From today’s SF Gate:
Generations of San Francisco public school students have no memory of what it was like to experience a teachers strike. That all changed on Monday: For the first time since 1979, San Francisco Unified School District teachers walked off the job.
It’s been decades since a teachers strike in the city. The last four took place in 1968, 1971, 1974 and 1979; except for the 1979 strike, none lasted longer than a week.
The 1979 strike took place in the fallout of California voters’ passage of Proposition 13. Colloquially known as the most famous, or infamous, ballot measure in state history, Prop 13 revamped California’s property tax laws, significantly lowering some of the tax revenues that went toward public schools. As a result of the lower funding, SFUSD laid off over 1,000 teachers.
Although contract negotiations continued through the summer, by September 1979, the district and the union were still far apart. The union wanted the laid off teachers reinstated, plus a 15.7% raise over the next two years. When the school year began, the teachers took to the picket line and substitutes filled the classrooms.
As the weeks dragged on, more students stopped showing up to class. San Francisco had always been a pro-union town, but the long walkout began to erode public support for strikes, the New York Times reported. Although it’s not clear how many students stayed home, estimates range from one-third to 60%. The San Francisco Examiner spoke to high schoolers who were spending their days eating burritos in the Mission. “We’ll go sit around school and sit around the park,” one said.
Read the complete story here.