San Francisco desperately needs public school teachers — even as it plans to lay them off.
That conundrum was on full display at a Board of Education meeting Tuesday night. While the meeting was ostensibly focused on balancing the budget, teachers lined up by the dozens to blast school officials for staffing shortages, which they argued have grown so severe it’s putting students at risk.
Nora Atkinson, a teacher for third through fifth graders with special needs at Yick Wo Elementary, told the Board that younger students in the same program have had substitute teachers since the start of the school year. Despite repeated requests by the school’s principal and staff, the district hasn’t advertised for a permanent replacement, Atkinson told the commissioners.
“These students need the expertise and the consistency that only a trained special education teacher can provide,” Atkinson told the Board. “I don’t understand…” she started, then paused as she began to cry. Fellow teachers and parents in the room clapped in support and urged her on. Then she finished.
“I don’t understand how the district has allowed these nine students to go without a teacher for half the year with no plans to fix the situation,” she said, to applause.
After numerous pleas from teachers, the meeting then turned to the school district’s budget, which is projected to hit a $113 million deficit next year. After almost two hours of discussion and presentation, the school board unanimously approved a stabilization plan, which could include as many as 535 layoffs, as well as an early employee retirement plan for older teachers.
All eyes at the meeting were on Dr. Maria Su, who was appointed to the unenviable Superintendent post in October, replacing Matt Wayne, who resigned amid protests over his plan to close and merge schools.
Su represents San Francisco’s last chance to fix the district before the threat of a state takeover becomes real. She and the Board have three months to right-size an organization that has resisted downsizing to meet the realities of its shrinking student enrollment.
In an interview with Gazetteer SF after last night’s meeting, Su explained the disconnect between a district in need of teachers, which nevertheless plans to eliminate them.
“We’re hoping that, through early retirement, we will be able to reduce, essentially, very expensive employees, and then be able to hire newer, different employees later,” Su said.
When asked, Su confirmed that by “newer” and “different” she meant teachers who will earn less than current employees.
The Superintendent said that if the district can close the budget deficit by eliminating contracts through its early retirement strategy, and “by recovering all of the positions that haven’t been filled, then maybe the layoffs will be very small.”
The early retirement plan will only move forward if at least 314 employees accept offers, Associate Superintendent Dr. Michele Huntoon said in an interview. If that bar is not met, the option may be rescinded entirely.
Asked about the alarming concerns of staffing shortages raised by teachers, Su said the complaints were “site-specific issues,” rather than district-wide problems.
“A lot of these situations are very particular, very one-off, very site-by-site situations,” Su said. “It’s not all of our schools.” Several teachers disputed Su’s conclusion to Gazetteer, saying shortages are more widespread, because the district takes too long to vet applicants for open positions.
Su told Gazetteer the district has now made it through its backlog of applicants; she blamed the slow hiring process, in part, on the state-appointed monitors who wield veto power over spending, thanks to the district’s previous mismanagement.
“They’re scrutinizing everything,” Su said.
One of those two monitors, Elliott Duchon, joined Tuesday night’s meeting by video. He told the audience that the district received a failing grade on its recent interim report on financial health, one of just eight out of 1,000 California school districts to receive such a grade.
The monitor’s advice to the district: Forget the threat of a state takeover; the worst consequence of overspending is the stress it causes on school programs, children, staff, and families.
“It’s time to bite the bullet,” Duchon said, endorsing the stabilization plan and early retirement offer as “the best possible way out of an overspending scenario that's going to continue to put the district in a spiral.”
Cassondra Curiel, president of the union representing SFUSD teachers, remains critical of any plan that relies on layoffs.
“Layoffs increase the instability at schools,” Curiel wrote in a text to Gazetteer during the meeting. “Every year the district has done this, they’ve rescinded them because they couldn’t staff necessary classrooms…To date, the district cannot fully staff its current vacancies, so increasing the number of vacancies it needs to fill seems like a plan to fail.”
It’s more plain than ever that San Francisco’s students and teachers will have to make do with less going forward. But Atkinson, the teacher at Yick Wo, told Gazetteer she is still determined to get a full-time staffer to help the youngest special needs kids at her school.
“We all (principal and staff) chip in to support them, and they have a wonderful group of para educators to support them and keep them safe,” she wrote in a text Wednesday. “But they need a teacher to help them learn. That’s what I would like the Board to know — I don’t want everyone to give up on getting them a teacher.”
