Whether you remember your school principal as a happy person or an angry person — or remember them at all — depends a lot on your comportment as a student.
Karate-kicking out a window in your high school, even inadvertently, can inspire no shortage of very memorable behavior from an assistant principal. Believe me.
San Francisco’s school principals are, for the most part, tired. Times are tough and they’ve been tasked to do more with less, which is never a recipe for success, let alone contentment. There are fewer educators and staff in schools, and fewer resources.
The large and powerful teachers union has, more often than not, rolled over the San Francisco Unified School District like the Harlem Globetrotters. The smaller and weaker principals union, meanwhile, plays more of the Washington Generals role.
But that passivity is changing. Everybody noticed when the union announced that, in lieu of attending the district’s mandatory quarterly all-administrator meeting at Burton High on Oct. 29, the principals and unionized administrators would instead walk out and demonstrate to gin up pressure for contract negotiations.
SFUSD Superintendent Maria Su certainly noticed. Mission Local spoke to multiple principals who say that Su told them that, if they skipped the meeting in protest, there would be legal ramifications.
One of those principals was Anna Klafter, the union president of the United Administrators of San Francisco.
“I had a couple of phone calls with Dr. Su,” said Klafter, the longtime principal at Independence High School. “She wanted to let me know that if we were organizing an official boycott of this all-administrator meeting, we would be in breach of our contract and they would have to file an unfair labor practice charge against us.”
This is not a discussion Klafter ever expected have with her superintendent.
“I felt like that was a pretty heavy-handed response to a group of school leaders who are just trying to make their voices heard,” she said.
It is unclear — to anyone — how cracking down in this manner on a proposed walkout at an internal quarterly meeting will cool tensions and avert a labor stoppage. Rather the opposite.
Asked directly and multiple times whether she threatened legal action against principals who planned to boycott the meeting, Su and her spokesperson declined to answer the question.
“First and foremost, Superintendent Su deeply appreciates our principals, and the leadership they provide every day for our students, staff, and families,” reads a statement.
“SFUSD remains committed to negotiating in good faith and continuing to work collaboratively with our principals to reach a fair agreement,” continues the statement sent to Mission Local.
But the principals are angry now. Kick-out-the-window angry.
The district subsequently relocated Wednesday’s meeting from Burton High School above McLaren Park to the district’s downtown headquarters at 555 Franklin.
It is difficult to read this as a strategic masterstroke. If the principals demonstrated at Burton in the far, far southeast of the city and atop a high hill, it would have gone largely unnoticed for anyone but passengers of the No. 29 bus — even if they burned down the building.
A demonstration held in the heart of San Francisco, stumbling distance from City Hall, figures to be far more visible — and accessible.
And that demonstration, Klafter notes, is still happening — after the meeting, now pared down to an hour (which the principals and administrators, under duress, now plan to attend). She says that she has received RSVPs from almost every one of the union’s 250 members.
And they may have company. News of the district’s alleged threats to the union spread among the labor community like a runny nose through a kindergarten class.
Teachers union president Cassondra Curiel says it’s quite possible her members will join the protest in solidarity. Labor Council Executive Director Kim Tavaglione says a broad spectrum of union members — many of whom, after all, have their own children in the school district — may show up, too.
The district’s alleged threats “likely make this bigger,” said Tavaglione of the Wednesday rally. “Other unions are now likely interested in joining.”
You cannot — can not — effectively run a school district without trust and buy-in from principals. It’s hard to say there’s an abundance of that right now, and the possibility of a principals’ strike is very real. The possibility of a teachers’ strike is very real as well.
At times, it feels like a grim pageant deciding which manner of educator feels most disrespected and put-upon by the administration. If one union strikes, the other will certainly hold a sympathy strike.
Speaking of sympathy, several principals tell Mission Local they are now acting as de-facto school nurses after taking mandatory training for first aid, Narcan and EpiPens. There is more clerk-like work, increased data entry, employee evaluations and Title IX investigations that used to be done centrally.
This extra helping of work literally no one glories in doing has come as principals are still waiting on a raise from last year. The United Administrators of San Francisco has reached an impasse in its negotiations with the SFUSD. Mediation has failed, meaning the next step is a “fact-finding” panel. After that: A potential strike vote.
