By Julie Payne 

In the current contract negotiations about teacher salaries and other working conditions, the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) and the United Educators of San Francisco (UESF) have reached a tentative agreement.  However these negotiations, which happen every few years, were quite challenging as both sides have different views on how much teachers should be paid, among other things.

The agreement is not a done deal.  UESF  members still need to vote to approve it. 

Due to harsh economic conditions and a tight budget, SFUSD initially proposed a 5% increase in teacher salaries. However, the UESF bargaining team asked for a far more significant raise, around 18%, to keep up with the ever-increasing cost of living in the city. In addition to the pay raise, UESF asked for 25 minutes of prep time for elementary teachers instead of their current 20.  They believed this would help them better support their students. 

Despite UESF asking for more prep time, SFUSD initially proposed to take some away. Here, the prep time in question is the AP teachers' extra prep period. During the 2022 - 2023 school year, AP teachers had four classes and two prep periods. SFUSD suggested reducing this to one and then using the extra money to increase salaries.  However, UESF had no interest in giving up prep time in exchange for a tiny pay increase. Their bargaining report states, “We rejected the district’s proposal to try and buy AP preps out from under us for a 1% raise.”

SFUSD  attempted to bargain with UESF with a recent contract suggestion. This contract includes a $10,000 raise for all teachers, for new teachers, this would be a 15% increase, and for veteran teachers, about 8.5%. Additionally, every paraeducator would have a 5% increase to their minimum rate, raising their pay from approximately $28 an hour to $30. On top of this, all teachers and paraeducators would receive a 4% one-time salary increase.  

However, more was needed for UESF, and adding the 4% one-time increase seemed almost offensive.  

According to Emily Patterson, a UESF negotiator, “Unfortunately, the offer of a one-time salary increase of 4% in the second year of the contract, which may turn into an on[salary] schedule increase based on the budgeting abilities of SFUSD, is not acceptable.” 

Arisa Hiroi, a Japanese teacher at Lincoln High School who actively participated in the negotiations, added, “I do see the district offering something closer to what educators and our union have asked for. I still think the district needs to do better. Your teachers can make about $30K more a year by driving 20 minutes south to work in San Mateo.”  

The nature of this disagreement and its longevity has prompted  UESF, representing about 6,000 teachers in SFUSD, including paraeducators and substitutes, to push for significant action. After ten months of back-and-forth with SFUSD, on October 11th, 97% of members in UESF voted yes to authorize strike vote.  UESF hoped this will result in being taken more seriously at the negotiation table, stating in an email, “Now is the time for SFUSD management to take our proposals seriously and support the critically important services to students, educators, families, and communities.” 

Hirori stated when asked prior to the October 11 strike vote if she thought UESF would move forward with a strike, “I’m not sure if we’ll really, truly strike. But if the district doesn’t show that they’re willing to support staff better by providing a fair contract, that pushes more and more people to want to strike.” 

Negotiations like these are never easy; they're full of complexities and differing expectations and proposals. It is critical to note that both sides worked hard to find a solution that ensures teachers get fair compensation while also recognizing the financial challenges the school district faces. Teachers and district officials alike know that a strike is not suitable for education as a whole, and neither side wants a negative impact on students.  

“The process has been difficult as the hope was to have solidified an agreement last year. By not reaching one last year, educators continue to feel the ramifications at site levels with vacancies and being stretched thin supporting their students,”  Patterson stated.

Dr. Matt Wayne, superintendent of SFUSD, stated in a letter from before the tentative agreement was reached, “I remain hopeful that we will reach an agreement with our labor partners. I deeply value every SFUSD employee and am grateful for the ways that they show up for San Francisco students and families every day.” 

By: Khoi Hoang Nguyen

When students return to school after summer break, they’re generally nervous if they’re going to be bullied, if they’re going to get good grades, if they’re going to have lenient teachers, and so on. At the beginning of this year, however, Lincoln students returned to school facing a problem that was unprecedented in scale: missing classes. 

It is estimated that in the opening weeks of the academic year, the counseling office received over 900 requests from students asking to see their counselors about their schedules. Long lines formed outside the counseling office, wrapping around hallways and stretching to unimaginable lengths, despite the door being locked and counselors repeatedly stating that students should use a Google Form to request a schedule change instead of visiting the office in person. 

However, numerous students voiced their frustrations at the counselors’ handling of the situation, saying their form submissions were ignored entirely, their concerns were invalidated, and they were forced to go weeks without having the classes they needed to graduate. 

