SFUSD Needs to Get Its Shit Together.
Let’s start with the lay of the land. Public schools are good. This reporter’s children go to an SFUSD school. If you’re considering sending your kids to SFUSD, do it! In fact, the deadline is Friday.
And not only is the enrollment deadline rapidly approaching on January 30th, but there also might be a strike.
The bargaining isn’t going well; this is no secret. It’s beyond tension at this point. A strike is all but inevitable. But new sources have suggested that the district is purposely mischaracterizing facts about teacher raises, prep time, and benefits – even about enrollment caps themselves. It even appears the district might be using enrollment caps as a school closure tool.
According to one parent leader, enrollment numbers for three schools (Garfield, Moscone, and Lau) were intended to close programs, all without prior engagement with the impacted school sites and families. After overwhelming pushback from parents, they say, the district backtracked. But new data shows that the problem is far more severe than previously thought.
Every school gets a set number of seats. Next year, several schools are being given fewer seats. It’s unclear whether these changes are driven by predictions that more families will go private, but we know the school district is lukewarm at predicting things.
According to documents distributed by concerned parents, the district isn’t as cash-strapped as they want us to believe. The district is holding tightly onto a sizeable reserve, several times over what is required or recommended as a minimum. SFUSD ended the 2024–25 year with ~$150M more than projected during the 2025-26 budget season, and that information was not publicly shared until after $114 million in cuts were made for 2025-26. These concerned parents say it is even possible that SFUSD is in fact, operating with a structural surplus. A working group put together a resource for interested people to read more; this group includes a current board member as well as several educators.
The United Educators of San Francisco team concur, saying, “The structural deficit has been put in place by management practices that year after year overestimate expenditures and underestimate revenue. After 5 years of this practice, SFUSD has accumulated a $430 million surplus.”
That’s why the seat allocations shared with this reporter are so surprising.
Reduction in available seats at several school sites. SFUSD has not responded to requests for comment.
Several schools have far fewer seats than this year, and some of the sites concurrently also have long waitlists of interested parents who have applied. This raises questions about two things that the district can’t seem to get right: communication and collaboration.
On top of all of this, the district refuses to address two key issues: a sanctuary school policy and the Stayover Program. In a fraught time, you’d think a place like San Francisco, California, would hold student rights in higher esteem.
In the absence of clear, official communication from district leadership on issues like enrollment cap changes, policies around ICE and commitments to sanctuary, and even the state of the budget, many parent advocates are left to wonder on their own: What is happening at my kid’s school? And why does it feel like the district isn’t telling us the full picture?
In conjunction with the strangely-worded emails from Dr. Su’s team about labor negotiations, parents are organizing to prepare for a strike that is starting to seem inevitable. The district has official channels that reach a vast audience, and they’ve been sharing things with this audience that don’t fully line up with what the union bargaining team experienced at the negotiation table.
One parent says, “This messaging is especially concerning given the power imbalance in communication. The superintendent’s office can instantly reach all families and educators via mass email and phone calls, while the bargaining team has no comparable mechanism to correct misinformation or reach the same audience in real time. That imbalance, paired with misleading public statements during negotiations, raises serious concerns about bad-faith bargaining tactics.”
In addition, teachers and their collective bargaining unit (the union) are limited as to what they can share. So parents are using another tactic, something so radical it bewilders the mind as to how the district couldn’t have predicted this: They’re talking to each other.
Traditional media is obsessed with the lottery, publishing pieces like this week’s “These are the most popular S.F. public schools.” It also regularly features the voice of the ChOsEn PaReNT, Meredith Dodson, and her little parent group, SF Parents. You are welcome to go elsewhere for those perspectives. Here’s the dirt they’re not going to tell you.
Not just in Meredith Dodson’s tightly-controlled Facebook Group; not in a centralized nonprofit newsletter. And news is spreading like wildfire. SFUSD had a comms problem before. Now it’s damn near unmanageable.
