Just days into the school year, the San Francisco teachers union is raising the alarm that strict oversight from the state is making it tougher to fill critical staff vacancies.
Because San Francisco’s public school system is mired in a financial crisis, the state has begun to intervene in the district’s spending, including hiring. The San Francisco Unified School District confirms that hiring for vacant positions is subject to review and approval by fiscal advisors appointed by state officials.
The process has angered the teachers union. The United Educators of San Francisco is planning an “emergency” protest Tuesday afternoon in front of the district headquarters.
“Many district positions are unfilled at the moment as a result of two concurrent problems — HR hiring/onboarding delays and the California Department of Education advisors reviewing vacant positions, further causing delays,” union president Cassondra Curiel said in an email. “This is all while the students have returned and there are classrooms of kids without permanent teachers and other needed school staff on site.”
It’s unclear how long a typical review process by state officials might take. There are more than 100 teacher vacancies, Curiel said, and a quarter of those are for roles in special education. Additionally, there are unfilled support positions, including counselors, social workers, and paraprofessionals.
The partial state control, or “takeover,” is due to the district’s poor budget rating, which means the state doesn’t trust its ability to resolve its deficit of hundreds of millions of dollars and avoid bankruptcy. In May, the district received notice from the state Department of Education that its interim budget report was downgraded from “qualified” to “negative.”
Because of the rating, two fiscal advisors from the state agency can directly engage in any district operation deemed counter to fiscal stability.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported this summer that the district had eliminated many schools’ assistant principal positions as a result of the state intervention to balance the budget.
The California Department of Education denied that its advisors are preventing the hiring of any fully funded “student-facing positions,” emphasizing in a statement that they “have not exercised stay-and-rescind authority to prevent the hiring of any position.”
The role of the state advisors is to “ensure that all educators and staff hired by the school can be paid for the full course of the school year,” the statement said. Addressing the concerns around vacancies in special education, the state said advisors will work closely with the teachers union to accelerate the verification of paraprofessionals in the field.
The school district said in a statement that it remains committed to working with the fiscal advisors, the Board of Education, and labor partners to balance the budget.
“[W]e are working collaboratively with our fiscal advisors because we recognize that any reductions we make now will help mitigate future cuts and layoffs,” the district said.
Last week, Lainie Motamedi abruptly resigned as president of the school board. Mayor London Breed soon appointed Phil Kim, a district staffer in charge of upcoming school closures, to replace her. The district is expected to announce details on school closures in mid-September.
Meredith Dodson, executive director at San Francisco Parent Action, is concerned about the state’s involvement in local hiring.
“We are in an awful situation. Our kids can’t wait longer to see their teachers,” Dodson said. “We can be mad at the state, but we have to take back our local control and be responsible for our dollars.”