According to Head Counselor Marlena Doyle, teachers are advised by the administration not to start the curriculum during the first two weeks of school because there are so many students transferring in and out, although not all teachers follow this advice. As a result, many students stated they felt like they were falling behind and that they had to carry the enormous burden of catching up by themselves.

Although the counseling office eventually managed to address the concerns of most students and give everyone the classes they were missing, questions continued to remain. Why were the schedules so messed up this year? How much loss of learning happened as a result? Who, or what, is responsible, and how can this be prevented in the future?

Doyle states that a “perfect storm” was created due to a lack of counselors, a computer issue with the master schedule’s software, and an unprecedented teacher shortage across multiple school departments.

According to Doyle, the computer bug blocks counselors from adding certain class periods, which prevents them from working over the summer to revise student schedules as they usually do, making things even worse. Specific problems also arose, such as the math department not receiving a list of freshmen who were supposed to skip Algebra 1 and go straight into Geometry, as well as a Spanish teacher leaving unexpectedly after being hired.

Doyle also offers a different perspective: while she acknowledges that students are upset for a valid reason, the counseling office has to work tirelessly to try and accommodate the needs of all students due to the high volume of course requests and emails. She also points out the complexity in modifying student schedules, as it creates a domino effect where changing the schedule of one student affects the schedules of many others.

Still, many students disapprove of the counseling office’s handling of the crisis, with many saying that no matter how hard it is, it is their job to make sure everyone’s classes are in order, and they failed to do so efficiently. 

As one student put it: “No student should be stripped of their education.”

By Daisy Vasquez-Aguilar 

            As the new school year begins, Abraham Lincoln High School is one of the most affected public high schools with open positions according to Tony Payne. In eight to nine academic subject areas, teachers are not in classrooms to instruct students in needed subjects to graduate. In this academic year, students are required to receive the proper knowledge or abilities to succeed. However, a few of these students will get an opportunity to be instructed by teachers. 

A few teachers are giving up prep periods for extra pay to take a section.  Other teachers are being paid hourly wages to provide content and grades through Google Classroom on their own time. Those teachers also help students via email for their online classes. Even though teachers volunteer to take up extra classes for pay it is still stressful for teachers. Marco Mendoza is one of Lincoln’s Spanish instructors. During the 2022-2023 school year Mendoza taught an extra three online classes along with his daily five classes. 

“It’s stressful to have to be ‘Mr. Mendoza’ all the time with no breaks in the day. I know these students need me and that they appreciate me as a teacher. But I feel belittled by the district. It’s hard just for me to have time off. Or even checking in to see if I am okay dealing with this. I know I chose to do this but it’s the minimum they can do,” Mendoza says. 

He believes that the district should do the bare minimum of what he asks because he is taking up a load of work. He wasn’t able to have a break from school because the district was hesitant to give it to him. Mendoza expresses the many emotions this situation had made him feel.

           Some classes that won’t have an instructor for the rest of the school year have received online teaching websites to meet graduation requirements. 

“We are using the online platform Edgenuity for Spanish periods five and six.  This course is UC-approved, meets our SFUSD graduation requirements, and is one that we have had students use successfully to earn credits,” said Principal Shari Balisi via email. 

With these websites, students will be able to receive credits for their classes that are needed to graduate. 

 Edgenuity’s website indicates that the online learning program costs Lincoln money as it charges around $350-$1000 per student enrolled in the learning program. The price depends on how many hours the school purchases for the students to access and be in the learning program. With these expenses for two classes Lincoln still needs to reach out and get substitute teachers for both Spanish classes. 

“We are doing everything possible to get teachers in classrooms or even long-term substitutes. But the candidate pool has been dry since the year started,” Jordan Loey,one of Lincoln's assistant principals, emphasized. 

Loey claims the school is always trying to get teachers on board but it is difficult when there are no candidates. He also indicated that the problems stemmed from HR when trying to hire possible teachers.

HR stands for head resources. The department exists to help employees develop their skills and expertise. While this is crucial, the HR department would also be in charge of assisting teachers, administrators, and other business-related personnel.

 Loey conveyed, “Our administration was expecting a teacher for the English department to acquire approval from HR. Our staff were ensuring the students and parents that a teacher was coming. Two weeks into the school year, HR department told us no teacher was coming. As we weren’t going to accept them from the start.” 

