‘We are left with no other option but to announce that, without an agreement that meets the needs of our students and educators, United Educators of San Francisco intends to strike on Monday, Feb 9.’
by Joe Eskenazi February 5, 2026 (MissionLocal.org)
The San Francisco’s teachers union has called for a strike to start Monday, Feb. 9. Teachers are expected to walk off the job and picket their schools starting that morning.
The district’s 6,400 educators were informed of the union decision in an email earlier this morning, and United Educators of San Francisco officially announced the strike date at an 8:45 a.m. press conference.
“We are announcing the strike here this morning because we want our community and families to be prepared in case the district does not make that agreement in time,” union president Cassondra Curiel told a mix of reporters and parents Thursday morning, standing outside the school district headquarters.
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She said educators are intending to strike, but that there is still time for the district and the union to come to an agreement.
A full 97.6 percent of teachers last month voted to authorize a strike after 99.34 percent did so in a preliminary December vote.
“Since the strike vote, SFUSD management has begun exploring creative solutions, but so far, no proposals have been made. The 100+ person UESF negotiations team is scheduled to meet on Thursday and is ready to hear from district management,” reads an email sent to the district’s teachers by their union a little after 6 a.m. with the subject line, “Our Students Deserve Stability — UESF Strike Begins Monday, Feb 9th.”
“While we appreciate the late-stage urgency,” the letter continues, “we are left with no other option but to announce that, without an agreement that meets the needs of our students and educators, United Educators of San Francisco intends to strike on Monday, Feb 9.”
Barring a last-ditch turnaround at the negotiating table, it would be the first teacher strike in San Francisco since 1979, when teachers walked off the job for more than six weeks.
It comes after a nearly year-long bargaining effort between the union and the school district over wage increases, healthcare for dependents, special education, and other issues.
Mission Local has learned that, following today’s announcement of a strike date by the teachers union, the principals and administrators union will commence an emergency vote at noon on whether to hold a sympathy strike.
The online voting period will last 24 hours until noon Friday, and it is all but certain that the principals and administrators will vote in solidarity with the teachers.
While Superintendent Maria Su and Mayor Daniel Lurie have said their No. 1 priority is keeping schoolhouse doors open, it is hard to conceive of how that would happen during a strike of not only teachers but principals and administrators.
It is also unlikely that unionized maintenance workers and others would cross a picket line to provide access to school buildings.
The strike was called on the morning after a state-mandated fact-finding report was released that, legally, gave the teachers union the right to set a walkout date.
The report was non-binding, and could neither prevent nor even delay a strike. It largely favored the district, but found that the district could afford higher wage increases than it had offered, but not as high as the union desired.
The potential walkout is one of several across the state. In Los Angeles, 94 percent of teachers voted to authorize a strike, and in San Diego educators greenlit a walkout over special education concerns.
In San Francisco, absent a major development, “Morning picket lines will be held at every work site starting Monday, Feb 9.”
Additional reporting by Marina Newman
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Joe Eskenazi
Managing Editor/Columnist. Joe was born in San Francisco, raised in the Bay Area, and attended U.C. Berkeley. He never left.
“Your humble narrator” was a writer and columnist for SF Weekly from 2007 to 2015, and a senior editor at San Francisco Magazine from 2015 to 2017. You may also have read his work in the Guardian (U.S. and U.K.); San Francisco Public Press; San Francisco Chronicle; San Francisco Examiner; Dallas Morning News; and elsewhere.
He resides in the Excelsior with his wife and three (!) kids, 4.3 miles from his birthplace and 5,474 from hers.
The Northern California branch of the Society of Professional Journalists named Eskenazi the 2019 Journalist of the Year.More by Joe Eskenazi
