Dolores Huerta: Don’t name streets, schools after me

As California cities consider what to do with the vast set of landmarks named for the late Cesar Chavez, who was accused of sexual abuse in a New York Times story published March 18 , Dolores Huerta said she would not like her name used as a replacement. A spokesperson for Huerta, who cofounded the United Farm Workers with Chavez, told The Standard that streets, schools, and buildings “ should not be renamed after her, but the UFW martyrs, organizers, farmworkers, and families who sacrificed everything to build something bigger than any one person.” The 95-year-old Huerta, who showed up at San Francisco City Hall as recently as January in support of more pay for street cleaners, told The Times that Chavez raped her and coerced her into having sex in the 1960s, encounters that produced two children, which she secretly had others raise. She said she had never told anyone about the abuse, even her children. Since the revelations about Chavez, officials in San Francisco have been considering how to rename the 3.5-mile Cesar Chavez Street and Cesar Chavez Elementary on Shotwell Street in the Mission. Supervisor Jackie Fielder, whose district includes the Mission, is working with the community and labor groups to determine a renaming process, according to her chief of staff, Sasha Gaona. While Huerta said in a recent interview that she would prefer that Chavez landmarks be named after individuals associated with the UFW movement, Tuesday’s statement represented her clearest attempt yet to distance herself from the renaming process. “We understand that this news has stirred deep emotions for many people, and we respect that everyone is processing this in their own way,” said Huerta’s spokesperson, Erik Olvera. “Questions about the naming of public buildings, streets, and schools are local and municipal matters, and we believe those communities are best positioned to have those conversations on their own terms.” Some have followed Huerta’s suggestion. On Monday, Assemblymembers in Sacramento voted unanimously to change Cesar Chavez Day — a state holiday every March 31 — to Farmworkers Day. The name change requires the approval of the state Senate and the governor. But other U.S. cities have gone ahead with honoring Huerta. On Tuesday, Tucson renamed its March 31 Cesar Chavez Day as Dolores Huerta Day.

