San Francisco School District to Slash 927 ‘Vacant’ Jobs To Avoid Projected $421 Million Deficit

The San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) came closer to eliminating 927 vacant positions during a meeting on Tuesday night as they scramble to avoid what is projected to be a $421 million budget deficit by 2025.

Since the late 2010s, the city and county of San Francisco have faced a quickly growing budget deficit. In 2020, thanks to a declining population, the loss of many businesses, the pullout of the tech industry, and a high crime rate turned what had been a booming city into one with a $653 million budget deficit. That year, the SFUSD alone had a $169 million deficit thanks to a declining enrollment and higher insurance and pension costs. Post-COVID, further population decreases and a rapidly increasing office vacancy rate, which is currently at 35%, only exasperated the problem. This year, the city reached a new deficit high of $780 million as a result.

With teacher pay about to go up, even more drastic student losses, and bloated parts of the budget that haven’t been cut back, such as on consultants, the SFUSD deficit is currently expected to reach $421 million by 2025 should no action be taken. Faced with a massive deficit, the SFUSD held a meeting Tuesday night in San Francisco to help plan a way forward.

First on the chopping block Tuesday night was 927 currently vacant positions. These positions, comprising of open teaching, office, custodial, and administrator jobs, amount to about $103 million annually through salaries and benefits. While not a complete fix, the cuts would effectively slash the projected deficit nearly in half. In addition, through other measures as well as continued declining enrollment, the SFUSD hopes to have a balanced budget by 2026.

“That’s just an illustration of what would happen if the board did not take action,” said SFUSD Superintendent Matt Wayne on Tuesday. “In fact, by the board taking action, we will show we have a balance budget by the end of 2025-2026. One of the reasons we can eliminate vacant positions is because we have declining enrollment and we don’t need as many positions going forward. We have a few other areas that we are looking at, like where we spend money on consultants, on the district office, how we are staffing our schools, we will be looking at that through our budget planning process.”

Cutting 927 vacant jobs

However, two areas not being considered are lay-offs and the closing of school buildings. The United Educators of San Francisco (UESF), the main teachers union in the city, have said that they would fight cuts in those areas, with the SFUSD also reiterating  that they would not be looking along those avenues for budget cuts.

“We will continue to advocate for the fully-staffed schools our students deserve and fight any cuts that attempt to balance budget deficits on the backs of our students and schools,” said UESF president Cassondra Curiel. “By stopping unnecessary expenditures, increasing revenue of certain properties, the district could save millions by stopping certain borrowing practices, leasing unused properties and raising the market rent on entities like PGE.”

However, many school district budgeting experts have said that layoffs and school closures shouldn’t be taken off the board this early, as further declining enrollment could lead to growing pressure to consolidate schools in the city.

“We’ve seen this sort of budget deficit and declining enrollment play out before in the Midwest and Northeast,” said Belle Green, an accountant and advisor to many school districts in Great Lakes states, to the Globe. “San Francisco is showing the exact same signs the Detroit had, that Cleveland had, that Milwaukee had. And they are still in that first stage of grief – denial.”

“No school district wants to close schools or have big layoffs. Now San Francisco is cutting all those open positions, which is good. Really good first step. And they’re looking in other places to cut costs, which is also great. But, at a certain point, they just have to box out the union and close some schools if they keep losing not only money, but students. No one ever takes joy in that, but it is sometimes a necessity.”

“Now, San Francisco says they can get back up to normal in 2026. Fine. But remember, that is three years. There will be a lot of teacher retirements, even further enrollment losses, and who knows what else. And if that happens, school closures may be on the table. So many districts had plans like San Francisco’s, but further losses just kept coming in.”

“Closures need to remain on the table. You can get around lay-offs for awhile by allowing teachers to retire or leave without replacing them, as yesterdays board meeting so aptly showed, by closures need to stay there. Buildings cost a lot to maintain, plus they can get a good price for the site through a buyer if they really need the cash. The district has to know the city is in decline, and as hard as it is to come to terms with, they need to start acting like it. So many rust belt cities hung on to hope that they would return to greatness, but that only made budget problems worse. San Francisco needs to learn from those mistakes. But after seeing how last nights meeting went, I have doubts about it.”

More on the SFUSD projected deficit is to come out later this month.