He says this set the school back since they expected and needed the teacher. They had to let down these students and families that they promised. Loey claimed that the HR department didn’t notify the school when they weren’t clearing this teacher. HR left Lincoln's admin clueless. 

             Payroll issues are something serious KRON4 indicates teachers in the San Francisco Unified School District are not receiving their accurate pay. In some cases, teachers are overpaid. 

Others are underpaid, and some teachers have not received paychecks at all during their monthly payroll cycle. Teachers who haven’t received their paychecks when intended time are stressed. Or they tend to feel a sense of bitterness or anger. 

             “My first year here at Lincoln, the district didn’t pay me three times. It took two weeks for it to be fixed. It was stressful because I couldn’t pay my bills and living expenses in San Francisco aren’t cheap. There was a sour taste in my mouth with the district,” exclaimed Marco Mendoza. 

With these facts, teachers are less likely to be drawn into wanting to work with the district. According to Bankrate, San Francisco’s average living cost is 79% higher than the national average. Not only is little pay difficult to handle but not getting paid at all is something that will lead people to struggle. Teachers believe they should get paid for their work and time Mendoza exclaimed. 

             “I deeply care and appreciate the staff and teachers we have at Lincoln. The last thing I want to happen is for them to burn out completely,” Loey says.

By Kendra Vo 

At the start of the year, an Abraham Lincoln High School teacher, Mr. Mendoza, came up with a brilliant new way to show students when it is and is not an appropriate time to use electronic devices during class time. The guideline that Lincoln High School has announced is called the “ALHS School-Wide Cell Phone Guidelines.” 

The new guideline tackles distractions in the classroom from electronic devices such as cell phones, airpods, and headphones. Using an image of a traffic light with red, yellow, and green, the guidelines state when the traffic light is on red, cell phones, headphones, and airpods must be silenced and away. Yellow light means cell phones might be acceptable after finishing a task. Green light means electronic devices are allowed and acceptable to use for independent work time and even listening to music. By enforcing new guidelines, teachers can help students get the best education without distraction. 

Mendoza wanted to experiment with this new stoplight phone guideline in his Spanish class in order to get his students' attention and focus. He mirrored this technique from his previous high school teacher after the approach showed great results in the classroom. After years of using this method in class, Mendoza decided to take action and proposed his strategies to the rest of the school department. 

He explains, “This guideline would ensure consistency that students would be able to adapt to since they are highly addicted to their technology devices.”

The school department agreed to implement this system as optional for teachers to use in their classrooms. 

As you may know, students and teachers may find cell phones extremely unhelpful when it comes to completing school tasks, considering it's a huge distraction to students. 

Mr. Guevarra, a teacher at Lincoln High School, states, “Overall, I feel like teachers who use this new guideline set clear expectations for students.” 

Although Guevarra wasn’t present at the start of the year, he also claims, “I was late [in becoming] a teacher, so I personally don't use the guidelines, but if I were present at the beginning of the school year, I would have used these guidelines on my students.” 

Students in his classroom often go on their electronics during inappropriate times, and it’s become an invasive distraction during class. 

Although every teacher has their own methods to minimize phone usage in class, their rules on phones can be confusing to students. 

Julie Payne, a junior at Lincoln High School, claims, “I think the new phone guideline has affected our school in a good way because now teachers have an easily understandable guideline for phones that students already know the expectations for. Before other teachers started using the new phone guidelines, their phone guidelines were unclear for students.” 

The “ALHS school-wide Cell Phone Guidelines” makes a clear point and tells students when it's an appropriate and inappropriate time to use their phones in class, whether it's for work or not. 

Lincoln High School wants what's best for their students and their education.  Uncontrollable phone usage has taken a turn for the worse, leading students to incomplete assignments and endless distractions for not just themselves but for others around them as well. Having this guideline set up by teachers in classrooms helps build self-control and awareness towards students’ addiction to technology usage.

By Samantha Hong

As of today, Abraham Lincoln High School only has four active security guards protecting the property. The main contributor to the scarcity of security guards is caused by the general lack of staff and funding within SFUSD. Lincoln's school administration is limited in resources and protocols, which poses several questions for various safety issues and crises. 

One main topic parents, students, and faculty worry about is lockdown drills. 

"We've never really had a lockdown drill at Lincoln, so I have like no idea what I'm supposed to do in case a shooter comes in," says Kaitlin Nguyen, a senior at Lincoln High School. 

