Preliminary layoff notices hit San Francisco teachers

For San Francisco’s public school teachers, the inevitable has arrived. Layoffs are here.

San Francisco Unified has begun to notify teachers, administrators, and other staff about impending layoffs, multiple sources told Gazetteer SF. The school district has notified principals at certain schools that some of their administrators and teaching specialists are targeted for elimination. The earliest targets seem to be assistant principals, some of whom have been told their positions will be cut. Others have been told they may be eligible for reassignment as classroom teachers.

Details remain opaque, including the most important one — the total number of teachers to be cut. But multiple educators working for the district, speaking on condition of anonymity because their jobs are at stake, confirmed the first steps are underway in the district’s attempt to eliminate positions and reduce payroll.

Cassondra Curiel, president of United Educators of San Francisco, the union representing teachers and aides, said the district on Friday issued an “excessive number” of preliminary layoff notices. The union thinks the inflated number of notices is due the influence of a state-appointed fiscal advisor overseeing the district “determined to impose austerity on SFUSD.”

The layoffs aren't a surprise. Dr. Maria Su, the new superintendent for San Francisco Unified School District, has been laying the groundwork for the cuts since she took the job in October in an attempt to close a projected budget deficit of $113 million next school year.

Friday evening, Su sent an email to parents and teachers explaining that at a Board of Education meeting on Tuesday, the school district will seek authorization to issue layoff notices to more than 500 San Francisco educators.

“I want to be clear that the Board is not taking action to lay off individual employees at next Tuesday’s board meeting,” Su wrote. “Those decisions will happen through a thoughtful process and will take multiple factors into account.”

Critics say the layoff notices remain ill-informed, because the district is moving forward without a comprehensive understanding of how many teachers will lose their jobs – and the ultimate cost to students.

One poignant example is the district’s goal of eliminating funding for reading specialists, one teacher said. The educators aren’t classroom teachers, but experts who intervene to help kids that have difficulty reading or are at risk of dyslexia. SFUSD suffers a paradox of needing teachers in some schools even as it cuts them. As it eliminates reading specialists, it seeks to move them into the teaching positions it still needs, the teacher said.

“They want to solve their teacher shortage by forcing people who do not want to be in classroom positions into unfilled classroom teacher positions,” added the teacher.

As recently as last month, SFUSD published alarmingly low early literacy proficiency rates, including a goal to raise the percentage of all third graders reading at grade level from 52 percent two years ago to 70 percent by 2027. According to the district’s own Jan. 28 progress report, it is “off track.”

Antonaé Robertson, chapter president of the Service Employees International Union Local 1021, a union that represents school custodians, student nutrition staff, secretaries, and clerks, said in a text to Gazetteer SF that her organization was, of course, well aware of the Board of Education’s previously approved budget aimed at eliminating hundreds of positions before next school year.

But she said it’s unclear how many district employees have accepted early retirement offers, a program SFUSD has said is aimed at offsetting the number of layoffs. (SFUSD previously told Gazetteer that the retirement program is only viable if at least 314 employees accept offers.) The deadline to accept the offer was Friday.

The union is concerned SFUSD “doesn’t have enough of a handle on its own budget and finances to avoid implementing harmful layoffs that may not in fact be necessary,” Robertson wrote. The district “should look at cutting spending on outside contractors and central office administration before moving ahead with layoffs that will directly affect students at the school sites.”

SFUSD has said as many as 535 of its employees could be laid off. The district declined to comment when asked for specifics about layoffs, but said in an emailed statement that it will disclose updates to its budget at its upcoming Board of Education meeting Tuesday. A discussion of layoffs is on the Board’s draft agenda.

Correction: This story was updated at 9:15 a.m. on Feb. 22, 2025 to correct an early literacy proficiency rate. It was 52 percent two years ago for all third graders; the earlier version said 15 percent, a figure for English learners last year.

Editor’s Note: It was also updated at 6:28pm on Feb. 21, 2025 to add SFUSD Superintendent Maria Su’s emailed statement to parents and teachers in the sixth paragraph.