New San Francisco Grand Jury Report Finds That 1 in 4 Teachers In City Are Uncredentialed

According to a new report from the City and County of San Francisco Grand Jury, one in four teachers in San Francisco are currently uncredentialed and not qualified to teach.

Before the report came out on Thursday, the San Francisco Unified School District had already been going through turmoil this week following the release of documents finding a teacher last year had to be suspended for discriminating against white students.

While the district had many other longer-term problems going on as well, the most urgent by far was the teacher shortage. At the beginning of the school year in August 2022, around 100 certified vacancies were open, as well as 150 paraeducator vacancies. The district quickly tried to fill the positions, including plugging in Teachers on Special Assignment, general educators who support school sites, programs, and classrooms, where needed.

The United Educators of San Francisco (UESF) teachers union quickly downplayed the shortage, instead saying that it was a low professional pay situation turning many teachers away that was the issue.

“Teacher turnover has been drastic for a decade,” said the UESF last year. “Three out of every five professionals who choose to become teachers turn over and later leave the field. The union’s position on this is that there is no teacher shortage, there is a crisis of professional pay and disrespect for our profession.”

“The public perception of teachers has suffered as a result of the narrative that was coopted by certain political parties, which pitted the public against educators and their unions.”

Despite doing everything to help fill the vacancies, San Francisco still had a shortage this year, with worries over its credentialing process building up throughout the year as well as many teachers were found to have not been credentialed at all. The suspicions were finally confirmed late Thursday when the Grand Jury report found that one in four teachers in the district was uncredentialled.

According to the report, San Francisco has so few credentialed teachers due to a low starting salary of $54,000 a year, payroll issues, and a high number of teachers leaving the district.

While some issues are being corrected, such as the district fixing the payroll system that has locked many teachers out of their pay for weeks or months at a time, some cannot be fixed as quickly. Most notably, for higher teacher pay to attract more teachers back to the city, either San Francisco would need to allocate more funds for higher pay or voters would need to vote on a a new bond or tax to make it happen. But with the city facing a huge budget deficit, and voters being largely apathetic to such a measure on the ballot, problems, like the high number of uncredentialled teachers, are expected to continue for some time.

More teacher problems in SF

“There’s a lot of combined problems,” former teacher and current educational professional transfer assistant Lindsay Martinez told the Globe Friday. “There’s pay issues, pay amounts, school quality, the whole situation in San Francisco right now with crime and drug use, high rent, better offers out of the district, better teacher conditions out of district, and many teachers leaving due to a spouse finding work elsewhere all causing this problem.”

“The Grand Jury report shocked a lot of people, but honestly, it came to as no surprise to those in educational circles. There are shortages everywhere, but in San Francisco it has become more pronounced. Few teachers want to really teach there anymore. And it’s everyone’s fault. The city, the school district, the union, individual teachers. Everyone is to blame to some degree. People always wonder why so many parents push students to be home schooled or to go to private schools in California. Or, if they’re lucky, some of the highest ranked public schools. This is partly why.”

“There is no easy or quick solution for San Francisco on this. Even a huge bump in funding for better pay won’t fix the fact about the dangers in the city for example. The problems compound each other. They need to target the largest problems first, but that’s tough with a huge budget deficit. San Francisco never planned for a contraction of taxes and population, and it is showing more and more every day.”

More on the teacher crisis in San Francisco is likely to come out soon before the start of the 2023-2024 school year.