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 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. “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 to be having 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.
Mission High School at 3750 18th St. in San Francisco, CA, on Friday, Sept. 22, 2023. Photo by Jesus Arriaga.
It is unclear how the district’s subsequent move to relocate Wednesday’s meeting from Burton High above McLaren Park to the district’s downtown headquarters at 555 Franklin is 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, under duress, now plan to attend). She says that she has received RSVPs from almost every one of the union’s 250 members.
And the principals 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.
Students exit Everett Middle School and meet up with their parents and guardians on Aug. 16 at the end of their first day of in-person classes of the fall 2021 semester. Photo by David Mamaril Horowitz.
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 principals’ proposed walkout was a likely 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.