Generations of San Francisco public school students have no memory of what it was like to experience a teachers strike. That may all change on Monday: For the first time since 1979, San Francisco Unified School District teachers are set to walk off the job.
It’s been decades since a teachers strike in the city. The last four took place in 1968, 1971, 1974 and 1979; except for the 1979 strike, none lasted longer than a week.
The 1979 strike took place in the fallout of California voters’ passage of Proposition 13. Colloquially known as the most famous, or infamous, ballot measure in state history, Prop 13 revamped California’s property tax laws, significantly lowering some of the tax revenues that went toward public schools. As a result of the lower funding, SFUSD laid off over 1,000 teachers.
Although contract negotiations continued through the summer, by September 1979, the district and the union were still far apart. The union wanted the laid off teachers reinstated, plus a 15.7% raise over the next two years. When the school year began, the teachers took to the picket line and substitutes filled the classrooms.
As the weeks dragged on, more students stopped showing up to class. San Francisco had always been a pro-union town, but the long walkout began to erode public support for strikes, the New York Times reported. Although it’s not clear how many studdents stayed home, estimates range from one-third to 60%. The San Francisco Examiner spoke to high schoolers who were spending their days eating burritos in the Mission. “We’ll go sit around school and sit around the park,” one said.
Deputy Mayor of San Francisco Hadley Roff talks to striking teachers in 1979. (John O’Hara/Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images)
Six weeks into the strike, the district and the union finally agreed to terms. Approximately 700 of the laid-off teachers were reinstated, and a 15.5% raise, spread over two years, was approved. But the damage between parties would last for well over a decade.
“I was elected to the school board in 1990, and people were still talking in the district about the experience of the 1979 strike,” then-school board member Dan Kelly told the Chronicle in 2005. “There were still wounds, there were resentments, there was distrust.”
On Saturday, unionized teachers said they reached an agreement on one of several divisive issues, but not enough to head off a threatened strike. The union has sought to include the district’s existing policies on immigrant rights in the new contract. However, there was little movement on wages and a demand for fully paid family health care, the union said.
Superintendent Maria Su, who took part in Saturday’s talks, said she was “deeply frustrated and disheartened that we did not reach a tentative agreement.” Su said the district’s latest offer includes a 6% raise over two years and a health benefits allowance of $24,000 a year. The union is asking for 9% over two years and coverage of up to 75% of health care costs at Kaiser or provide teachers with $2,000 a month for their own health care expenditures.
Hard caps on class sizes and the union’s demands to alleviate the workload of special education teachers by hiring more and changing the way their workload is assigned were also areas of disagreement.
SFUSD has been negotiating for almost a year with the union, which includes 6,500 teachers, substitutes, paraeducators, counselors, social workers and nurses. The schools argue that there is no surplus of funds to pay for raises beyond what it is offering without making cuts elsewhere.
Bay City News Service contributed to this report.
More News
– Startup founder behind San Francisco pro-billionaire rally
– SF teachers are set to strike. Here’s what happened the last time.
– Human remains found in burned Bay Area home after deadly shooting
– Bay Area exec had kids’ private school tuition paid for by Jeffrey Epstein
Sign up for daily SFGATE breaking news alerts here.
This article originally published at San Francisco teachers are set to strike. Here’s what happened the last time..