Following its late-night unanimous vote to extend Superintendent Maria Su’s contract through June 2028, the San Francisco Board of Education next meets on Tuesday, Dec. 9, to potentially approve an administrators’ contract that will return the district to a deficit level surpassing $100 million this fiscal year.
The school board will also be asked to approve the district’s first interim report to the California Department of Education, which documents an already ballooning deficit and outlines plans to restore the district’s financial health. School budget cuts of $113 million this year have not been sufficient to close its structural deficit.
These major decisions scheduled for the December meeting come amidst a continued pattern of not disclosing information to the public in a timely manner. For example, the district’s first interim report is not included on the Dec. 9 agenda for public review, despite district staff long knowing the state’s legal deadline of Dec. 15 for school districts to approve it. The board’s rules (adopted three years ago) require this disclosure. The required availability of this information has been used by the board to justify imposing rules to limit its members from asking questions of Superintendent Su and her staff at board meetings.
Another area of aggressive confidentiality is the superintendent’s rule — not based on board policy — to redact from contracts the names of individuals she wants to appoint to key leadership positions until the start of the board meeting, where they are considered. This delay leaves parents, teachers, students, and the general public little to no opportunity to provide relevant information or views about the appointees. Next week’s meeting takes this policy one step further. In a proposed contract extension for the district’s current interim technology services officer, the name is covered up, despite Eddie Ngo’s identity being known throughout the district and featured on Superintendent Su’s webpage.
Answers about how the deficit has reached, and will now surpass, the $100 million mark, and what the district plans to do about it, may be contained in the important first interim report and district financial stabilization plan, but the public awaits disclosure.
The provisions of the administrators’ contract are already raising questions about how it will be paid for. In the aftermath of the current cutbacks, administrators were assigned additional duties and generally have lower pay levels than their counterparts in surrounding Bay Area school districts. In recognition, district leadership and the administrators’ union have agreed on a three-year contract retroactive to July 2025, offering a $7,500 salary increase this fiscal year, and additional 2 percent raises for this and the next two years. According to district data, the cost of the 8.5 percent increase in salary and benefits is nearly $10 million, enough to increase this year’s expected budget deficit to $109 million.
District observers will recall that Superintendent Su reported to the board in December 2024 that cutting $13 million in the 2026 fiscal year would eliminate deficit spending. Last June, the board approved her recommended budget, which revised the expected deficit upward to $59 million. Answers about how the deficit has reached, and will now surpass, the $100 million mark, and what the district plans to do about it, may be contained in the important first interim report and district financial stabilization plan, but the public awaits disclosure.
To date, no cuts to the budget have been identified to fund the new administrator salary increases to be paid out this fiscal year. For the next fiscal year, starting in July, the administrators and the district have agreed to eliminate 16 administrator positions, pause paid sabbatical leave for two years, and reduce school-site discretionary funding by at least 17.5 percent. Which 16 administrators are eliminated will not be known until early 2026. Students and teachers, the primary beneficiaries of discretionary school funding, will have to make do with almost one-fifth less than they have today or be expected to do their own fundraising to make up for the cuts. Pausing sabbaticals will delay, but not reduce, their cost to the district.
Last June, the district made $113 million in budget cuts by offering retirement buyouts to senior teachers and other staff, taking advantage of “one-time” funding and making other budgetary shifts. Now it has used up those resources and has a remaining budget reduction target that has grown dramatically. Meanwhile, it is in separate contract negotiations with teachers who are currently working without a contract, threatening to strike, and seeking salary increases. A provision in the proposed administrators’ contract gives them an additional salary increase to match any teacher salary hikes that exceed 2 percent.
The budget landscape ahead is not what Superintendent Su and the board forecast it would be less than six months ago in the district’s Fiscal Stabilization Plan. Instead of $59 million in future cuts for one year and thereafter a balanced budget, documents at Tuesday’s meeting will describe a larger budget gap this year and at least two more years of deficit spending or substantial cuts. At its Dec. 16 meeting, the school board plans to consider and approve a resolution directing Superintendent Su to present her plan for school closures by August 2026.