Many students like Nguyen are concerned with the potential threat of a lock down especially because the school hasn’t implemented or practiced procedures on what students must do in case of one. 

“It’s not even about practicing, honestly. I mean, yeah, it would help to practice it, but it’d also be helpful to just know what [the procedure] is.” Katrina Huynh, a senior at Lincoln High School says. 

Lockdown drills are an active discussion in Lincoln's administration.  

Jordan Loey, assistant principal, says, "We as a school haven't really stimulated that [lock down drills]. We should…but if we send that message out to our communities [and say] ‘Hey families we're gonna do a lockdown drill at an unannounced time to really simulate what we as a school site need to do,’ [Parents might say], ‘I don't want my kids there because that is triggering.’" 

This means the school would have to send out an email alerting parents, effectively defeating the purpose of an unannounced and realistic drill. Loey then brings up points on how parents’ issues with the triggers of a lockdown drill is a serious conversation that the administration needs to address but hasn't yet.

Kim Chester, the school's secretary, spoke out on some of the main issues with Lincoln's safety protocols concerning the lack of security guards and faculty.  

"First, our school is short-staffed, so it's hard to enforce the safety protocol."

A few basic procedures during a lockdown drill include locking the doors, keeping the students quiet and inside of the classroom and waiting for further instruction from administration before exiting the building, but because of the staff-shortage within SFUSD, maintaining effective communication and keeping everyone informed is difficult. 

In past years following the pandemic, Lincoln has struggled immensely with short staffing of teachers and faculty.

When the school year started, Lincoln had six on-site security guards. Two left, leaving only four to guard the four floors in the main building, the new building courtyard, the black tops and tennis courts, and the north wing. Lincoln has multiple entrances and exits, it is a large campus and the security team cannot fully cover the property. 

As of now, SFUSD is backed up by requests from other schools and cannot hire new security guards for Lincoln. In the meantime, there are several ways students and staff wish to address safety issues and the lack of lockdown drills in Lincoln. 

"I feel like the school needs to find ways to enforce or educate students on protocols. I get that they are limited, but it'd be nice for us as students to have some understanding on what needs to happen. I mean, we've had like ten fire alarm drills in a week, but I've never experienced a lockdown drill," says Nguyen. 

“It’s not that I don’t feel safe at Lincoln, most of the time I do, but I think there needs to be more practice with more drills. It’s just that, we're really under prepared as a school. I feel like I’m always hearing about a school shooting happening somewhere in the US, and even if it never happens here, I’d like to know that my school is prepared just in case,” Huynh says. 

Furthermore, Chester strongly believes that the school needs to strengthen its community. Communication is challenging in large institutions like Lincoln High School, so consistent understanding of lock drills and safety protocols are difficult. 

"I feel like we [in relation to faculty] could come together and brainstorm what we can do. Let's learn from each other, let's learn from actual schools that are going through these lockdowns and safety protocols, and see how that works for them and see if that can work for us."

By Mason Ngo

The payroll problems in San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) impacting staff has been persisting since the start of the new payroll system, EMPowerSF, implemented in January 2021. The problems were worsened due to lack of staffing at the time, at one point leaving over 10,000 tickets over payroll unanswered according to data shown in a recent board meeting.

Since then, improvements were made to the system, yet the complaints around pay remain. At the same time, the teachers’ union, United Educators of San Francisco (UESF), and others have recently called on SFUSD to remove the EMPowerSF system entirely, and to find something more reliable in its place.

Antonio Esparza, a Spanish teacher at Lincoln who joined in 2021, stated that, “Since I have started working with SFUSD, I have had four paychecks that were short. My recent paycheck from last month [August] was over $1000 short.” 

When notifying Human Resources (HR), he was often told that it was human error that caused the issue, sometimes even claiming that he screwed it up. Esparza was one out of many queued for support from HR on a day that he went to resolve his problems in person. 

He did mention that problems like this have existed before the implementation of EMPowerSF however, and that problems were not just limited to payroll. 

“When we hired our latest Spanish teacher, it took HR over a month to prepare him to start because he needed to fill out a lot of paperwork,” Esparza said. 

However, he noted that newer problems have been resolved faster and with more transparency.

“They acknowledged the problem right away, explained why it happened and then sent the missing money within a week.” Esparza added.

A representative from SFUSD’s Communications Office shared one of their Board of Education meetings where payroll issues were discussed.

