On a Wednesday afternoon in September, during the typical pick-up time for Commodore Sloat Elementary, Robert Byrd was stabbed to death right next to his 8-year-old son, just steps away from the school.
Sloat’s social worker, McKenna Hendrickson, had the grim responsibility of breaking the news to the third graders that their classmate’s father had been killed.
Social workers employed by the San Francisco Unified School District have a litany of responsibilities, from holding one-on-one counseling sessions with students to training teachers on emotional support, to building trust and connection with parents. However, none is arguably more crucial than helping a school community through a tragedy.
This is one of the reasons why SFUSD’s new staffing proposal (opens in new tab), which cuts nearly half of the district’s school-site social workers — including Sloat’s position — has been so maddening for district staff and parents. Many of them implored the Board of Education at a meeting last week to reconsider.
There, Hendrickson, whose job is on the line, explained that she has had to support families and students through their pain with “real trauma-informed care and crisis intervention every day.”
“The district likes to send emails telling students and families to talk to their wellness counselors and social workers,” she said. “We’re essential then, but when budget season rolls around, we’re extra.”
The district has proposed cutting 45 of its 99 school-site social workers as part of widespread layoffs that would include giving pink slips to 56 classroom teachers, 51 security guards, 18 assistant principals, 15 counselors, eight clerks, and eight middle school health teachers. The district expects those layoffs to eliminate $25.6 (opens in new tab) million in spending as part of a plan to cut into the district’s projected deficit of $103 million for the next school year. That plan also includes shutting down school bus routes, reducing central office operations, and altering the school day to include six periods instead of seven.
The proposal to cut social workers comes at a dire time for the district, which is attempting to produce a convincing, multi-year Fiscal Stabilization Plan so as to exit state oversight and resume local control. In May, the district cancelled widespread layoffs at the last minute after uproar from employees, instead opting to eliminate vacant positions and offer early retirement plans to more than 300 employees as part of $114 million in cuts.
SFUSD has been applauded by political (opens in new tab) and parents groups (opens in new tab) for taking the budget crisis seriously, and has little choice but to make serious cuts for the coming school year. But the impact of any cost-savings measures — including the cuts to social-work positions — on students is sobering.
Already this school year, SFUSD has been enmeshed in criticism of inequitable access to in-person algebra and understaffing in its expanded transitional kindergarten (opens in new tab) program. Furthermore, the district’s new proposal included a plan to consolidate three school sites or school programs starting in 2027-28, reigniting concerns that school closures — the issue which contributed to the ouster of Superintendent Maria Su’s predecessor — are back on the table.
During the current school year, all elementary schools with more than 300 students, all middle schools or high schools with over 450 students, and all schools with a chronic absenteeism rate higher than 24% are provided full-time social workers. Others are allotted a half-time social worker. (There are additional centralized social workers, including some who can be mobilized to specific schools as needed in a crisis.)
However, under the newly proposed staffing model, only the district’s schools with a Title 1 designation would be granted a social worker at all. Title 1 is a federal designation for schools with a large proportion of students qualifying for free or reduced-cost meals because of financial need.
Even Title 1 schools that won’t lose a full-time social worker position would still be impacted by the cuts. Layoffs at the district are done by seniority, in a last-in-first-out system. That likely means reshuffling longer-tenured social workers from elsewhere into Title 1 schools.
Autumn Garibay, the parent-teachers association executive vice president at the Title 1 Flynn Elementary in Bernal Heights is concerned that its bilingual social worker will be replaced by someone without the connections and language skills to aid the school’s many English learners.
“You can’t just swap one social worker for another one,” Garibay said.
The decision to cut nearly half of the district’s social workers might come as a surprise in particular because Superintendent Su, who holds a doctorate in clinical child psychology, has championed mental health support for students. During an event at Manny’s on Oct. 24, Su said keeping social workers at school sites was one of two non-negotiables for her when the district made cuts last year.
“I knew that we needed to protect our social workers,” she said.
The Board of Education has yet to publicly debate the proposed cuts, but is scheduled to do so at its next meeting on Tuesday. In January, the district will issue projected budget allocations to individual schools and engage with the community about planning. An updated Fiscal Stabilization Plan will then be reviewed by the board in March before it adopts the final budget in June.
At a press conference on Dec. 5, district leaders, including Board President Phil Kim and Superintendent Su, acknowledged that the cuts would be a tough pill to swallow but asked the “entire city to come together” in support of them. But that hasn’t stopped efforts to save social workers.
At the Dec. 9 board meeting, dozens of parents, teachers, and district staff pressed the board to push back on the proposed cuts. While a social worker might seem like a dispensable position, they said, they can play a crucial role not only in students’ socio-emotional well-being, which has been declining (opens in new tab) in recent years, but also in their school performance.
Marty Mannion, the social worker at Sunset Elementary, a non-Title 1 school where a student was a victim of the Ocheltree-Truong murder-suicide in October, implored the district to consider the fact that, even though Sunset Elementary isn’t a Title 1 school, one-third of its students qualify for free or reduced lunch. “Listen to what our community is saying,” Mannion said.
Staff at Sunset and Sloat praised the contributions of their social workers. Sunset’s principal, Michael Cress, said the school would have been “lost without” Mannion’s leadership, and called the proposed cuts both “ill-advised” and “disrespectful.” Allan Ma, a teacher at Sunset, praised Mannion for helping his students with issues including bullying, suicidal tendencies, depression, and problems in the home.
Ma said he had “the impossible task of teaching students for 10 minutes” after finding out about the tragedy. But, with Mannion’s help, he said, he “had the words and the confidence to deliver the news to my kids.”
“He is the most important person at our school,” Ma said. “It would be a big mistake if you let him go.”