Ready to rumble: The 37 most powerful labor leaders in San Francisco

SF voted to close juvenile hall. Seven years later, it costs $543K per kid

A child arrested and taken to San Francisco’s Juvenile Justice Center first sees the sun-drenched parking lot where a police car or van brings them to the facility. When they step inside, their eyes have to adjust quickly to darkness. In the reception room, staff sitting behind an imposing, semi circular desk process them in and assign them a bed. Next is a hallway so long and curved, from some perspectives it seems to never end. The juvenile hall was built in the classic prison architecture style of the 1990s. Multiple locked doors separate cells from hallways from the yard. They close with loud, reverberating clangs. The 75-square foot cells are painted beige and light blue, and feature bed frames and sinks built into the brick. For decades, progressive-minded activists, attorneys, and politicians have tried to shut down the hall, arguing that the jail-like space near Twin Peaks is no place for children. The closest they ever came to success was a 2019 vote by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to close the facility within three years. At the time, Mayor London Breed criticized the legislation as “not the most responsible thing to do without a real plan of action.” By 2019, the Juvenile Justice Center had come to exemplify all the apparent wrongs of a previous era’s tendency to lock up children. On an average day, it housed less than a fifth of its capacity, which contributed to an eye-watering cost of $270,000 annually to lock up a child, according to a San Francisco Chronicle investigation . But the city never had a clear plan for where to put the young people that had been jailed there. Then California Gov. Gavin Newsom changed the rules — youth who committed the most serious crimes, who had been imprisoned in state facilities, suddenly became San Francisco’s responsibility. This mirrored the “realignment” process that moved many incarcerated people out of state prisons and into local jails. Chief Juvenile Probation Officer Katy Weinstein Miller was once part of a working group set up to close the facility. Now she runs it. “This building is far from ideal,” she admitted about the dark, echoey space. Seven years after the Board of Supervisors’ decisive vote and five years beyond the deadline to close it, the justice center doesn’t just remain open and operational — it is even more expensive than it was when the city vowed to close it. San Francisco isn’t the only county stuck with an oversized juvenile hall. Giant, chronically empty juvies litter California, a hangover headache from an era of mass incarceration. And like San Francisco’s hall, as the population in these facilities has fallen, the price to keep them open has soared. What sets San Francisco apart is that its leaders — progressive minded, and maybe a little naive — tried to fix things. They moved to stem the bleeding and close the hall, recruiting high-ranking officials from city government and lifelong juvenile justice activists who dedicated years to the effort. And they completely failed. Today, the annual cost of jailing one youth in San Francisco is $534,000 — roughly double the 2019 price — with a daily average population of 31. In part, today’s increased cost is a sign of success. On any given day in 2025, San Francisco jailed one-third fewer youth than it did in 2018. But many of the costs of operating the enormous, mostly empty hall are fixed, meaning the per child cost has ballooned. Some advocates say this is the price of running a much more humane hall. It may be the most expensive juvie, but it may also be better than it’s ever been before. So what’s San Francisco getting for its money? ‘A major public policy blunder’ In the mid-1990s, the homicide arrest rate for juveniles in California was skyrocketing, mirroring a grim national trend. San Francisco was a poster child for the troubling phenomenon. In 1993, San Francisco’s juvenile arrest rate was the highest in the state, 50% higher than the California average. In 1995, the California Legislative Analyst’s Office predicted that the number of juvenile violent crime arrests in the state would increase 60% by 2004. “The primary focus of the juvenile justice agenda, at least among the [San Francisco] Probation Department, was to build a new juvenile hall,” said Daniel Macallair, executive director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice and a practitioner-in-residence at San Francisco State University. At the time, the justice center consisted of a number of so-called cottages with a maximum occupancy of 135. “It was overcrowded all the time. Kids had been sleeping on the floors,” Miller said. “I worked in the mayor’s office when we built this building and everyone believed we needed that size.” A prison building boom was already underway in California and other states across the country, and now it had reached the kids. The federal government began distributing hundreds of millions of dollars to states and municipalities earmarked for the construction of larger juvenile detention facilities. But by the time San Francisco’s new juvie opened in 2005, the crime wave was over. Youth crime rates continued to plummet for the next two decades. According to a 2025 report by the advocacy group The Sentencing Project, juvenile arrests fell 75% from 1995 to 2023. From 2000 to 2023, the youth incarceration rate declined 74%. The nation was riddled with empty jails built for kids. “It was a major public policy blunder,” Macallair said. “And we spent hundreds of millions of dollars on it.” San Francisco’s juvenile hall “was never full from the day they cut the ribbon,” Miller said. ‘It was a misnomer’ Continuing to operate the current facility is expensive. But after voting to close the hall, the city soon realized the alternatives would cost even more. The legislation vaguely stated the intention to “expand community-based alternatives to detention, and provide a rehabilitative, non-institutional place or places of detention, in a location approved by the Court.” But those alternatives could never have led to the full closure of juvenile hall because state law requires that youth arrested for certain offenses be detained at secure facilities. The mandate also didn’t come with any funding. To this day, San Francisco is still paying off its mostly empty juvie, paying more than $2 million each year to service the total $22.3 million remaining debt on the facility’s construction. The jail won’t be paid off until 2034. A new justice center or even a remodel of the old one would cost millions the county doesn’t have. Patti Lee, the assistant chief of defense for the Public Defender’s Office, who previously worked in the public defender’s juvenile unit for three decades, had lobbied