San Francisco public school parents, teachers, and administrators are breathing a sigh of relief: The city’s first teachers strike in 47 years is coming to an end.
The San Francisco Unified School District and the United Educators of San Francisco have reached a contract agreement 4 days after teachers walked off the job, Superintendent Maria Su announced (opens in new tab)on Friday.
“I am so proud of the resilience and strength of our community,” Su said in a statement. “This is a new beginning, and I want to celebrate our diverse community of educators, administrators, parents, and students as we come together and heal.”
Union members will now vote to ratify the tentative agreement. Schools will be reopened on Wednesday.
The agreement, struck after a series of marathon negotiating sessions this week, included 5% raises for teachers over two years, 8.5% raises for paraprofessionals and instructional aides over two years, and fully funded of healthcare contributions for dependents.
The union celebrated the deal, saying “we won” in their announcement that an agreement had been reached.
“This historic strike built an unbreakable solidarity across our city, among families, students, educators and community,” a UESF statement (opens in new tab) said. “This strike has made it clear what is possible when we join together and fight for the stability in our schools that many have said was out of our reach.”
Mayor Daniel Lurie, who had called for the teachers to delay their strike, welcomed the breakthrough.
“Our kids deserve schools where they can thrive, with educators who have the tools and support they need to best serve our kids,” said Lurie. “And all of our families deserve a fiscally stable school district that will be able to do the same for generations to come. This agreement is evidence that when we work together, we can all get closer to that goal.”
UESF launched the strike Monday after nearly a year of negotiating with the district on a collective bargaining agreement, with few concessions made by either side. Schools were closed, and parents of roughly 50,000 students scrambled to find alternate options for child care.
Tony Thurmond, the state superintendent of public instruction and candidate for governor, came to the War Memorial building Tuesday to help the two parties strike a deal. He oversees fiscal monitoring of SFUSD, which has been described by district officials as one of the main roadblocks to meeting union demands.
A neutral fact-finding report released Feb. 4 gave the union the power to announce a strike, which it did the next day. That report recommended a 6% total raise over two years; the district offered that pay hike over the weekend, but the union declined to accept the proposal.
When the strike began, the district was offering to pay $24,000 a year in healthcare benefits for each educator and suggested initiating a pilot for increased special-education capacity at five schools.
By Monday night, the district was offering a 10% raise for classified employees and a 6% raise for certificated employees over two years — still short of the union’s demand for raises of 14% and 9%, respectively.
The union was also able to win more protections for immigrant students and against the use of artificial intelligence to replace human instruction.
Since the strike began, thousands of teachers — along with district administrators and members of service workers unions, who walked off their jobs without pay, in solidarity with UESF — have been picketing. Rallies at Dolores Park and City Hall have attracted as many as 20,000 people, according to estimates from UESF.
By Tuesday afternoon, Thurmond and other state leaders had descended upon the War Memorial building to help with the negotiations.
The district had argued that its dire budget situation and its status under state oversight made it impossible to meet the union’s demands. Hours before the strike began, Mayor Daniel Lurie, along with Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and state Sen. Scott Wiener, called for a three-day cool-off period so that schools could remain open while the two sides continued negotiations. The union shrugged them off.
In the end, the union got much of what it wanted. The district, on the other hand, will have to decide if it will move forward with layoffs suggested in December. After all, it still needs to manage its way out of fiscal oversight. Now it’ll have to do so with less money in the bank.
This is a developing story and will be updated.