On the first day of school after winter break, San Francisco public school principals were greeted by a baffling email from Superintendent Maria Su. 

In the email, shared with Mission Local, the superintendent shared a preliminary budget that laid out $102 million in cuts to balance the district’s budget and exit state oversight. 

School principals and members of the San Francisco Board of Education were confused: The Board of Education had unanimously rejected the same plan just last month. 

The budget numbers, sent to principals of more than 100 schools across the district, detailed how many staff members would be retained, and which programs and services would survive into the 2026-2027 school year. Principals and school board commissioners were befuddled — and fearful. 

“I don’t know how they could go forward with it,” said a principal and union representative, who did not give her name for fear of repercussions. Every principal she knows disapproved of the district budget plan, she said. The Board of Education unanimously rejected it. And still, here it was, apparently moving forward. “It doesn’t seem to matter what we say.” 

When asked why Su had re-shared a rejected budget, a spokesperson for the school district said that the Board of Education has the authority to reject Su’s budget, but not to make decisions on staffing, and so the budget sent by Su is still in play as a “starting point.” 

Su, during December’s school board meeting, described the projected cuts in her budget proposal — which call for major layoffs of school staff, including teachers and assistant principals, with the greatest cuts happening at smaller schools with lower enrollment — as a “worst-case scenario.” The next step, she added, will be meeting with school principals one-on-one to listen to feedback on how the plan would impact their schools.

At smaller schools with lower enrollment, the number of layoffs would be significantly higher — despite smaller schools often featuring larger numbers of low-income and immigrant students. 

Those who voted down Su’s budget argued that the size of a school doesn’t necessarily correlate to how many employees it needs. Schools with large populations of low-income or immigrant students, for example, typically need more staff to help students who may not be getting help with their homework after school, or have access to outside tutoring, or even a quiet space to study. Visitacion Valley Middle School, for example, hosts just over 300 students, and nearly 90 percent of them are low-income and receive a free or reduced lunch. Under Su’s budget, Visitacion Valley would lose about half its teachers — going from from 22 to 14 — as well as its assistant principal. 

This weekend, schools will host meetings with families and SFUSD staff will go over Su’s budget proposal. The district has until March to present any budget revisions. 

Su, who was appointed in October 2024 to replace former Superintendent Matt Wayne, and took on a permanent role last November, has faced criticism in recent months for what some staff see as a lack of transparency in the district’s financial decisionmaking. 

But Board of Education sources said Su’s staffing cuts were the “main reason” it voted against the district’s overall fiscal plan in December. 

At the time, criticism of the plan was harsh. “This appears to be a one-size-fits-all” policy, said Board Vice President Jaime Huling during last month’s meeting. “We have diverse schools with diverse needs.” 

Reading from messages he received from school principals concerned over the staffing plan, School Board Commissioner Matt Alexander in December said, “‘It’s just not possible to run a school at this staffing level ….  It honestly feels like [this proposal] was made by people who have never actually worked in a school.’” 

“You just can’t run a middle school without an assistant principal,” said Maya Baker, the principal at Visitacion Valley Middle School. Between disciplining students, managing daily school operations and new curriculum, the burden placed on school principals will be “impossible,” she said. 

“I thought they would go back to the drawing board,” said another school principal, who wished to remain anonymous. When she opened her email to discover that the same plan had been proposed again, she was shocked. 

The model, which is based on a ratio recommended by the state, may work for suburban schools, she said. But at a smaller, urban school like hers, students have “deep, unique needs.”