for the legislation. She said she told the supervisors at the time that it wouldn’t be that easy. She believes the campaign to close the Juvenile Justice Center mismanaged expectations. “ Maybe we shouldn’t have said close juvenile hall,” she said. “It was a misnomer.” A “Close Juvenile Hall Work Group” considered alternative spaces — a former foster home, an old hospital — but ultimately rejected them all. Covid slowed their work, and emptied the hall even further. In 2020, as the average daily population at juvie plummeted to 17, the yearly cost to jail a child reached just shy of $900,000. The work group submitted its final report in November 2021, a month before the Board of Supervisors’ legislation targeted for the closing of the hall. It offered recommendations for how to improve the city’s juvenile justice system writ large, but no plan to wind down operations at the current facility. Macallair, who was also on the work group, acknowledges that the primary objective of the Close Juvenile Hall Work Group was in its name. It was expected to offer a solution. “I think the [work group] failed on that,” he said. ‘It’s going to cost more’ On an average day in 2018 , 47 beds at the Juvenile Justice Center were occupied of a total 150, and it cost $266,000 a year to jail a child. In 2025, the cost had nearly doubled, to $543,015 — calculated by dividing total budget by daily population. The facility had an average daily population of only 31, leaving nearly 80% of beds empty. Many cells are now used for storage. Fewer kids mean higher fixed costs per child. And the population itself has greater needs. The city stopped sending youths to alternative facilities outside the city, some of which closed due to low occupancy. In 2022, California dissolved its state youth prison system, which housed children convicted of very violent acts. Counties were suddenly responsible for creating “Secure Youth Treatment Facilities,” requiring additional segregated housing units, individually tailored rehabilitation plans, and 24/7 counselors. In San Francisco, the program has cost an additional $8.7 million from fiscal years 2019-20 to 2024-25. Still, Miller admits that the cost of the hall is high. “You have fixed costs when you run buildings, so it’s really expensive,” she said. “And also [the kids] are worthy of really important investments for themselves and for all of us. If we don’t do that, no one is safer. And they’re going to live a kind of life that none of us want for them.” Macallair frames the cost in terms of the now-shuttered youth prisons formerly run by the state. “ You had one staff person for 30 kids and there was a lot of violence,” Macallair said. “You have to have a good ratio of staff to kids in order to change the environment. So it’s going to cost more.” But not everyone agrees. “ I think it’s overstaffed for the few kids that we have,” said Lee. When asked about the high cost of running the hall, she replied, “ I still find that shocking.” ‘It’s better now than it was’ At a glance, the justice center hasn’t changed much in decades, from its imposing intake area to its Escher-like hallway. “All of these secure facilities for kids that came online in the early 2000s, they feel of a particular era,” said Miller. “ We built these institutions that looked like jails and prisons for kids in the early 2000s, probably across the whole country. They all looked the same. One of the architects who helped design this building told me a few years ago that they would never design a building like that today.” But while the building is the same, the programming has changed significantly since 2019. Of the eight living units, only five are currently used for their intended purpose. One is a “merit room” with video games, a piano, and a recording studio. Two others were repurposed as a gym and a cooking space for a newly introduced culinary course. Aside from the living spaces, the justice center also has an indoor basketball court, a dedicated wing for classrooms where the incarcerated attend school, and a very large backyard with a barbecue and planter boxes where food is grown. The homiest room in the facility is a space where families come to visit their imprisoned loved ones. The room has a view of the ocean in the distance. A colorful side room caters to toddlers and small children, either younger siblings coming to visit their locked up siblings, or babies visiting their young parents. In the corner, a tiny cloth playhouse is set up for toddlers. The hall hosts workshops aimed at deprogramming toxic masculinity and understanding the impacts of crimes on their victims, developed by incarcerated people at Soledad State Prison and San Quentin, respectively. Soon after children arrive at the hall, they’re greeted by a “credible messenger,” an employee of a community-based organization with carceral experience, who is more able to connect with the youth than regular staffers. Credible messengers are an almost constant presence. “Because I’ve been a critic of the place for a long time, it’s hard for me to concede we have a rich array of services,” said Macallair. “It’s better now than it was before.” Community justice activists, Public Defender’s Office staff, and the president of the Juvenile Probation Commission agreed. Much of the praise for how the hall has changed is credited to Miller. ”Katy Miller is probably the best chief probation officer that we’ve had the fortune to work with,” said Lee. “She’s very pro-child.” But that praise comes with a caveat that echoes the failed 2019 push to close the hall. “ A jail is a jail is a jail,” Lee said. “You can only slap so much lipstick on a pig. If you ask any youth that goes into juvenile hall, whether it was back in the ’80s, ’90s, or currently, their first request is, ‘When can I get out?’” In 2024, the Juvenile Probation Department commissioned the architectural firm KMD to design a remodeled justice center. The plans envision a campus-like space, with a green central plaza in place of two of the existing living units. Large windows and natural light accentuate a series of new and renovated buildings. Dedicated training spaces would teach kids how to barber, smith, cook, and grow vegetables. If the current hall reflects an era that tried to solve youth crime by locking kids up and throwing away the key, the KMD design is a contemporary dream of how to rehabilitate kids into happy, productive adults. The designs were spurred not by any work group or Board of Supervisors vote, but primarily by the Juvenile Probation Department. Kids detained at juvie for longer stays were paid for their input on the new designs. “ When our kids were given the opportunity to dream, what they actually dreamed up looks like a junior college and not like a house,” said Miller. The projected cost to realize this new, blue-sky dream? $220 million.

