As we approach parent conference week, you once again prove that you are deeply committed to our students and families, and that is why you fight for the schools they deserve. This past week, thousands of you picketed to show your support for your big bargaining team and the demands that will continue to stabilize your schools. Everything we have done till now has been to prepare us for the time we are approaching. For the past eight months, we have worked hard to come to a negotiated settlement with the district. Despite our intentions, the district and the union remain far apart. Monday’s mediation session did not result in any agreements, and as a result, we will likely proceed to fact finding next.
Your picket power this week is important because it shows that you are serious and prepared across the entire district to win a fair contract. Pickets are an important practice in collective power, where you and your colleagues practice leading chants, taking attendance, and disseminating information from the bargaining team. These practices, paired with our communication structures, such as this video message in our Friday newsletter, are the foundation that will guide us through the coming period, during which we should expect misinformation about our bargaining demands. You must lean on these structures to maintain unity and to sustain the fight for the schools our students deserve.
In the headlines, some media outlets simply parrot the superintendent’s perspective that there is no money and that more cuts will stabilize the school district budget. The current superintendent, who is not an educator, is not the first superintendent to make this statement. Every year we have been in negotiations with the district, they have claimed the same thing. This is despite the facts you’ve seen with your own eyes: year after year, SFUSD closes its books with millions in surplus cash, year after year, they send out pink slips but start the next year with empty classrooms, year after year, they put families on a long waitlist to enroll their students in SFUSD while forcing under enrollment at schools.
With this most recent unaudited actuals, UESF observed that the District continues to mismanage its budget and does a very poor job of aligning costs with the needs of our schools. In the October budget presentation to the Board of Education, the District showed that the variance between its projected ending fund balance and its final fund balance was almost 70%. Normally, a best practice variance would range from 3-5%. It means that the District projected to have only $130 million in reserves in its unrestricted general fund and ended up with $220 million. This same behavior is repeated throughout the budget and has been the norm for the past several years. Your union is keenly aware of how poorly the District’s budget has been managed. Your union has pointed out year after year through our own analysis and reports that the District does not have position control and still struggles to know where people’s placements are, we know that they are over contracting special education services instead of prioritizing the hiring of our members and that they cannot offer quality control for the growing list of contracts offered to outside companies. Your union knows the budget better than they do, which is why we’re willing to negotiate when we get presented with actual figures.
Another talking point from the District is that they will have to close schools and make tough site budget decisions to balance their budget. You, your colleagues, and your union deeply understand the needs and opportunities at schools throughout this entire district. Your union has 120 UBCs, 100% coverage by union leaders at schools, and stays in regular contact. Management’s current approach is simply to react and then make excuses for their mismanagement, all while expecting you to remain silent and suffer the consequences.
The lack of seriousness with which the School Board and management approached the planned changes to the overly confusing and universally despised enrollment process, and their inability to plan out 2 to 3 years for programs that would welcome our San Francisco families, shows that all levels of the District leadership offer no actual vision for our public schools. Time and again, San Franciscans overwhelmingly supported public schools by passing propositions to invest more money, so our city deserves something better than simply making excuses for not paying folx, hiring adequate staffing, and making attractive programming for families.
In the coming months, you and your colleagues will organize the strongest actions UESF has taken in a generation. The power of thousands of UESF members – the educators, paraeducators, nurses, counselors, social workers, family liaisons, and more is needed to force this district to do its job. You and your coworkers have the power to educate and welcome families and fight for our students. As we approach the first strike vote on December 3 at Balboa High School, it is your power and that strike vote that will show the district we mean business. Good luck with your parent conferences because they always show overwhelmingly. They support their educators, and we will need them as we build up our actions.
