San Francisco Teachers Put Salary Before Students
Schools in the San Francisco Unified School District are closed for a fourth straight day as the United Educators of San Francisco’s strike against the district continues. Home to 120 public schools and about 50,000 students, the school district employs over 2,300 teachers.
United Educators of San Francisco, the teachers’ union, has described the strike as a “fight for the future of our students,” even as district student enrollment has been declining. The union’s list of demands includes fully funded dependent healthcare, a 9 percent salary increase, an increase in the number of special education teachers, and an agreement ensuring the city’s sanctuary policies are included in union contracts. (RELATED: State of Denial)
So far, the school district has countered with a 6 percent raise, recommended by a neutral arbitrator, while acceding to the union’s demands on sanctuary policies and introducing a pilot program to address teachers’ “special education workload.” The school district also caved to the unions’ demand for fully funded dependent healthcare, even though those terms are rarely ever met, even in the private sector, where only 2 percent of employers cover dependents at no cost.
It’s also unnecessary. Teachers in the district already receive over $4,000 per year for family health insurance coverage and an additional $1,897 through the Quality Teacher and Education Act, a San Francisco initiative to boost teacher salaries. In the San Francisco Unified School District, the starting base salary for a teacher with a bachelor’s degree is $73,689. (RELATED: Dangerous Schools and the Democratic Governors Who Ignore Them)
What appears to be a cash grab has been framed as a “strike for our students”…
Without the 6 percent raise, that’s still $10,000 more than the average American’s salary, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Even as the school district struggled with a budget crisis, it still provided teachers with a 6 percent raise in 2022 and a $9,000 raise with a 5 percent increase in 2023.
What appears to be a cash grab has been framed as a “strike for our students,” even as teachers have called parents to urge them to stop their children from participating in the district’s independent study program, according to the New York Post. Without self-awareness, teachers emailed parents, urging them to forgo learning opportunities for their children in favor of supporting the right of these educators to skip work in protest of better pay.
One parent called the ask from teachers “diabolical.”
On Wednesday, the striking teachers spent the morning picketing individual schools, then broke for a photo op at Ocean Beach, forming a “human banner” that spelled out “Strike For Our Students.”
Merit aside, the school district has made it clear that it simply cannot afford to meet the union’s demands while it works to dig itself out of a $102 million budget deficit. Since its budget is currently under state oversight, the district can hardly afford to increase costs by adding to the 85 percent already spent on staff and benefits.
With teachers more concerned about “grading for equity” than grading homework, it’s little shock that 54 percent of students in the district fail to meet state standards for proficiency in math. Overall, 46 percent of district students are rated as minimal or developing in English literacy.
Unsurprisingly, the school district is bleeding students. It’s expected to lose an additional 4,600 students by 2032.
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