Newsom is MIA in schools shutdown. Plus: Where do SF electeds send their kids?

You’re reading Power Play, The Standard’s twice-weekly newsletter about City Hall and San Francisco politics. To receive Power Play directly in your inbox, sign up here . Got tips? Send to us at powerplay@sfstandard.com . Are school strikes the new wildfires? If San Francisco parents can take one consolation from their days-long scramble for child care, it’s this — they won’t be alone for long. While the City by the Bay makes headlines for its striking educators, unions in eight other California school districts have voted to approve strikes, including Oakland, Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento, and San Bernardino. So, where is Gov. Gavin Newsom in all this? Well, Friday he’s flying to Munich with a bevy of heavy-hitter national Democrats, like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez , to court European leaders and upstage President Donald Trump , all while parents back home are tearing their hair out over school closures. He hasn’t done nothing — Newsom has a major reform in his budget this year to move authority of the California Department of Education under the governor’s office, winnowing the role of the state superintendent and adding some funding for the next two years. There’s also a $46 million funding increase for schools, though that’s a drop in the bucket compared with SFUSD’s needs alone. When Power Play asked SFUSD boss Maria Su on Tuesday if she’d heard from Newsom or other state leaders on the district’s request for financial support, she said simply, “We have not heard back.” Newsom’s office did not respond to a request for comment. Despite the radio silence, it seemed the cavalry was on the way Tuesday, when state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond stepped into negotiations to mediate between the district and union, upstairs in the War Memorial and Performing Arts Center. There were hopes that Thurmond, who is a gubernatorial candidate, could provide insight into how SFUSD could meet the teachers’ demands while still satisfying state oversight of the district’s dire finances — wiggle room, in other words. And there were whispers among union members picketing the War Memorial that Thurmond was about to take their side in talks and push the district over the hump on the sticking points: salary increases, fully funded dependent healthcare, and special-education staffing. Instead, insiders tell us, Thurmond reaffirmed that SFUSD has to make “financially responsive” offers. And he was out of the War Memorial almost as quickly as he arrived. On Wednesday morning, Su was diplomatic, saying, “State Superintendent Tony Thurmond said to both parties, ‘Get this done.’” Asked if he offered specific help, Su shook her head. Thurmond’s office did not respond to a request for comment. It looks like each California school district will need to deal with labor issues on its own — without the governor or a state education honcho to back them up. — J.F.R. and G.G. Public officials, private schools: Part 1 We all know the SFUSD does not have the best reputation, but city leaders have never shied away from expressing their support for teachers and public schools. But no matter how publicly supportive they may be, their decision on where to send their children speaks volumes. Start with Superintendent Su, who identified herself as a “former SFUSD parent” in her inaugural press release in 2024 but rarely discusses the details of that title. In a 2025 interview with KALW , Su said her two sons attended SFUSD elementary and middle schools in the Ingleside area, “and then for high school, we chose a different route.” Sources say Su’s older son graduated from a local private high school, where the younger son is currently enrolled. Mayor Daniel Lurie , heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, went to private schools, and his two children attend private schools in the city . Of the 11 members of the Board of Supervisors, only four are parents of school-age children: Myrna Melgar , Connie Chan , Stephen Sherrill, and Chyanne Chen . Of those, Melgar and Chen are SFUSD parents. Chan’s son is in private school, but she emphasizes that she’s “a proud graduate of Galileo High School,” and her son attended Lafayette Elementary School. Sherrill said he’s “currently navigating the kindergarten process for the first time and looking at all available options.” Shamann Walton and Melgar’s older children graduated from SFUSD schools. Supervisor Danny Sauter has a newborn, and the remaining supervisors do not have children. Power Play is taking classroom attendance for other SF politicos’ children; we’ll share more of our findings in a future email. — H.L. and J.F.R. Correction: A version of this story in Wednesday’s Power Play newsletter did not include information about Melgar’s child attending an SFUSD school. Big money backs Lurie — again A new independent expenditure committee linked to Lurie’s web of well-heeled donors could bring in lots of dough to this year’s supervisor candidates and ballot measures. “SF Believes,” filed Feb. 5, is being run by the same people behind the “Believe in SF, Lurie for Mayor 2024" committee that brought in $6.7 million from contributors like the mayor’s mother, Miriam Haas , and former WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum . SF Believes was registered by Lurie’s pal Alec Perkins , CEO of Hunter Capital Management and a board member of the mayor’s Tipping Point Community, along with Adam Clammer , founder of True Wind Capital. It is also getting help from the consultancy and communications firm The Media Company and its veteran consultant Dan Newman , who worked on Lurie’s 2024 committee. “San Francisco has made remarkable progress over the past year, and this past [Super Bowl] weekend was a powerful reminder of the energy and optimism people are feeling about the city,” said Emily Matthews , a spokesperson for The Media Company. “SF Believes is focused on building on that momentum by supporting initiatives and candidates that sustain San Francisco’s success.” No donors or expenses have been filed yet, but the committee will be supporting Lurie’s allies and initiatives, which could include Supervisor Sherrill’s D2 race and the Muni parcel tax measure. — G.G. PG&E to face grilling Considering the anger toward Pacific Gas & Electric during December’s blackouts, a hearing Thursday in front of the Board of Supervisors’ public safety committee could get charged. The committee has summoned PG&E CEO Sumeet Singh , Senior VP and Chief Customer Officer Vincent Davis , and Bay Area local government affairs manager Sarah Chavez-Yoell . “PG&E looks forward to sharing with the Board of Supervisors information about the Mission Substation outage in December as well as the progress we’re making operationally and in improving our communication with customers and officials,” the company said in a statement. The committee will be asking how the failure of one of the utility’s substations caused a daylong blackout in large swaths of the city, about coordination between the company and emergency services, and about why some neighborhoods got power back and others didn’t and what PG&E is doing to prevent another incident, according to Supervisor Bilal Mahmood . “The priority is accountability,” he said. “Understanding their context on what went wrong during the blackout.” — G.G. Socialists to supes: You failed The Democratic Socialists of America’s San Francisco chapter just released a report card on the city’s 11 supervisors — and it’s brutal. The DSA laid out 20 key issues and compared how each supervisor voted, blasting the “moderate supermajority” for backing what they view as increased mayoral power, corporate interests, and punitive responses to social crises over the needs of working-class residents. Not surprisingly, outspoken progressive Supervisor Jackie Fielder got an A. The only issue in which she broke with the DSA was in backing Lurie’s fentanyl state of emergency. Walton got a B after voting to support the mayor’s budget. Chan, often seen as unapologetically progressive, earned a C. She’s at odds with the DSA on multiple issues, including the police budget. Chen also received a C, and Melgar got a D. The other five supervisors, generally considered more moderate, all received Fs. Supervisor Alan Wong was not rated because he doesn’t have a full year of voting records. Chan, who is running for Congress, released a statement through her campaign striking a conciliatory tone. “We look forward to continuing to work with DSA-SF to support working people in our city,” said campaign spokesperson Julie Edwards . “Connie understands San Franciscans won’t agree 100% of the time and she values open-dialogue with the community.” — H.L. In case you missed it MAHAN’S RUN : The Standard interviewed gubernatorial candidate Matt Mahan on our “Pacific Standard Time” podcast. Here are four takeaways . GARRY’S LIST : Outspoken techie Garry Tan isn’t leaving California like other Silicon Valley moguls. Instead, he’s starting a nonprofit for voter education. ETHICS VIOLATION : Planning commissioner Kathrin Moore has been fined $12,000 for approving projects involving an architecture firm from which she receives income.

