SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — For the first time in more than a week, nearly 50,000 students in San Francisco are back in the classroom. The nearly five-day-long teachers’ strike ended Friday, which was welcome news for parents.
Monday and Tuesday of this week were previously-scheduled holidays.
Joyful reunions were seen on Wednesday morning at Visitacion Valley Elementary School.
“We’re so excited to be back and welcome all our students,” said Principal Sarah Seaton.
Visitacion Valley campuses across the San Francisco Unified School District were now able to welcome back all students.
RELATED: Tentative $183 million deal reached to end historic San Francisco teachers’ strike
“We’re a community school, and this last week, we really came together as a community school,” Seaton said. “We had a lot of our community partners come together and support our families.”
The strike came to an end early Friday morning after an overnight bargaining session. The deal includes fully-funded health care for educators and wage improvements. It also means new sanctuary policies and protections from AI.
United Educators of San Francisco said it’s the deal they fought for on Friday.
SFUSD said it’s dipping into part of its reserve to make the deal happen.
Superintendent Maria Su said cuts like school closures have never been off the table, even prior to the new tentative agreement.
MORE: San Francisco schools to be closed Friday as teachers’ strike continues
She said any potential layoffs are required to be announced by March 15, though the district plans to do so sooner.
“In terms of funding for this particular tentative agreement, we do believe that we have the resources. I was able to be fiscally responsible when we made those agreements with our partners,” Su said.
Right now, the agreement between the union and the school district is still tentative. Su said that there are several steps that have to happen before that agreement is finalized.
“The unions will take a couple of weeks to ratify, and hopefully they will approve the package. Once that is approved, we get notified, we then put together, essentially, a financial document. It’s called the AB1200, and this document, essentially, will show to the state how we will pay for the agreement,” Su said. “Once we put that document together, we will bring that to the board of education for either the first or second meeting in March, and I hope that the board will adopt that and approve that, and then we then put the tentative agreement into action.”
As for the days of instruction lost during the strike, Su said the district will be determining when those will be made up with the California Department of Education.
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