As San Francisco School Closures Loom, Frustrated Teachers Say Hiring Has Hit a Wall

Updated 5:30 p.m. Wednesday

As parents crowded the San Francisco school board meeting on Tuesday night to push back against the district’s plans for upcoming school closures, a rally by frustrated teachers and staff called out how the district’s budget crisis is already here.

The proposed closures come amid continuing enrollment declines and a $420 million budget deficit, which the San Francisco Unified School District must close or risk a state takeover. Intervention from California’s Department of Education has already begun.

In the spring, advisers appointed by CDE a few years ago were granted veto power over SFUSD’s financial decisions, deeming it at high risk of running out of money. Teachers say that the move is blocking hiring in their schools, leaving students without resources and available staffers without work.

“We’re glad that somebody is now watching and ensuring that the district is doing the right thing,” Cassondra Curiel, the president of United Educators of San Francisco, said during a union protest on Tuesday afternoon outside the district office.

“But if the process is delaying our hiring, if the process and the correctness of these line items is in any way hindering the ability for our students to get what they need, then we are not centering students but centering bureaucracy.”

Curiel said that she has met with CDE staff multiple times and that their “priority is shared with [the union’s] priority.” The “failure lies with the system of the district not getting it right,” she said at the rally. In a press release ahead of the protest, though, the unions said, “CDE is currently blocking the hiring of critical school staff.

Laura Dudnick, SFUSD’s executive director of communications, said in an email that the district is continuing to work “collaboratively” with fiscal advisers and labor partners to hire for vacant positions.

“The escalated state oversight has further highlighted the need for SFUSD to take corrective action to eliminate deficit spending and implement sustainable financial practices,” Dudnick said. “We all share the goal of returning SFUSD’s budget to local control.”

It’s not entirely clear where the breakdown in the hiring process is, but Curiel told KQED that 104 student-facing positions are vacant across SFUSD, including nurses, psychologists, social workers and paraeducators. She said the number of vacancies was even higher at the start of last year.

The district has already cut nearly 900 roles, many of which were vacant, and currently has a hiring freeze on non-classroom positions.

The frustration shared by Curiel and protest attendees is that they say some people have been selected for many of the roles and money budgeted to pay them, but they have been unable to start.

“I work with elementary school social workers, and this school year, we were really excited because we were going to welcome at least 14 new school social workers,” said Yajaira Cuapio, who works at the district level. “We were only able to welcome four because 10 are stuck in this hiring freeze.”

Cynthia Vasquez, a transitional kindergarten teacher at Junipero Serra Elementary School, told the crowd that she has been housing one paraprofessional who she said is slated for a role but isn’t hired.

“She’s awesome, she’s honest, she’s smart, she’s bilingual, she’s everything you want in a paraprofessional,” Vasquez said. “She can not get an offer letter in order to get a place to live.”

During the school board meeting that followed the protest, Superintendent Matt Wayne presented an update about the district’s plan to close several schools at the end of the academic year. Parents, meanwhile, pleaded for their children’s schools to remain open.

Wayne is set to announce the list of schools recommended for closures on Sept. 18. District officials said letters will be sent out to the campus communities, and staff will be on hand that day to answer questions and address concerns.

The closures will be the first in the district in 20 years despite enrollment consistently declining since 1999, leaving more than 14,000 empty seats across campuses. More than 4,000 students have left the district since the 2017–18 school year, and SFUSD could lose 4,600 more by 2032, according to the district.

Speaking on KQED’s Forum on Wednesday morning, Wayne argued that the closures would improve opportunities for students by concentrating resources.

“We need to do this now so we’re not trying to maintain a status quo that overall is not working for our students — and particularly our students that over the years have been the most vulnerable and most underserved,” he said.

District officials will consider three factors in deciding which schools will close, according to the presentation: equity, excellence and effective use of resources. Equity is weighted the highest at 50%, while the other two categories split the remaining half of the score.

Teacher turnover, social and emotional learning development, academics, and school culture will all be factors in those composite scores.