PST: The SF teachers strike + governor candidate Matt Mahan

Lurie, riding high on Super Bowl, meets his kryptonite: Organized labor

A version of this story appeared in Power Play, The Standard’s twice-weekly political newsletter. To sign up, click here . As a mayoral candidate, Daniel Lurie had it all — unlimited money , an outsider message that resonated with voters , and a well-run campaign team. But there was something missing from his well-stacked arsenal in 2024: union support. Now his inexperience with unions is biting him in the Levi’s. In recent days, Lurie has been getting rolled by the city’s powerful labor interests on multiple fronts: the teachers strike , the city budget , and dueling tax measures . The labor battles have felt like a sobering slap in the face after the mayor’s starring performance as Super Bowl 60 cohost. The most pressing crisis is the strike of roughly 6,000 San Francisco Unified School District teachers, counselors, and other staff. After making little headway last week, Lurie threw a Hail Mary pass Sunday afternoon , pleading with the United Educators of San Francisco to pause their strike plans by committing to three additional days of negotiations with SFUSD. Alas, the union rejected the idea. San Francisco teachers are now picketing for the first time in 47 years , and 50,000 children have no school for the foreseeable future. The next bargaining session between the union and the district was set for noon on Monday. Though Lurie has issued social media pronouncements encouraging the sides to hash out a deal, he has made it clear that he’s more observer than active participant. “I’m not in the weeds in the negotiations,” Lurie said Monday. “I don’t think that’s my role.” That’s consistent with the role he played in a previous labor dispute. When Lurie was on the cusp of inauguration, in December 2024, he was widely credited with helping to end a hotel workers strike. He reportedly did so by calling Marriott leadership, breaking a three-month logjam. Lurie should be credited for picking up the phone to reach elites who wouldn’t respond to the rank and file, said Mike Casey, president of the San Francisco Labor Council. But when it came to ending the dispute, “the fact that we were on strike for 97 days had a lot to do with it.” Casey said Lurie has made school district negotiations a priority, despite SFUSD being a state entity outside of the city’s purview. The mayor has said he’s offered support to Superintendent Maria Su. “He’s not sleeping on this,” Casey said. Charles Lutvak, a spokesperson for the mayor, said, “Since he ended a three-month hotel strike before even taking office, Mayor Lurie has had an open door and worked productively with unions across the city to make San Francisco work for working families. He’s doing the same thing right now, bringing UESF and SFUSD to the table to support our educators and get school back open for our kids.” He added, “Mayor Lurie was elected because San Franciscans knew it was time to change a system that has only worked for the people who knew how to game it. San Francisco’s working families deserve a government that works hard every day for them, and that’s exactly what Mayor Lurie and his entire administration is doing.” As the prospect of a teachers strike grew, Lurie dispatched his policy chief, Kunal Modi, to help out, to no avail. A source said the mayor’s office has also brought in Steve Kawa, who served as chief of staff to former mayors Gavin Newsom and Ed Lee and deputy chief of staff for Willie Brown, to help with negotiations. Past mayors were personally involved in mediation between the SFUSD and the union, according to former UESF president Susan Solomon. “[London] Breed and Newsom made attempts and were sometimes successful,” she said. Despite an often rocky relationship with the union, Breed even placed a measure on the ballot to secure raises for educators by introducing new taxes . There’s another reason Lurie may be having a tough time dealing with labor issues: None of his policy chiefs has a deep background in the movement. Modi, for example, has little hands-on experience tussling with unions, having come from McKinsey & Company , the blue-chip corporate consultancy. Others in Lurie’s top policy circles include Ned Segal, his housing and economic development chief and a former Twitter executive, and Staci Slaughter, his chief of staff and a former Giants executive. Sources say public affairs director Han Zou is usually the link between the Lurie administration and labor — but he is a young up-and-comer at City Hall. He’s no battle-scarred Kawa or Sean Elsbernd, Breed’s former chief of staff. By contrast, some of the labor officials have been sitting at the table with mayors for decades. Lurie does have some union people in his circle; namely, SEIU 87’s Olga Miranda and UFCW5’s Jim Araby . But the pair aren’t involved in public-sector employee matters. Miranda represents janitors, while Araby represents grocery workers — different worlds entirely. John Logan, a professor of labor studies at San Francisco State University, said some in the labor movement feel Lurie hasn’t offered much to earn their support. “My impression is that Lurie’s pretty clueless” when it comes to dealing with labor, Logan said, adding that the mayor “feels no pressure to understand it because he thinks unions are irrelevant or dinosaurs or both.” “The teachers strike could either serve as a wake-up call or it could just reinforce his views that unions in general, and public-sector unions in particular, have too much power and are an obstacle to his pro-business, anti-regulation agenda,” Logan added. This sentiment is reinforced by the types of allies with which Lurie has surrounded himself. The mayor has pitched himself as a friend to business interests and has pushed for deregulatory policies he believes will make life easier for city residents. His philanthropic ventures aimed at repairing the city’s economy include some of the city’s wealthiest and most powerful corporate figures, worlds that have traditionally clashed with labor unions. A teachers strike may be a harbinger of more painful labor battles to come. Lurie will have to navigate painful City Hall layoffs in response to a $936 million budget deficit. That battle is already causing strife within the labor movement . Last week, San Francisco Building and Construction Trades leader Rudy Gonzalez resigned from the Public Employees Committee as the top public-sector unions, IFPTE 21 and SEIU 1021, are expected to wage a holy war against the possibility of pink slips. Then there are the union-backed city and state business taxes on the ballot, which stand in stark contrast to the mayor’s corporate-friendly approach to San Francisco’s economic recovery. Last month, Lurie said he opposed the California Billionaire Tax Act because it would scare businesses away from the city. On Friday, Lurie said he would not support the local Overpaid CEO Act — nor would he back a competing measure from the pro-business camp. He said the labor-versus-business war is bad for everyone. Lurie’s opposition to both measures actually helps the unions’ Overpaid CEO Act — without his support, the business-backed measure plays with a weaker hand. And don’t forget his quest to reform the city charter, which might make it harder to place measures on the ballot. Labor representatives on the charter reform working group have pushed back on this idea, arguing that it would hinder the ability of working-class interests to put measures before voters. So far, Lurie has been vexed by unions at every turn. Maybe he should just unionize the mayor’s office and get it over with?

