On a Wednesday afternoon in September, during pick-up time for Commodore Sloat Elementary, Robert Byrd was stabbed to death next to his 8-year-old son, just steps from the school.
Sloat’s social worker, McKenna Hendrickson, had the grim responsibility of breaking the news to third graders that their classmate’s father had been killed.
Social workers employed by the San Francisco Unified School District have many responsibilities: holding one-on-one counseling sessions with students, training teachers on emotional support, building trust and connection with parents. However, none is more crucial than helping a school community through a tragedy.
This is why SFUSD’s new staffing proposal (opens in new tab), which cuts nearly half the district’s school-site social workers — including Sloat’s position — has been maddening for staff and parents. Many implored the Board of Education at a meeting last week to reconsider.
There, Hendrickson, whose job is on the line, explained that she has had to support families and students with “real trauma-informed care and crisis intervention every day.”
“The district likes to send emails telling students and families to talk to their wellness counselors and social workers,” she said. “We’re essential then, but when budget season rolls around, we’re extra.”
The district has proposed cutting 45 of its 99 school-site social workers as part of layoffs that would include 56 classroom teachers, 51 security guards, 18 assistant principals, 15 counselors, eight clerks, and eight middle school health teachers. The district expects those layoffs to eliminate $25.6 (opens in new tab) million in spending as part of a plan to cut into a projected deficit of $103 million for the next school year. That plan also includes shutting down school bus routes, reducing central office operations, and altering the school day to six periods instead of seven.
The proposal to cut social workers comes at a dire time for the district, which is attempting to produce a convincing, multiyear Fiscal Stabilization Plan in order to exit state oversight and resume local control. In May, the district canceled widespread layoffs at the last minute after uproar from employees, instead opting to eliminate vacant positions and offer early retirement plans to more than 300 employees as part of $114 million in cuts.
SFUSD has been applauded by political (opens in new tab) and parents groups (opens in new tab) for taking the budget crisis seriously and has little choice but to make cuts for the coming school year. But the impact of any cost-savings measures — including the cuts to social-work positions — on students is sobering.
Already this school year, SFUSD has faced criticism of inequitable access to in-person algebra and understaffing in its expanded transitional kindergarten (opens in new tab) program. Furthermore, the district’s new proposal included a plan to consolidate three school sites or programs starting in 2027-28, reigniting concerns that school closures — the issue that contributed to the ouster of the previous superintendent — are back on the table.
During the current school year, elementary schools with more than 300 students, middle schools or high schools with more than 450 students, and all schools with a chronic absenteeism rate higher than 24% are provided full-time social workers. Others are allotted a half-time social worker. (There are additional centralized social workers, including some who can be mobilized to schools as needed in a crisis.)
Under the newly proposed staffing model, only schools with a Title 1 designation would be granted a social worker. Title 1 is a federal designation for schools with a large proportion of students qualifying for free or reduced-cost meals because of financial need.
Even Title 1 schools that won’t lose a full-time social worker position would be impacted by the cuts. Layoffs at the district are governed by seniority, in a last-in, first-out system. That likely means reshuffling longer-tenured social workers from elsewhere into Title 1 schools.
Autumn Garibay, the parent-teachers association executive vice president at the Title 1 Flynn Elementary in Bernal Heights, is concerned that its bilingual social worker will be replaced by someone without the connections and language skills to aid the school’s many English learners.
“You can’t just swap one social worker for another one,” Garibay said.
The decision to cut nearly half the district’s social workers comes despite Superintendent Maria Su, who holds a doctorate in clinical child psychology, championing mental health support for students. During an event Oct. 24 at Manny’s, Su said keeping social workers at school sites was one of two nonnegotiables for her when the district made cuts last year.
“I knew that we needed to protect our social workers,” she said.
The Board of Education is scheduled to debate the proposed cuts at a meeting Tuesday. In January, the district will issue projected budget allocations to individual schools and engage with the community about planning. An updated Fiscal Stabilization Plan will be reviewed by the board in March before it adopts the final budget in June.
At a press conference Dec. 5, district leaders, including Su and Board President Phil Kim, acknowledged that the cuts would be a tough pill to swallow but asked the “entire city to come together” in support of them. But that hasn’t stopped efforts to save social workers.
At a Dec. 9 board meeting, dozens of parents, teachers, and district staff pressed the board to push back on the proposed cuts, saying social workers play a crucial role not only in students’ socio-emotional well-being, which has been declining (opens in new tab) in recent years, but in their school performance.
Marty Mannion, the social worker at Sunset Elementary, a non-Title 1 school where a student was a victim of the Ocheltree-Truong murder-suicide in October, implored the district to consider the fact that one-third of its students qualify for free or reduced lunch. “Listen to what our community is saying,” Mannion said.
Staff at Sunset and Sloat praised the contributions of their social workers. Sunset’s principal, Michael Cress, said the school would have been “lost without” Mannion’s leadership and called the proposed cuts both “ill-advised” and “disrespectful.” Allan Ma, a teacher at Sunset, praised Mannion for helping students deal with bullying, suicidal tendencies, depression, and problems in the home.
Ma said he had “the impossible task of teaching students for 10 minutes” after finding out about the tragedy. But with Mannion’s help, he said, he “had the words and the confidence to deliver the news to my kids.”
“He is the most important person at our school,” Ma said. “It would be a big mistake if you let him go.”