Nathalie Hrizi is Vice-President for Substitutes of United Educators of San Francisco
Every morning, for four days straight, public school educators in San Francisco organized picket lines in both rain and shine. Instead of getting out of bed to enter our classrooms, we got out of bed to join coworkers, students and families in vibrant, loud displays of our commitment to the schools our students and educators deserve — All so we could go back to our classrooms proud of the achievements we made for our students and school communities. We will proudly and joyously go back to our classrooms and work sites on Feb. 18, 2026.
While we withheld our labor to make historic wins for our schools, what we created in the process was a transformation in our city. The whole city felt alive with a sense of struggle and no capitalist politician could turn it back.
We have recently experienced the incredible strikes of the hotel workers and their use of coordinated campaigns to win. Now we need to reclaim the deep and vast history of a wider sector of the working class taking action to win: The history of the longshore workers whose strike in 1934 became a general strike in response to deadly police repression;The history of the teachers’ strikes of 1968, 1971 and 1974 that helped public sector workers win collective bargaining rights in California. These are the histories we are not nearly conscious of enough today. Organized labor in San Francisco has an opportunity to build upon the historic educator strike.
In withholding our labor and bringing our collective action to the streets of San Francisco, we also stepped into the movement of which we have been only witnesses. This movement most recently saw a general strike in Minneapolis and a nationwide walkout against ICE terror and the billionaire agenda. This movement saw educators strike for better working conditions and respect from West Virginia to Los Angeles and Oakland in 2018 to 2019. We stepped into the movement that saw millions of people act against genocide in Gaza and defend the Palestinian people. I saw the same students who led us then and walked out in Jan. 30 on the picket lines and in the marches. We are connected now in a way we never were before, in our fight for a better future for students and for workers.
The decision to strike was not an easy decision. We exhausted all alternatives. We bargained for seven months. We mediated and went through fact-finding (a process through which very few facts were actually found) over 3 months. Throughout that time, UESF members generated priority issues, signed on to show our support for our highest priorities, practiced picketing, rallied the Bay Area against the Trump administration, trained each other, studied, discussed politics and organizing strategy and tactics, had one organizing conversation after another and much, much more. In the end, over 5,000 of us voted to authorize a strike if we didn’t get the agreement we were fighting for.
Throughout all of it, the bargaining team of 120 people from all job categories stayed strong. From our first bootcamp in September 2024 to signing the tentative agreement at 5:30 a.m. on Feb.13, the bargaining team centered the needs of our membership and our commitment to our students and families through difficult decisions. We bargained after long days at work and stayed into the night when necessary. Fundamental agreements kept us true to each other and focused on our objectives. We stayed united in our message, honest in our internal disagreements and committed to our participation in what we could do.
And on February 9th, 2026, we struck. The schools were closed. The superintendent cried crocodile tears after months of proposing cuts and school closures. The mayor begged UESF to hold the strike for 72 hours after just weeks earlier dismissing the importance of the negotiations. As my son so eloquently said in holding his district leadership accountable: “So, it takes a strike for you to pay attention?”
In four days, we ran four major daily demonstrations: 15,000 rallies in Civic Center Monday Feb. 9, 20,000 rallied in Dolores Park and marched past SFUSD headquarters at 555 Franklin before visiting the bargaining team at the war memorial and finishing at City Hall, thousands created an aerial photo saying For Our Students STRIKE on Ocean Beach before picketing outside the bargain at the war memorial at 5:00 p.m., and 15,000+ rallyied at Embarcadero Plaza before marching to the City Hall to deliver the finishing blows to opposition to the educators’ demands.
As the thousands gathered, rallied and marched to City Hall, Superintendent Maria Su and upper management of SFUSD and their lawyer met with the Board of Education in closed session to figure out how they could possible extricate themselves from the hole they dug when they dismissed the importance of our fight — a hole they then basically excavated into a giant crater with every twist and turn through the 4 days of our strike.
I can only imagine what one would have heard if they were able to be an observer in that room. But, like with most deliberations in capitalist politics, the discussion was held amongst a small party. If I were to imagine it, what I would assume is that each one of them were desperate to end the educators’ strike and deeply concerned about agreeing to our demands. Their concern emanated not from care for our students or interest in stabilizing our school communities but from their concern for their own political futures and the insistence of the political forces to whom they are beholden. The ruling class political forces of San Francisco were horrified at the thought of a well-organized, militant public sector strike machine winning demands that could set the standards of organized labor’s fights to come. The political leadership of the city of San Francisco, under a billionaire nepobaby mayor with no experience in labor relations — elected on the wave of a corporate right wing Democratic Party takeover that capitalized on the political crisis caused by the pandemic — failed in every respect to properly “manage” the educators’ strike. With bruised egos and visions of failure dancing above their heads, Superintendent Su and those Board of Education commissioners who had not sided with the educators capitulated to every single demand of the educators’ strike.
UESF won fully funded health benefits with no limitations and no concessions in our contract. This is a generational win, the kind of contract win that keeps educators in the schools teaching our students the way they should be for decades. UESF won sanctuary schools language and housing protections for our families in our contract. We didn’t just talk about solidarity. We wrote our solidarity into the contract with the force of collective action that our families and students played a huge role in supporting. UESF won contractual language that helps relieve the intense workload of special education educators so they can meet the needs of their students. The district was intent on forcing us to pay for anything we won from the contract with cuts elsewhere (increasing class sizes, cutting AP prep funding to large high schools, cutting sabbaticals and more). We made no permanent concessions. We forced them to do what is right.
But we won much more than that. We won the kind of organizational strength that sets the foundation to fight for our students and educators and school communities the next time we need to. We won solidarity and unity in struggle. We won the experience of working class struggle and overcoming all the obstacles that are normalized in a society built entirely on exploitation.
We won a consciousness that we are powerful. We are powerful not because we have the most money or own the most. We are powerful not because we were elected into positions through campaigns funded by the ultra-rich. We are powerful not because we exploit and oppress and divide people we view as beneath us. We are powerful for the exact opposite reasons. We are powerful because we do the work, we run the schools, we educate the students. We are powerful because we are the centerpiece, along with our students and families, of a cornerstone of a democratic society— free quality public education. we are powerful because we stand with our communities and address the divisions of society head on — rejecting racism, sexism and homophobia.
Our moment to celebrate the win is right now. We should be so very proud of the achievements last week. Next week and the week after and the years after, as we move forward, we will channel the joy, the pride, the sense of community power into future fights. We set a standard in the contract language we won and the organizational strength we displayed. We will continue to fight for our schools and for working people with that standard in mind.