The conditions leading to this have been building for years. And, for years, the principals union has folded like the Washington generals.
In 2020, 123 out of 124 principals polled answered that they did not want to be ordered back to work in empty schools during the pandemic. The district turned around and did exactly that.
Principals whose own children were quarantining at home during lockdown were told to just bring them to work. Principals who expressed concern about being confronted by parents eager to get their own kids out of the house and back to school were told to park far from school sites, and to come and go furtively.
Well, that was then.
The district, in its statement to Mission Local, said it was “concerned about the plan to hold this work action during the regular school day, when principals are on duty and being paid with public funds.”
That’s confusing: The principals’ action was slated to begin at 3 p.m. The site of the meeting, Burton High, lets out at 2:25 on Wednesdays. Administrators, additionally, do not have a defined working day under their present contract (which essentially means they don’t get paid by the hour).
Even if the proposed walkout was a contractual breach, there were certainly more politic and de-escalatory means of handling it than to (allegedly) threaten legal action. Principals were riled up before, and they’re really riled up now.
“I’ve been a school leader for 11 years and, before that, I was a teacher for eight years in Oakland,” said John Nepomuceno, an assistant principal at Balboa High and a union leader. “I never thought we’d see the day we’d be on a picket line, no less looking at a strike vote. This is the strongest I’ve ever seen an administrative union unite.”
Let’s hope that “fair agreement” is reached. Your humble narrator has three children in San Francisco public schools. His work colleagues are very generous, but having three new grade school-aged interns would be a lot to ask.
Here’s hoping they don’t kick out the windows.
Well, Su was never in a classroom. It is bad enough when Admin have never been teachers (they come from being counselors or somewhere else) but when the Admin of the Admin have never been a classroom teacher? Talk about out of touch.
It is not like SFUSD is a buyers market for staff/Admin, they have trouble getting folks and they have had mostly bad press over the past five years (Payroll boondoggle for example).
Su, was hired by London Breed, in order to appease the Chinese community. Her former position at City Hall, was some sort of make work job, as City hall’s school district advisor. Less than a year after her appointment, she turns her back, on both the Black/Brown communities, who’s students are struggling, in part due to school closures, due to the pandemic. Su, is trying to increase, Chinese language classes, even though there are several schools in SFUSD that are devoted to Chinese immersion classes.
Su and Jenny Lam are not the same person. Newsflash.
This Superintendent and Board is out of touch.
I worked for SFUSD and Oakland for many years, and don’t blame the principals for being burnt out. The central office tends to lean on agencies, like: Teach for America, and hire uncredentialed teachers to save money, like that idiot, that taught at Mission High School, about 3 years ago, Mission Local, did an excellent article titled :” A Teacher’s Odyssey.” This places work and additional stress on the principals, which, not only, have to train these teachers, but warn them about what’s correct workplace attire and behavior. Many principals leave the district, and go over to Marin, or down the peninsula, where the pay is higher, and there is less stress, plus they don’t have to deal with the district’s “P.C” politics.
Brings to mind, “The beatings will stop when morale improves.”
Sfusd needs to close inefficient small schools to shift resources and properly staff schools with nurses, instructional coaches, and fix the buildings in need of repair. Tenderloin has a broken garage door for about two months.
Cassandra Curiel does not speak for all or even most teachers. Just because she’s addicted to drama, doesn’t mean we all are. Maria Su is doing a much better job than any other superintendent. She is trying to clean up the bloating at 555 that was created for 20 years. Principals are just salty because they wanted those overpaid jobs at 555 and now those do-nothing jobs are gone. This teacher will cross the Principal Picketline just like they would cross ours.
My question is at what time did teachers and principals refuse to return to classrooms when everyone in the civilized world realized that children were not susceptible to Covid and only adults that were immune compromised were in danger? Two years? Also, what gives them leverage for more than a cost of living increase? Test scores? Not likely
What gives them more leverage? How about the lack of applicants for those jobs. Look at the turnover and where they go.
As for Covid, where did you get your M.D. degree?
You don’t have to be a biologist to know you stepped in human feces .
Go back to school please, learn how facts work.
“children were not susceptible to Covid”
Assuming those who died from it were not susceptible, sure.