The San Francisco School District Administration finally gave the Teacher’s Union most of what the educators wanted—after a five-day strike the cost the district more in lost state revenue than the cost of healthcare for dependents that the union was seeking.
The strike never needed to happen. MissionLocal reports that SFUSD administration “fumbled the teachers strike,” noting that none of the union’s concerns were new or surprising.
In a city that is still heavily labor-friendly, the community mostly sided with the teachers, and if the administration thought the union would bow to pressure from angry parents, they weren’t paying attention.
The main issue from the start was dependent health care, which under current rules can cost teachers up to $1,500 a month, in some cases 15 percent of their pay. When the district agreed to cover those costs, it amounted to a major wage increase, particularly for those at the lower end of the pay scale.
The city provides good dependent health care benefits to almost all of its employees. The cops not only get health care while they’re working, they get it for life, and can retire after 30 years at 90 percent base pay (which is often spiked). Cops start at almost $30,000 a year more than teachers, and after even five years, most officers make close to $150,000. The highest paid teachers, with 20 years of experience and advanced degrees, get $130,000.
This is, of course, radically unfair.
But back to the strike: Not only did the administration of Superintendent Maria Su bungle the situation—so, perhaps more importantly, did Mayor Daniel Lurie.
Lurie demonstrated early on that he had no experience with labor, and nobody on his team has any credible connections to most of organizer labor in this city. He knew this strike was coming months ago; he did nothing until it was too late.
I called former Sup. Aaron Peskin, who ran against Lurie for mayor, and asked what he would have done. Peskin, of course, had deep ties to local labor—and credibility with the unions.
“I would have given the superintendent the hand-holding they need,” he said. “And I would have brought everyone together and nobody would have left my office until we had a deal, and at 3 am we would all have walked out bleary and told the media we had a contract.
“We would have looked at what the city’s union contract was the last time, and I would have said to stop fighting the teachers over two percent,” he said. “But that would require some adults in the room, and in this administration, there are no adults in the room.”
If Lurie wants to avoid more problems at SFUSD, he needs to talk to his buddy Gov. Gav, and push for a change in the way the schools are funded.
Right now, California schools are funded on the basis of Average Daily Attendance, which means if students don’t show up, the schools don’t get the money. That makes no sense in a city like San Francisco at a time when a lot of immigrant families are afraid to send their kids to school.
Change the formula to enrollment numbers, not ADA, and the SFUSD budget crisis gets a whole lot easier to handle.
Oh, and do you suppose if Gav and Dan lined up a bunch of their billionaire friends to support another effort to reform Prop. 13, this whole problem of adequate school funding might go away?
Oh, but then the Newsom for President Campaign would have to defend him against the charge that he “raised taxes.” He is so determined to redecorate the Oval Office that he can’t do anything that might help vulnerable people in California.
We all knew that cuts were coming to the San Francisco budget (not for the cops or the district attorney, of course), but a recently released list of contract eliminations for grassroots community service providers shows that the Mayor’s Office seems to think the only public safety spending that matters is law enforcement.
The list is long—and the remarkable fact is that most of these grants are relatively tiny, in the grand scheme of the budget, and they provide direct services that help prevent crime.
Any decent criminologist can tell you that preventing crime is way cheaper than arresting, trying, and jailing criminals, just as preventing evictions is way cheaper than providing services to the unhoused and disease prevention is way cheaper than hospitalization.
In the case of some of these cuts, “entirely vulnerable communities will be completely abandoned,” Anya Worley-Ziegmann,coalition coordinator for the People’s Budget Coalition, told me.
Some organizations, like All My Usos, which works with under-resourced Pacific Islander communities, and HOMEY, which works with youth, including Transitional Age Youth, and families in the Mission, may have to shut down.
Others will have to lay off hundreds of workers.
Thousands of vulnerable people will lose access to what can be life-changing services.
All of this will save $10 million, about 15 percent of what the city will spend next year just on police overtime.
The cuts will take effect July 1, so the mayor still has time to come to his senses.
Crime is way down in San Francisco, and it’s not because of more cops; in fact, violent crime is at its lowest rate in 50 years, and so is the number of sworn officers on the streets.
Programs like these, inexpensive and community-based, with workers making a fraction of police salaries, are preventing crime. Is eliminating them really a smart move?
Check out the list, thanks to the People’s Budget Coalition:
