San Francisco teachers authorize strike as contract talks near legal deadline

On a rainy Thursday, nearly half a century after San Francisco teachers last walked off the job, educators in one of the nation’s wealthiest cities moved a major step closer to doing it again.

Members of United Educators of San Francisco (UESF), the union representing most employees in the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), voted 97.6% to authorize a strike if contract talks with the district fail. Union leaders announced the results Jan. 31, saying 5,202 educators cast ballots over three days.

The vote does not mean a strike is imminent, but it gives union leadership the power to call one once legally required procedures are complete. A neutral fact finder is expected to issue a report on Feb. 4, and both sides agree the earliest a walkout could legally begin is around Feb. 9.

If that happens, San Francisco would see its first teachers strike since 1979, a seven-week walkout that led to a 15.5% pay increase and rehiring of laid-off staff.

“This is a clear message to the district,” union President Cassondra Curiel said in a statement announcing the vote. “The time is now for the district to act. Our community is standing with us in our fight for the consistent classroom teachers, special education supports, and stable programs our students and families need and deserve.”

The showdown comes as SFUSD, which serves roughly 49,000 students, confronts overlapping crises: declining enrollment, state fiscal oversight, a string of management failures and a push to reorganize or close under-enrolled schools. The union is seeking double-digit raises, fully paid family health benefits and stronger protections for special-education and high-needs students, while the district insists it cannot go beyond modest increases without jeopardizing its financial recovery.

What the vote does — and what comes next

Under California’s Educational Employment Relations Act, public school labor disputes move through bargaining, impasse, mediation and then fact finding. SFUSD and UESF reached impasse last year, and a formal fact-finding hearing was held Jan. 23 before a three-member panel that includes a neutral chair.

Once the panel’s report is made public, the recommendations are nonbinding. At that point, the district can move to implement its “last, best and final offer,” and the union can legally strike, subject to notice and what both sides describe as roughly a 10-day cooling-off period.

Superintendent Maria Su told families in a Jan. 31 letter that schools remain open and negotiations will continue.

“While a strike remains a possibility, my sincere hope is that we can avoid any disruption to learning,” Su wrote. “Keeping our students in the classroom and supporting families is my top priority.”

Union officials say the second, full membership vote was needed to comply with internal rules before any strike call. A preliminary authorization tally among a smaller group of members in December drew about 99% support.

Pay, health care and the cost of staying in the city

At the center of the dispute is a familiar question in San Francisco: whether middle-class public workers can afford to live and work in a city with some of the highest housing and health-care costs in the country.

The union is seeking raises of 9% to 14% over two years, depending on job classification, along with district-paid health insurance for employees’ dependents. Teachers and paraeducators say salaries and out-of-pocket medical costs have not kept up with rising rents and inflation, forcing many to take second jobs or move outside the city.

In an opinion piece published last month, a veteran SFUSD teacher described paying about $6,000 a month in rent and $1,500 in monthly health insurance premiums to cover a family, arguing that “without competitive pay and benefits, we will continue to lose experienced educators.”

Curiel has accused the district of refusing to substantially move from its initial wage position for months.

“The district hasn’t changed their position since May of 2025,” she said in a recent interview on local television. “That is an untenable condition for us to be in.”

District officials say they understand the strain on staff but face hard limits. SFUSD’s latest proposal, which Su has called a “three-year stability package,” offers 6% in raises spread evenly over three years, a “fiscal pathway” to fully fund family health benefits over time, and targeted pay bumps and a pilot program aimed at easing workloads for hard-to-staff special-education paraeducators.

To pay for that, the district is proposing to scale back or eliminate several long-standing perks, including paid Advanced Placement preparation periods, paid sabbaticals and certain department-head preparation time, and redirect the savings into across-the-board salary increases.

District officials say there is no surplus money to fund anything beyond the 6% offer without additional program cuts.

Special education as flashpoint

Beyond pay, special education has become a central point of contention.

