SF School Board Must Consider a Worst-Case Scenario of Over 800 Layoffs

San Francisco’s school board will make its first major budget decision of the year on Tuesday night when it votes on a proposal to potentially lay off hundreds of educators and administrators — “painful” cuts that parents and teachers say will unfairly harm students’ education.

The San Francisco Unified School District, which is already under state oversight after certifying two negative budget reports in a row, has to cut $113 million — 10% of its total spending — next year. In an announcement on Friday, SFUSD said that about 80% of its budget goes toward staffing, so cuts across school sites and the district’s central office will be necessary to close its funding gap.

The district has been warning of the budget crisis’ effects on school staffing since it launched its now-shelved school closure plan last March. Still, for many, Tuesday’s decision will be a reality check of what campuses could look like next fall when the district starts operating on a staffing plan focused on “keeping the lights on.”

“I hear that it is a really tough place to be in right now where we have to make these tough decisions, and these tough decisions are going to, as I shared in our last meeting, impact people that we know and impact our students and impact our schools,” Superintendent Maria Su said at a board meeting earlier this month. “However, we are, at this moment in time, facing a very large deficit.”

Tuesday’s proposal is part of a worst-case scenario that would see the district issue as many as 837 preliminary layoff notices. If approved, it would give the district permission to send pink slips to 559 student-facing employees such as teachers, counselors and teachers aides. Earlier this month, the board approved a plan to send notices to 149 administrators and release temporary staffers. In the coming months, it also expects to request approval to pink slip 129 central office employees.

The district said these high numbers were chosen out of an “abundance of caution” and added that the final number of employees left without a job next year will likely be lower. But because it is required by state law to issue preliminary pink slips by March 15 — before it has a complete picture of its budget for the next fiscal year based on resignations, an early retirement buyout plan, and final state and federal funding allocations — it wants to ensure “flexibility” to lay off the necessary number of employees.

“We really find this to be an unnecessarily high number, even if they were in good faith doing due diligence in order to make sure their budget matches their staffing,” said Cassondra Curiel, the president of San Francisco’s teachers union.

“We have so many families and students without a [permanent] educator in their classroom right now, so the concept of a layoff yet again of educators that are already employed seems counterproductive to ensuring that every student has a qualified credentialed educator in their classroom for next year,” she told KQED.

Last fall, students in dozens of classrooms didn’t have a permanent teacher. There’s also been an uptick in the number of combination classes that schools have to teach.

Next year, some schools, like Sheridan Elementary School, might have to introduce a kindergarten-first grade combined class.

“Not one person who I know has a child in this district sends their child to school to be the teacher. They send their child to school to learn from teachers and educators,” Curiel said. “The district’s cuts [are] ultimately harming what students have to look forward to for the next year.”

Parents are also worried that important school-site positions like assistant principal roles won’t be funded. Some campuses are already without a second-in-command who helps supervise and train staff and work on “closing the opportunity gap” in schools — including managing individualized education programs and efforts to help chronically absent students.

“We’ve got over 100 IEPs in the school, which is about 25%–30% of the student population, all of which not only requires the extra staffing to put those supports in place but also an administrative overhead to make sure they’re being met, that the reporting is happening, all of that kind of stuff,” said Daniel Hobe, whose third-grader attends Rosa Parks Elementary in the Western Addition. “That’s really where our assistant principal was carrying a lot of the water.”

Su’s staffing plan presented earlier this month does not include guaranteed funding for assistant principals at any schools. The baseline model, which district staff said includes the positions required to keep schools functional, is trim — it includes classroom teachers, a principal, a clerk, janitorial staff and a few other roles. It doesn’t cover wages for many of the social workers or counselors the district employs, though Su said that doesn’t mean they will all be laid off.

“Half of our SFUSD students live in poverty, we have other kids with disabilities. This is just a real kick in the stomach,” parent Brandee Marckmann said of cuts to student support positions. “It’s not fair to basically balance the budget on the backs of our kids when it’s the SFUSD management that has made so many mistakes.”

The board’s decision on Tuesday night won’t include a list of specific employees who’ll get pink slips next month, — only the numbers that will go out. If the plan is approved, the district said it will review employee resignations, retirements and leaves and then use a seniority list to determine which staffers will receive preliminary notices.

Some staff who have worked in the district for a long time might be bumped from a specialized role, like a language arts specialist, back to the classroom. That means that in some cases, two notices are issued while only one employee would be without a job, Curiel previously told KQED.

The district is also reviewing interest in a buyout it offered more senior staff last December, which had a deadline last week. If at least 314 agree to early retirement at the end of the year, they’ll get a one-time payment equal to 60% of their salary and keep their retirement benefits. The district said that could help offset the final number of layoffs, but if there is too little interest, the deal will be fully revoked.

While Su has said that the process of stabilizing the district’s finances will be “awful” over the next few months, she has maintained that it is necessary to keep the district from further state intervention — especially with uncertainty at the federal level.

“We will be in a much better place in two years’ time where this district will be fully solvent, meaning we control our budget, we control how we allocate our dollars, we control what types of programs and initiatives we want to fund,” she told the school board at its last meeting. “More importantly, we will have and be able to give our teachers and educators and staff a level of stability and predictability that they need.”