San Francisco public school teachers received an email today at 5:42 a.m. from their union announcing a deal that will end their strike that had gripped much of the city, and especially its public school parents, since Monday.
“I’m still trying to wrap my head around it, what we gained and lost,” Nora Atkinson, a special education teacher at Yick Wo Elementary School, said in a text to Gazetteer SF
Another special education teacher, who texted on condition of anonymity because she’s not authorized to speak for the San Francisco Unified School District district or the union, messaged that the deal amounts to a “big win” for paraeducators, the teachers who assist them. Besides improved healthcare benefits, they will get an 8.5-percent pay raise over two years.
“It will allow us to attract educators to SFUSD,” she said.
The United Educators of San Francisco have claimed victory, and the union’s president, Cassondra Curiel, will no doubt trumpet the resolution and carry it into future labor disputes. The union deployed a well-orchestrated strike, though one that sometimes leaned on specious claims about the school district’s troubled finances.
While the union had its share of parent supporters, the ones I spoke to over the last week described their patience growing thin. Chants at recent union rallies personally attacked Francisco Unified School District Superintendent Maria Su, protested at her home, and called for her to go. Su, a technocrat, proved ill suited to go to 12 rounds with an energized union. At one point, when the fight brought her to tears, the union ridiculed her.
Elliott Duchon, the monitor appointed by the state to oversee the school district’s spending, told Gazetteer SF last week that Su and the district are bound by rules to not appear to be bargaining in its statements to the media, and that unions aren’t nearly as constrained.
In labor fights “there’s a lot of language that goes back and forth, not always friendly,” Duchon said. “School districts have to be a little bit more careful about their words.”
While teachers celebrate their well-deserved wage and healthcare win, Su will return to her main role: figuring out how the public school system can afford to operate.