Public schools to close Monday as teachers prepare to hit picket lines

After shrugging off responsibility for a looming teachers’ strike when he was asked about it two weeks ago , Mayor Daniel Lurie has now entered the chat. On Sunday, in an Instagram post, Lurie stepped into center stage . He requested that the United Educators of San Francisco and the San Francisco Unified School District take a three-day timeout while they continue negotiations and keep schools open this week. His remarks, which were echoed in a statement by Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), suggested that “our students and our parents need certainty ahead of tomorrow.” And yet, less than 24 hours before school starts on Monday, there was little certainty being provided on the part of SFUSD. Union representatives have declined to call off the strike. “We need to see serious movement from the District,” UESF wrote on Facebook at about 3:15 p.m. “Our team is working hard today to respond to the proposals we received last night.” The district was still saying schools could be open tomorrow if a last-minute agreement is reached as of the afternoon, even after they had been telling parents since Friday, without a caveat, that schools will be closed indefinitely starting on Monday. Throughout Sunday, representatives from both the union and SFUSD dodged questions from The Standard on when negotiations would resume on Sunday or Monday or beyond. The union has said both that they were waiting to meet again until they came up with a sufficient proposal for the district, and also that they were waiting to meet again until they got a better proposal from the district. By Sunday evening, it was clear that there would be no school on Monday — with negotiations resuming Monday afternoon. At a brief and vague press conference Sunday afternoon, UESF President Cassondra Curiel reiterated that the union “will be going on strike on Monday, absent a signed tentative agreement with this district.” Union representatives disregarded Lurie and Pelosi’s joint “timeout” suggestion. “We know the district is aware of what we are asking for,” Curiel said. “We need to see there’s serious movement.” Negotiations ramped up on Wednesday after the release of a neutral fact-finding report that gave the district the power to announce a strike Thursday morning . Since then, the district and union have come to an agreement on increased protections for immigrant students but little else. They remain stuck on the union’s demands for higher wages, increased capacity for special education professionals, and fully funded family healthcare. After a marathon session dragged on into Saturday night without a new agreement, Superintendent Maria Su said she was “deeply frustrated and disheartened” that the two sides could not reach an agreement.

SFUSD teachers on the brink of strike as fact-finding panel fails to bridge wage gap

A fact-finding panel has recommended that the San Francisco Unified School District provide educators with a 6% total raise over two years, which would be a compromise with the teachers union in a labor dispute that has brought the district to the brink of a crippling strike. However, while the nonbinding report released Wednesday suggested a middle-ground agreement, the two sides remain far apart on wages and healthcare contributions, effectively raising the likelihood that SFUSD teachers will strike for the first time since 1979. “The report does not go far enough — and the recommendations here alone will not solve the stability crisis in our district,” United Educators of San Francisco President Cassondra Curiel said in a statement. “Now is the time for the district to come to the table with real solutions and show the community that they are fully committed to funding the classrooms and schools our students and communities deserve.” Contract negotiations will continue through the week. The union said it will announce its next steps Thursday. The fact-finding report was led by a panel that comprised an impartial chairperson, an attorney representing the district, and a representative of the union. Now that the report, intended to help the two sides overcome the impasse in negotiations, has been released, teachers can call to strike. The report noted that the recommended 3% annual raises would bring SFUSD in line with expected inflation and cost-of-living increases and stated that the district faces financial constraints, including declining enrollment and a “negative financial certification” status that subjects it to state oversight. The union-aligned panelist, Angela Su, characterized the raise recommendation as a “step in the right direction” but wrote that it would not be enough to retain key employees. She echoed statements from the union that the district should use its reserve funds — which she said exceed state recommendations — to meet educators’ demands. District officials project they will move from a “negative” to a “qualified” financial certification by March, but “any budgetary changes must be scrutinized and approved by the state” until a positive certification is achieved. UESF argued that SFUSD “spends a significant amount on contracting out for consultants instead of increasing wages and filling vacancies.” UESF developed an alternative calculation showing the district would have enough money to adopt the union’s proposals if it spent less on consultants. At a press conference, SFUSD Superintendent Maria Su said the report backed up the district’s assessment of its dire financial situation and its inability to provide the 9 to 14% raises demanded by the union. She said the district’s state oversight requires a more conservative spending approach. Su was recently granted emergency authority by the school board to deploy or redeploy staff and renegotiate contracts in the event of a strike. “We do not want a strike. Our goal continues to be to keep our children in classrooms,” she said. I remain hopeful that our labor partners will return to the bargaining table so that we can review this report and avoid any disruption to student learning.” A continuing point of contention is the union’s proposal to designate SFUSD as a “sanctuary district” for immigrant families as part of the collective bargaining agreement. The fact-finding report stated that this “would expose the District to significant liability that would misdirect District resources away from District employees.” Instead, it recommended that the district and union express their support for sanctuary status outside of the contract bargaining process. Another issue is health benefits for dependents. UESF seeks $14 million per year to offer members “fully paid health coverage at the Kaiser family plan.” The district argues that the costs would face state rejection given the ongoing fiscal oversight. The fact-finding report suggested using revenue from parcel taxes to fill the gap, but the union panel member argued that pledging the funds for healthcare contributions should be part of the collective bargaining agreement, rather than a separate deal. The report’s recommendations are nonbinding, meaning either party can accept or reject them as negotiations continue. UESF’s strike authorization vote means a work stoppage could occur if the parties are unable to reach an agreement. In a video posted on Instagram , Mayor Daniel Lurie said, “It is crucial that schools remain open,” while noting that he doesn’t directly oversee the SFUSD. He said he has been encouraging both sides to continue discussions toward an agreement.

