be as bad as last year,” said Klafter.  “And then it does end up being as bad as last year. We have to stop making that joke, we’ve realized.”

Even still, Klafter said that she was pleased to hear that teachers were feeling a sense of hope going into the school year despite reduced administrative staff and the resultant stress that could put on school sites. 

“Part of the job of the administrator is to keep this stuff from teachers,” she said.