About 14% of SFUSD students received special-education services in 2023–24, up from roughly 12% four years earlier, even as overall enrollment declined. At the same time, the district has struggled to provide legally required services.

In 2024, an internal review found that close to 200 students with disabilities started the school year without some or all of the services spelled out in their individualized education programs after the district cut nearly $30 million from special-education budgets. SFUSD later acknowledged it owed nearly 9,100 hours of compensatory services to make up for the shortfall.

The union is demanding more staffing, clearer caseload limits and stronger workload protections for special-education teachers and paraeducators. Paraeducators, who often earn among the lowest wages in the district, say proposed cuts to their positions—at a time when the district has set aside tens of millions in reserves—are unacceptable.

Calling proposed layoffs “very immoral,” one longtime paraeducator told a neighborhood news outlet that paraprofessionals “are the ones who provide direct services to the children” and should be the last, not the first, to go.

SFUSD says it has begun “systemic and structural improvements” to special-education services and notes that part of its latest offer is aimed specifically at relieving pressure on special-education staff. But it argues that some of the union’s proposed contract language would lock in staffing and caseload obligations the district cannot guarantee it can afford in coming years.

A fight over reserves and state control

The money debate is complicated by the district’s precarious finances and state oversight.

After years of structural deficits, SFUSD’s budget was formally downgraded to “negative” certification in 2024, triggering intensive monitoring by state fiscal experts. The district has since cut about $114 million, much of it from central office staffing and through early retirements, and says it has improved to a “qualified” status. Officials hope to return to a clean bill of fiscal health, known as “positive” certification, by mid-2026.

Even after those reductions, district projections show unrestricted deficits of about $51 million in 2025–26, $32 million in 2026–27 and $19 million in 2027–28 without further cuts.

In December, the Board of Education voted to create a $111.5 million reserve fund, describing it as a rainy-day cushion necessary to reassure state regulators and protect operations from further shocks. The move angered many teachers and support staff, who argue that “it is storming now” and the money should be used to keep educators in classrooms and avoid cuts to paraeducators and other front-line positions.

“They’re sitting on hundreds of millions of reserves,” Curiel said at a recent rally, contending that the district is choosing stockpiles over direct services.

District leaders counter that dipping too deep into reserves could push SFUSD back toward insolvency and invite harsher state intervention. They also note that any contract the district signs must be approved by state fiscal monitors, who can reject agreements they deem unaffordable.

That triangular relationship—between the union, the district and the state—means even a tentative agreement at the bargaining table could be revised or blocked in Sacramento.

Parents, principals and the prospect of closed doors

The threat of a strike is reviving painful memories of pandemic school closures for many families, who are bracing for possible class cancellations, lost income and renewed disruption to children’s routines.

Low-income families and parents of students with disabilities, who were hit hard by previous shutdowns and by the district’s special-education lapses, stand to be affected most if schools close. State law requires at least 180 instructional days, meaning any days lost to a strike would need to be made up later, potentially by shortening summer break.

Su has previously said that in the event of a full-scale strike, the district may “not be able to open schools to students safely” if there are not enough credentialed adults to supervise children. Principals and other administrators are also considering their options; some have discussed holding a separate strike authorization vote in solidarity with teachers, according to local reporting.

Civic groups are split. Some local political organizations have warned that a strike is a “dangerous gamble” that could deepen enrollment losses if more families bolt for private schools or other districts. Labor scholars say the union is banking on public frustration with SFUSD’s management—including a $34 million payroll system failure that left many staff unpaid or underpaid—to maintain support even if a strike closes schools.

For now, both sides say they prefer a negotiated settlement. The fact-finding report due this week will offer the first outside assessment of their competing claims about what the district can afford.

Whether that is enough to avert San Francisco’s first teacher walkout since the 1970s will test not only the strength of the union’s mandate, but the city’s capacity to pay for the schools its educators say students need, while keeping its own books in the black.