With strike looming, SF parents’ loyalties are with teachers — for now

On Thursday morning at Marshall Elementary School in the Mission, dropoffs proceeded as usual. Kids shuffled out of school buses and Subarus and hopped off e-bikes and scooters. Parents bantered, coffee in hand, before heading off to work. What was unusual: Parents were learning in real-time that San Francisco teachers had announced they intend to strike for the first time in 47 years. Barring an 11th-hour breakthrough in negotiations, school would be canceled for the foreseeable future starting Monday. The Standard spoke with more than a dozen parents of elementary kids, and all said they support teachers’ decision to strike. Despite the logistical headaches a strike would bring, the parents didn’t direct their frustration at the United Educators of San Francisco. Many clutched flyers offering ways to help the union’s efforts, including details on educators’ demands and a standing offer to join the picket line. When asked about the San Francisco Unified School District’s claims of a financial crisis, Griselda Martinez, a 39-year-old caregiver whose kids are in the second and third grades at Marshall, didn’t buy it. “I think that’s BS, honestly,” she said. “They have a lot of money for other stuff.” The comment was echoed by other parents, many of whom said they believe teachers’ claims of struggling to get by in a city with an extremely high cost of living. However, those opinions conflict with what the San Francisco Parent Coalition, which bills itself as the city’s largest parent advocacy group, said about Thursday’s strike announcement — describing it as “the wrong call.” “This is not the time to escalate,” said Executive Director Meredith Dodson. “This is the time to come together and do everything we can to avoid disruption for our students. We’re hearing a lot of confusion from parents about why that’s not the focus and why the strike announcement came anyway.” Many parents disagree. “I think there is plenty of money in our government,” said Ty, father of a kindergartener at Clarendon Elementary in Forest Knolls, who declined to give his last name. “Defund the cops, pay the teachers.” Stacy Boyer, mother of a fifth grader at Clarendon, said Mayor Daniel Lurie should step in to take responsibility for resolving the impasse between teachers and the district. “Teachers work so hard,” Boyer said. “Whatever they are asking for, I am completely 100% behind them.” A neutral fact-finding report , released Wednesday, argued that the district does not have the funding to support raises of 9% or more, as the union has demanded. The report instead recommended raises of 6% over a two-year period. Negotiations between the union and the district were set to continue Thursday evening. Gerry Phung, mom of a Clarendon kindergartner, said the district has been due for a strike for years because of ongoing staffing shortages in special education. “It has to happen,” Phung said. The report agreed that the district needs to switch from a caseload model to a workload model for special education, meaning educators would be assigned tasks based on how much time and effort each student requires, rather than being assigned a certain number of students. Justin Lin, a 47-year-old software engineer whose kids are in the second and fifth grades at Clarendon, said he is most concerned about dependent healthcare costs paid by teachers — another sticking point in the negotiations — which some report can reach $1,400 a month. At Clarendon, one parent said she’d keep her kid at home in case of a strike, as she works remotely. Another said he’d arrange a playdate with a few of his kids’ friends. But most parents at Marshall are concerned about child care. Nearly 80% of students there qualify for free or reduced lunch, as do 23% at Clarendon. Rigo Ochoa, a 37-year-old electrician whose kids are in the second and fourth grades at Marshall, said he wants teachers to get the “benefits and rights” they deserve but is concerned that the strike will be bad for his family, since they “are working all of the time.” “If the kids don’t have school, it affects our family,” he said. “If [the strike] takes more than a week, we will have to do something.”