What’s next? A strike is possible. The votes closed on Wednesday, January 28. If it happens, it might be soon.
Is there an actual bargaining table? We asked a member of the bargaining team, school social worker Maggie Furey. This is Furey’s seventh year working for the district. “My 1st year was the year we went home with COVID. So I have never had a not-tumultuous here.”
Furey is a part of United Educators of San Francisco. She explains that the keyword there is educator. The group includes teachers, social workers, nurses, school psychologists, paraprofessionals… “We're more than just teachers. We are actually a pretty comprehensive union. So we call ourselves educators because we are all educating in some way.” As a social worker, Furey says, “I educate in feelings, and regulation, and relationships.”
The relationship between the district and its employees is fraught. “We've just not been making progress,” Furey says. “The district is wanting us to make really large concessions in order to make or to have any gains. So they're wanting any gains that we get to basically come off of our own backs.”
“So there is an actual bargaining table,” Furey says. The negotiations have been taking place inside the Board of Education room at 555 Franklin. The union has a bargaining team of over 100 people. Since they don’t all fit at the table, they gather behind. “So when the district is really looking at us,” Furey explains, “They do see all of us.”
The mood is a mix. “People have gotten increasingly frustrated with what has seemed like the district's apathy.”
It’s a tough position to be in. Furey says, “We are feeling the real impacts of our healthcare cost going up. Of the strain of the workload getting harder… It doesn't feel like they [SFUSD] are motivated to solve it.”
But the frustration has an outlet. “We are reaching our goals of getting that vote turnout. People are really energized and people are voting.” At her school, there were tons of votes within the first few hours of the strike authorization poll opening. “People were ready. They wanted to show the district that, no, we're serious, so we want you to show up serious.”
Furey’s feeling confident though, and she says it’s because of the solidarity they’re feeling. “Educators are feeling more resolved than ever, but I think also the solidarity that we're feeling from parents, from community members, from other people in our schools that maybe aren't part of UESF that are part of other unions, or maybe aren't even unionized.”
Many parents at public schools don’t make a lot of money. In fact, Furey points out, at her school a lot of parents don’t even make the same wages as the educators. But the parents are still showing up. “Our educators are pretty privileged in relation. Yet they're still standing there fighting for us and they want us to get everything that we're asking for.”
The strike vote is ending soon, but it doesn’t automatically trigger a last-resort measure like a strike. Instead, it shows the district how serious the educators are about picketing. Will that make a difference? Furey laughs. “If the district is smart.”
Not everyone is under the same umbrella. For instance, clerks, custodians, nutrition workers, and even principals might be unionized but not under UESF. However, Furey points out, they all have the right to not cross the picket line.
Parents, too, should read up on the potential for a strike. We covered it several weeks ago if you need a refresher.
“We are encouraging our site leaders to tap into the different groups and the different parent leaders at each site,” Furey explains.
But some groups aren’t officially allowed to weigh in; for instance, PTAs have been instructed to stay neutral. Although PTA officers are allowed to speak outside of their official capacity as parents, it’s clear some are either feeling pressured into silence or using the neutrality instruction as an excuse to stay out of a heated topic.
Furey explains, “We're just encouraging people to navigate it individually and to trust the structures that exist. There's a lot of WhatsApp groups that are happening.” (Yes, reader, there are.)
Furey continued, “A strike is not something that we go into lightly. It is the last thing that we do because it is a huge sacrifice, right? It’s the last step that we take. And it is when we've exhausted every other option.”
Not only do educators working paycheck to paycheck risk losing those hours; Furey also recognizes that parents may not have alternative forms of available childcare. “So what we ask of parents is to keep your ear out and start to plan ahead. Start to think about who it is in your community that, you know, you might be able to help with childcare. Who is it that you can call if you don't have the flexibility in your schedule to take off or change your schedule? Who can you rely on in your school community, in your neighborhood to maybe, you know, switch off with childcare?” She says what’s important is to show up at the picket line if you can.