In their recent board meeting, Superintendent Dr. Matt Wayne noted that the EMPowerSF system was a software program provided by SAP. As part of what SFUSD calls the payroll state of emergency, they provide updates on their payroll system and are allocating more resources to deal with problems with EMPowerSF as they arise.

In this meeting, Wayne reported that, though improvements have been made, they know that problems around payroll are still prevalent. At the start of the year, over 10,000 payroll tickets or complaints were open for the HR department. Now, fewer than 3,500 open tickets remain. However, these remaining tickets are, according to him, more complicated and harder to close. The complications led to a stall in progress for SFUSD trying to eliminate the payroll problems in the current system. 

SAP is now providing their resources on site to address these issues in conjunction with SFUSD. As of this May, SFUSD has spent about $15.8 million to address the problems around EMPowerSF.Wayne also reported in this meeting that teachers will no longer need to enter their hours every day for normal pay and claims to have resolved other HR related problems as well. He also pointed out that staffing, though still at low levels, is improving within a few departments including HR.

SFUSD now allocates significant resources to fix the EMPowerSF issues, as mentioned on their website. The prolonged issues and allocation of resources to fix these issues is likely what made some, including UESF, to advocate for removing the system. Similar new systems for the State Controller’s office and Marin County government were also previously cut for similar reasons after dealing with very similar problems too in 2016 and 2010 respectively. 

Other Lincoln faculty members however, such as Jorge Goncalves did not experience such issues. He did note that the new system puts more responsibility on teachers to input information on their own. Goncalves said, “The Empower system used to require teachers to input the amount of hours worked. Some teachers may not have submitted the hours they had worked to be paid. Before this system, teachers would go to the main office and sign in on a paper list there to be verified for payroll.”  

Teachers at Lincoln and other schools, including those who have not been impacted by these issues have openly expressed their frustrations over the system. SFUSD in response has set up a dashboard showing their status on resolving the issues, and is also committed to making regular public announcements around the problems in their board meetings.

As of September 2023, it appears that the current problems surrounding payroll have improved compared to the start of the EMPowerSF platform back in 2021. However in its current state, much more can still be done to fix payroll problems in SFUSD.

By Marina Gonzalez 

Recently our school has suffered many damages. 

“How am I supposed to get into the South gym when all the door handles are broken?” Johanna Ruiz, asked herself in her freshman year. 

Currently as a junior Ruiz wonders why the handles only recently got fixed. Budget cuts have affected schools nationwide and have forced schools to cut back on staff, specifically within the buildings and grounds department. 

Sharimar Balisi Lincoln Principal since 2004 states, “The buildings and grounds staff is not as big as it used to be back then, but even back then they probably had a staff of three to five people. Now we're probably down to one person for all of the school district.”

This explains why it takes a while to get something in need of repair, worked on.

 Jordan Loey explains,“One person worked on heating and air conditioning, two people for the electricians office. These people are responsible for the entire district.”

Since the buildings and grounds staff has decreased when Loey puts in a request to get something fixed, he has to say that it is a safety hazard to get it urgently fixed. Otherwise it could take days or even months to get something fixed or looked at.

Loey states,”It's frustrating in the sense that I put it [the request] in but I don't see where my ticket is in the system.” 

The system that the district has set up only allows Ms.Loey to see that the request is a work in progress and the priority level. The priority level shows up as either high, medium, and low. However this scale does not give an accurate wait time or order in which it is going to get worked on. Even if there was an accurate wait time there is an issue, which is the parts that need to be ordered. The part’s that are needed to fix something might take a while to arrive. Then comes another issue: the workers in a certain department that are needed to get the job done might not be available for a while due the lack of staff.  Additionally there might be different departments needed due to a problem that might not have been seen at first. 

For example, next to Kevin Grayson’s world history class by North gym, there was a broken door frame. Loey commented that people came to fix the door. However once the sheet metal workers came they said that a different department had to come as well because another part needed to be fixed. 

“The companies don’t communicate with each other,” Loey states. 

When the companies fail to communicate it creates even more chaos. The district should find a more effective system that makes it easier for requests to be put in and see where it is on the waitlist. In addition there should be a more in depth description of the thing that is broken, so once an inspector comes they can find the issue faster and avoid having an unseen issue come along in the future. There should also be a way to help or encourage companies/departments to communicate with each other to avoid adding to the chaos.