After months of tense negotiations, the San Francisco school district and its teachers’ union have failed to reach an agreement to begin reopening classrooms in late January, the union and the district said Friday.
District officials need staff approval for reopening plans that would return the youngest children and people with disabilities to six primary schools by January 25, while older students would return later.
But the teachers’ union and the district could not agree on the proposed terms of employment, which will shift the timeline for reopening, the district said Friday.
“This pandemic has meant that we have to live with a lot of uncertainty and it’s just not over,” said SFUSD Superintendent, Dr. Vincent Matthews in a statement. “I am disappointed that we cannot provide a guaranteed date for when we can resume personal learning for our youngest and most vulnerable students. We will continue … meeting with our labor partners as much as possible to complete negotiations. “
The standoff will delay the return to personal learning for the first group of the district’s 53,000 students, meaning that most likely the inside of a classroom won’t see until spring at the earliest. The sunken reopening timeline is the latest setback in a debate about schools marked by intense pressure from parents and city officials eager to usher in a return to classroom learning, as many children continue to struggle academically and socially with online learning.
The district blamed the delay on a new set of health and safety criteria the union set on Tuesday, days before the deadline for an agreement. The union’s proposal included “significant new requests” that “went beyond the health ministry’s guidance” for schools, the district said.
Susan Solomon, president of the United Educators of San Francisco, which represents 6,500 teachers and para-educators across the city, declined to say exactly what the teachers’ union was against in the district’s reopening plan, except that the two sides were engaged in the detailed proposal on the table. “
“These are complex situations that we have to go through in order to reach an agreement that will benefit our students and keep our teachers safe,” said Solomon.
It is now uncertain whether San Francisco teachers will agree to return to personal work before the vaccine becomes widely available. California’s 300,000 teachers will likely be among the first to receive the vaccine after health workers, state officials have said.
Representatives from both sides held three all-day negotiation sessions last week but disagreed on health and safety requirements for personal instruction, including ventilation and testing protocols for personnel. The two sides will meet again next week, Solomon said.
Matthews notified the Health Department on Dec. 9 of the district’s intention to proceed with the elementary reopenings. The move came amid increasing new cases of coronavirus threatening to overwhelm local hospitals.
Under existing stay-at-home mandates, schools that are currently open can continue to provide in-person instruction, but new schools will not reopen until current restrictions are lifted, perhaps in early January, as the number of cases and hospitalizations decreases.
Mayor London Breed called the standoff “irritating” and said it is important to secure an employment contract so that classrooms are ready to reopen once health officials say it is safe to do so.
“We cannot create unrealistic standards for personal learning that are not even recommended by the Department of Health,” Breed said in a statement. “I understand the concerns of some of our teachers who are in the vulnerable population, and we need to listen to them. But let’s be honest: San Francisco’s public health officials are among the most conservative in the country on reopening. “
Breed pointed to the success of the Community Hubs Initiative for young people, which provides personalized support for distance learning and out-of-school activities. There has been no outbreak in the learning centers since it opened, serving 2,000 students in 78 locations across the city.
While many private school districts and suburban school districts have been safely opened and few instances of classroom spread have been reported, some teachers and parents have questioned the wisdom of returning to schools before the vaccine is widely available. The recent increase in the number of coronavirus cases has fueled fears of transmission in the classroom.
“As long as the community is spreading and rates are as high as they are, it’s important to keep schools closed,” said Laurel Paul, whose two teenage sons attending public schools in San Francisco both tested positive for COVID-19 last week. Her husband, a teacher, also tested positive.
While Paul’s husband and oldest son became noticeably ill, her younger son, a freshman at The Academy San Francisco in McAteer, was largely asymptomatic.
“If he had been to school, there’s no telling how many people he would have come into contact with,” she said.
Paul recognized that she may be in the minority, as many parents, especially those with young children, remain desperate to see schools reopen their doors.
“I’m really just devastated by the ongoing backlash,” said Jennifer Sey, who has a toddler and senior in San Francisco public schools.
Meredith Willa Dodson, a parent attorney at Decreasing the Distance who was previously a member of the Children’s Council of San Francisco, said she now has doubts about whether the city’s students will return to class before the fall.
“It looks like the union is trying to run the clock to not come back at all this school year,” she said. “The learning loss, the mental health consequences that we see for both these children and their parents, this is devastating on the next level.”
The families most affected by Friday’s slowdown are those most disconnected, said Hayin Kimner, interim director of Parents for Public Schools of San Francisco. She called the uncertainty surrounding reopening “ paralyzing and demoralizing, ” especially for those who lack the resources to navigate virtual learning.
“People are looking for the light at the end of the tunnel, and the tunnel is longer now,” she said.
Chronicle staff writer Mallory Moench contributed to this report.
Nora Mishanec is a staff writer at San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @NMishanec