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San Francisco Unified School District kept its 120 schools closed for a third day Wednesday as teachers from United Educators of San Francisco remained on strike, leaving nearly 50,000 students out of class. For parents, the stoppage has turned routines into a moving target, with many scrambling to cover work schedules and find ways to keep children occupied while negotiations continued.
Connor Haught, who works in construction and can work from home, said his family has been juggling virtual meetings alongside arts and crafts as they try to navigate the strike. Haught said parents’ main concern has been “really the timeline of it all and trying to prepare for how long this could go on,” while he and his wife planned their children’s days without a clear sense of how long the closure might last.
Haught said his two daughters, ages 8 and 9, would stay home for at least the first week of the strike, with plans for play dates and outings with other families. He said the family had not rushed to sign up for paid camps because they expected some flexibility in their schedule compared with other families facing tighter child care options.
While some parents leaned on after-school programs that offered full-day activities during the strike, others relied on relatives and help among neighbors. Haught said the family had not yet worked out what it would do if the strike extended beyond the initial week, underscoring how quickly the disruption compounds when the end date remains unclear.
Teachers said they knew the strike was hard on students but said they were walking out to improve stability and working conditions they argued would affect classrooms. Lily Perales, a history teacher at Mission High School, said, “We believe our students deserve to learn safely in schools,” and added that “means having fully staffed schools,” retaining teachers through “competitive wage packages and health care,” and fully funding programs students need most.
The union and district have been negotiating for nearly a year. The teachers’ demands include fully funded family health care, raises, and the filling of vacant positions that affect special education and related services, according to the report.
On Wednesday morning, Superintendent Maria Su urged urgency, saying the district had a counterproposal ready Tuesday night and that union negotiators left for the day. Su said at a press conference, “We have been ready to negotiate this entire time. We are prepared and committed to getting this agreement done today.”
The sides have not yet agreed on the specifics of wage and health benefit changes. The union initially asked for a 9% raise over two years, while the district, which is facing a $100 million deficit and is under state oversight tied to a long-standing financial crisis, countered with a 6% wage increase over three years.
Beyond the bargaining table, teachers staged a visible demonstration Wednesday at San Francisco’s Ocean Beach, gathering to form the word “strike” as negotiations continued. Parents said the pause in schooling has created daily strain that does not affect all families equally, especially those who depend on work schedules that cannot easily shift.
Mahdi Rahimi, who has a son in public school, said the continuing closure carries “incredible pain and cost to many, many, children,” and urged both sides to compromise. Sonia Sanabria described similar pressures after taking a 5-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old nephew to a church in the Mission District neighborhood for free lunch, saying she stayed home because leaving the children with her elderly mother all day was not an option.
Sanabria, who works as a cook at a restaurant, said that if the strike continues she would have to request a leave of absence, but added, “it will affect me because if I don’t work, I don’t earn.” She said she planned lessons day by day and gave the children reading, writing and math work while awaiting a settlement that would restore classroom instruction.