For the first time in almost half a century, teachers and staff in the San Francisco public schools concluded a historic strike, returning to their classrooms with a new contract and major wins on key demands. After nearly an entire year of stalled contract negotiations with the San Francisco Unified School District, months of escalation, and two near-unanimous authorization votes, the United Educators of San Francisco (UESF) organized the militant strike to demand improved family healthcare, support for special needs students, and livable wages in one of the country’s most expensive cities. Within four days, the parties reached a tentative agreement that union leadership and many rank-and-file members described as a substantial victory.
San Francisco instructional aide and UESF executive board member Alex Schmaus paints a picture of the fervent, optimistic energy on the picket lines, describing them as “big and strong and joyous, like big parties.” Displays of solidarity from principals, administrators, clerical and custodial workers, and the broader labor movement underscored the breadth of unity behind the effort. The pickets were “well attended, high membership participation, high participation from students and caregivers and community members and other parts of the labor movement. And that never waned throughout. Full four days of the strike, they were the same size, and through rain and fatigue and all of that, they never wavered.”
Support across the labor movement may very well have been key in achieving the swift tentative agreement. Solidarity actions from the United Administrators of San Francisco, SEIU 1021, IFPTE Local 21, and others were accompanied by considerable student organizing and demonstrations. Alex describes their experience participating in one of several marches, on what would end up being the last day of the strike:
…because by then we had broken, I think, some of their political will to keep fighting. And so that was a really powerful march because we knew at that point that we were winning, and I had just been through the whole week of very little sleep, getting up really early in the morning for a meeting at the office and then going straight to bargaining and then being up in bargaining through the night, but then not really getting to participate as much in these really powerful, celebratory picket lines and mass actions throughout the city. Finally getting to be a part of one was a really powerful experience. And that march was, I think, at least another fifteen thousand people.
And as we marched down Market Street, it was just so clear how much support we had, like how broad…I’d been on a lot of marches down Market Street in San Francisco. Really big ones, really powerful ones. But I’ve never really been a part of a mass demonstration like this.
And it was really beautiful. And one of the most, I think, aesthetically powerful moments of social effervescence that I’ve ever been a part of…And we were naming our demands and we knew that we were winning and that we were going to march basically into the Opera House and negotiate a settlement on our terms.
And that’s what we did. It was really incredible.
The tentative agreement most notably secured fully employer-paid family healthcare by 2027, alongside wage increases, commitments around staffing and student support, and sanctuary protections for immigrants. The healthcare victory in particular marked a breakthrough, addressing what union organizers identified as a core demand and a critical barrier to educator retention.
While imperfect—wage gains did not achieve the full nine percent that the union initially proposed, workload reductions for special education teachers were conceded, and deeper structural crises facing public education remain to be addressed, the settlement still represents a clear material win secured through collective action. Just as significant as the contract itself was the strike’s demonstration of solidarity, with students, families, and school workers rallying behind educators, reinforcing the legitimacy of their demands, and reasserting the tradition of militant disruption that locates power not in concessionary bargaining, but in workers’ capacity to withhold their labor.
This strike signifies the working class’s willingness to confront austerity directly and exercise its power at a time of deepening economic precarity and inequality. It also raises critical strategic questions about what comes next: how to build on this momentum, how districts and political leaders will respond, and what this moment reveals about the evolving terrain of labor struggle in public education.
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Featured Image credit: Dale Cruse; modified by Tempest