What could an SFUSD teachers strike look like? Here’s how it went down in 1979

Slashed tires. Special-needs students darting into traffic. Principals in hairnets, scooping cafeteria lunches. These are some of the chaotic scenes from the six-week work stoppage known as the Great School Strike of 1979, which unfolded in a San Francisco still reeling from the assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk the year before. This week, after educators voted by 97.6% to authorize a work stoppage amid an impasse in labor negotiations, the San Francisco Unified School District is closer to a strike than at any point in half a century. It is unlikely to be as vitriolic or long-lasting as the showdown 47 years ago. But the history is instructive. According to archives of the San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Examiner, here is what happened last time — and, critically, what it took to bring the strike to an end. That dispute was triggered by the passage of Proposition 13, which slashed property taxes and gutted school-district budgets statewide. SFUSD responded by announcing layoffs of roughly 1,200 teachers — nearly 30% of its faculty — ahead of the school year. Union leaders refused to sign a contract unless the district permanently rehired all laid-off teachers who wished to return and agreed to a 15.7% wage increase over two years. Two days before school was set to begin, around 2,000 teachers gathered at Kezar Pavilion in Golden Gate Park to vote for a strike. “They say our 15.7% is unrealistic,” union leader Jim Ballard told the San Francisco Chronicle on Sept. 16, 1979. “But they’ve offered zero, and that’s unrealistic too.” Pay and job security remain central issues in the current negotiations. Educators are seeking raises of 9% to 14% over two years, while SFUSD has repeatedly floated the possibility of major layoffs to close what it says is a $100 million-plus budget deficit. The economic backdrop, however, has shifted. The 1979 strike unfolded amid runaway inflation of more than 13%. Today’s labor fight comes in an era when affordability — especially in housing-starved San Francisco — has become a defining political issue. In 1979, all campuses remained closed for the first two weeks of the school year, as staffing shortages made it impossible to open. SFUSD Superintendent Robert Alioto gambled that prolonged picketing — and the threat of missed paychecks — would eventually push teachers back into classrooms. The majority of teachers remained on strike, but 43% returned to work after two weeks of picketing. SFUSD reopened 72 elementary schools and three special-education campuses, arguing that their roughly 17,000 students required the most supervision. Many campuses saw few to no teachers cross the picket lines. By the second day of reopening, roughly two-thirds of the district’s elementary children were back on campus. The kids received lunch and adult supervision — but little instruction — from a mix of teachers and subs, some of whom didn’t have teaching credentials. Some schools offered only two classes a day, each lasting around two hours. Conditions varied dramatically. At Lakeshore School near Lake Merced, principals served lunch when cafeteria workers refused to cross picket lines. At Louise Lombard near Alamo Square, special-education students wandered hallways and ran into the street as just one of the school’s 35 permanent teachers reported for duty. Middle schools reopened next, on the strike’s 15th day, staffed by more than 400 substitute teachers — some recent arrivals to San Francisco; others among those who’d been laid off by the district. High schools began opening three weeks into the strike. As the weeks dragged on, tensions escalated. Verbal confrontations among striking teachers and those who crossed the picket lines gave way to physical fights. Some picketers were arrested. Clothes were reportedly set on fire outside schools. During the fifth week of the strike, 10 cars parked outside Patrick Henry Elementary in Potrero Hill had their tires slashed. Rather than breaking the strike, the chaos hardened teachers’ resolve. The number of educators crossing picket lines declined as the work stoppage continued. A similar dynamic is unlikely today. United Educators of San Francisco has more than 6,000 members, including teachers, substitutes, counselors, and nurses. Large-scale recruitment of replacement staff appears improbable. Meanwhile, the union representing principals and administrators is planning a vote on whether to cross picket lines if teachers strike — and early signs suggest they will support UESF. Four weeks into the 1979 strike, a Superior Court judge ordered teachers back to work, ruling that San Francisco’s 60,000 school-age children were being unlawfully deprived of an education. Union leaders defied the order. Responsibility for resolving the crisis fell to Mayor Dianne Feinstein, newly elevated after Moscone’s killing 10 months earlier. Facing mounting political pressure and a reelection campaign, Feinstein brought in a state mediator and began pushing negotiations forward. She urged SFUSD to permanently rehire laid-off teachers and convened late-night bargaining sessions between union leaders and district officials. Eventually, the district blinked. Alioto agreed to rehire all laid-off teachers permanently — some in part time or substitute roles — and to grant a 7.5% raise beginning in November, followed by an 8% raise the following year. After six weeks of turmoil, students and teachers returned to school. Chronicle columnist Herb Caen noted something unexpected: Children seemed genuinely happy to see their teachers again. “If there had been a teachers strike when I was a kid, back in Sacramento, I think the entire student body would have danced in the streets,” Caen wrote. “Yet here and now, all the evidence is to the contrary.” John Logan, chair of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State University, predicts that any strike now will be intense but brief. While the late ’70s were marked by unrest in the public sector following the introduction of collective bargaining agreements, the succeeding decades have seen fewer, more abbreviated strikes. “The divisions the [1979] strike caused took years to get over,” Logan said. “Even having a strike that lasted a week or two weeks would cause enormous disruption — more than the mayor would want at this point. It seems so beyond a possibility to me.”

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