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San Francisco teachers on strike are urging parents to refrain from homeschooling their children as part of their campaign for improved wages and working conditions.
Over 50,000 students stayed home on Monday and Tuesday as educators left their classrooms to join the picket lines. The teachers are advocating for a nine percent salary increase over two years and subsidized healthcare for families. However, the financially challenged San Francisco School District insists it cannot meet these demands.
As the strike looks likely to continue into Wednesday, many local parents are expressing frustration after receiving emails from teachers discouraging them from facilitating any home-based learning for their children.
The district has warned that it risks losing millions in funding for each day the strike persists. In an attempt to mitigate this, they have distributed homework packets designed to provide “five days of independent study in both English Language Arts and Math,” as stated on their website.
However, teachers argue that these packets are merely a strategy to maintain district funding during the strike, which they believe would weaken their bargaining position by allowing the district to resist their demands.
“If many families participate in independent study, it reduces pressure on the district and can prolong the strike,” read a screenshot shared on social media. “If you are able, we ask that you do not participate in the independent study provided by the district.”
”If you are able, we ask that you do not participate in the independent study provided by the district.’
Tech worker Nadim Hossain, who has a child in elementary school, described the email as ”messed up.”
”Strike if you must but it’s diabolical to say ‘don’t do independent study while we shut down the school for a few days,’” he wrote on X.
The email sparked arguments on social media with one pundit equating the homework with “crossing the picket line” – while others blasted the union for appearing to discourage children from keeping up with they studies during the strike.
”The district providing packets like this that the teachers themselves did not put together – which is in their statement that you quoted – is essentially the same as using scabs,” one parent claimed.
Meanwhile, there was no sign of a deal between teachers and the public school district Tuesday night, which is already facing a $100 million deficit and ongoing budget crisis that’s led to deep cuts to school.
Starting salaries for a K to 12 teacher are about $80,000 a year, with the average about $100,000, which is significantly higher than the national average of about $72,000.
Union organizers claim San Francisco teachers need better pay and benefits to survive in the notoriously expensive city, where rent for a one bedroom apartment is at least $3,000 per month and the median home costs $1.3 million.
“We will continue to stand together until we win the schools our students deserve and the contracts our members deserve at every single school site — until we close this deal,” union president Cassondra Curiel said on Monday.
But the district, plagued by spiraling pension costs and under state oversight after years of mismanagement and enrollment losses, claims it’s too broke to raise salaries by much.
Heartbreaking images shared on X showed one family squashed into a Chinatown motel, assisting their children with workbooks.
Superintendent Maria Su said at a Board of Education meeting last week that the district could lose between $7 million and $10 million every day schools are closed.
“If we don’t have instruction, we cannot get any funding for that day, and the loss of funds per day of not having instruction is significant,” Su said at meeting on February 3.
She pleaded with the board to let her to negotiate with state education officials to reduce penalties associated with the school closures.
The union reportedly agreed to reduce its 9% pay raise demand, but the two sides are locked apart on health care benefits and total pay as the district countered with a 6% raise for teachers and wage increases for paraeducators and security guards, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Other points of negotiation included paid sabbaticals and test prep periods and health spending accounts, according to reports.
The strike has sent local parents scrambling for backup child care, with some forced to pay for babysitting help or even stay home from work to mind their kids if they can’t access limited city-run camps.
The teachers’ union, United Educators of San Francisco, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.