San Francisco educators continue their historic strike, and parents and kids are on the picket lines alongside them. But don’t worry, Daniel Lurie is making Instagram videos.
San Francisco educators continue their historic strike, and parents and kids are on the picket lines alongside them. But don’t worry, Daniel Lurie is making Instagram videos.
Greetings from Day 2 of the teachers’ strike here in San Francisco, the first of its kind in nearly 50 years. Schools are closed, and some 6,000 public educators from the United Educators of San Francisco union are on strike, along with 250-plus principals and custodians, who are striking in solidarity.
SFUSD teachers’ demands include a 9% salary increase over two years and fully paid family healthcare. Educators are also calling on the district to reduce the workload for special education teachers and other paraeducators, and to reduce class sizes by hiring more teachers. As of 9 p.m. Monday night, per Mission Local, the district and the union had come to an agreement on SFUSD’s AI policy, and on increased support for its Stay Over Program, under which school buildings can provide emergency housing for homeless students and families. Picket lines outside of school sites are filled with teachers, principals, parents, and adorable kids (hi, Charlie!). Meanwhile, Daniel Lurie is making phenomenally useless Instagram videos.
Yes, this is highly anecdotal, but every public school parent I personally know is behind the teachers 100%, even if the strike is fucking up our lives; I beg you to read any news coverage that pits parents against educators with a true mountain of salt. Yours truly, for example, is a parent of one of the 50,000 kids who aren’t in their San Francisco public school classrooms right now, which explains why this post is on the shorter side.
For now, here’s video of a march that went by my block in the Mission today, as well as some photos I took at Civic Center the day before. I’ll add to this post throughout the strike as time/childcare allows. May we all get what we need — the teachers most of all.
An A+ sign. (Emma Silvers/COYOTE Media Collective)Chris Hackett and Christina Harr, community health outreach workers at School of the Arts and Presidio Middle School. (Emma Silvers/COYOTE Media Collective)
Chris Hackett, an outreach worker at a health center at San Francisco School of the Arts, said he was out especially in support of the social workers, psychologists, special ed teachers, and other paraeducators who have massive case loads and, in many cases, are the first on the chopping block. “I love my job,” he said. “I just feel like the process that led up to the strike was so long and systematic — usually we make demands at the beginning of the year, and they’ll give us a little something and we’ll settle a little something, but they've turned down everything so far. This strike was forecasted for way too long, like six or seven months in the future, and nothing moved. They didn’t budge. It’s super reasonable to go on strike.”
L to R: Rose, Nate, Jules. SFUSD kids know what's up. (Emma Silvers/COYOTE Media Collective)
Jules, 11, Roosevelt Middle School: “I’m here to support our teachers, because teachers create our future.”
Rose, 8, George Peabody Elementary School: “My mom is a teacher, and I want all the kids that need support to get the support they need.”
Nate, 11, Roosevelt Middle School: “Teachers need to get paid better. They do a lot of work helping kids. And kids need help.”
Kai Atkinson, a teacher at Aptos Middle School. (Emma Silvers/COYOTE Media Collective)
“Our special education teachers have caseloads that are unworkable, and we’re losing teachers to other districts around the Bay Area,” said Kai Atkinson, an educator at Aptos Middle School. “We had three amazing special education teachers at our school and they all left — one went back to New York, two went to San Leandro. They'’e like ‘We miss Aptos, but we get paid 30% more here and we have more humane working conditions.’”
“I went to public school here, I was born and raised in San Francisco, and my wife is a teacher here also. Our health care plan right now, if you have dependents, it’s like $700 or $800 dollars a month. [Ed. note: per the union, that’s more like $1200, and could soon hit $1500.] So we’re trying to start a family, but we can’t afford that. We're also going to have to move out of the district because we just can't afford it here.”
AJ Johnstone, a teacher at Independence High School. (Emma Silvers/COYOTE Media Collective)
“It’s my 26th year in the district; we should have done this 26 years ago,” said AJ Johnstone, a teacher at Independence High School. “I’ve been waiting for the day when we finally say enough is enough. There are way too many things that have happened in schools over the past two decades... everything’s just been heading in the wrong direction. Schools are becoming more like online screen time data collection centers for our students. Class sizes are too big, and [the district is] not trusting teachers, not paying us our worth. The gap between paraprofessionals and the teachers is too huge, and my coworkers with kids are barely making it because they're trying to pay for healthcare for their families.”
Scenes from the rally at Civic Center on Feb. 9, 2026. (Emma Silvers/COYOTE Media Collective)
Emma Silvers is a San Francisco journalist with 15+ years of experience covering the people and policies shaping arts and culture in the Bay. She grew up in Albany and lives in the Mission.
