San Francisco teachers strike over wages and health benefits

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — About 6,000 public schoolteachers in San Francisco went on strike Monday, the city's first such walkout in nearly 50 years.

The strike comes after teachers and the district failed to reach an agreement over higher wages, health benefits, and more resources for students with special needs. The San Francisco Unified School District closed all 120 of its schools and said it would offer independent study to some of its 50,000 students.

“We will continue to stand together until we win the schools our students deserve and the contracts our members deserve," Cassondra Curiel, president of the United Educators of San Francisco, said at a Monday morning news conference.

Teachers with the union were joining the picket line after last-ditch negotiations over the weekend failed to reach a new contract. Mayor Daniel Lurie and Democratic U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco had urged the two sides to keep talking rather than shut down schools.

Union members planned a Monday afternoon rally at San Francisco City Hall. Negotiations were scheduled to resume around midday. Schools will remain closed Tuesday, the district announced.

“We look forward to receiving the union's counteroffer,” said San Francisco Unified School District Superintendent Maria Su. She told reporters on Monday that the district had put forward a comprehensive package despite entrenched financial difficulties.

“This is a viable offer. It is an offer that we can afford,” Su said. “We will be at the table and we will stay for as long as it takes to get to a full agreement. I do not want a prolonged strike.”

Lily Perales, a history teacher at Mission High School, said many union members can’t afford to live in San Francisco anymore.

“Too many of my colleagues have been pushed out of the city because of the high cost of living, and with our current contract it’s not enough,” she said from a picket line Monday. “We’re willing to be on strike until all of our demands are met.”

Her colleague Aaron Hart, a photography and media arts teacher at Mission High, said schools are understaffed.

“That’s why we’re out here. We just really want stability for our students,” he said.

The union and the district have been negotiating for nearly a year, with teachers demanding fully funded family health care, salary raises and the filling of vacant positions impacting special education and services.

The teachers also want the district to enact policies to support homeless and immigrant students and families.

The union is asking for a 9% raise over two years, which would mean an additional $92 million per year for the district. They say that money could come from reserve funds that could be directed back to classrooms and school sites.

SFUSD, which faces a $100 million deficit and is under state oversight because of a long-standing financial crisis, rejected the idea. Officials countered with a 6% wage increase paid over three years. Su said the offer also includes bonuses for all employees if there is a surplus by the 2027-28 school year.

A report by a neutral fact-finding panel released last week recommended a compromise of a 6% increase over two years, largely siding with the district’s arguments that it is financially constrained.

The union said San Francisco teachers receive some of the lowest contributions to their health care costs in the Bay Area, pushing many to leave. Su said the district offered two options: the district paying 75% of family health coverage to the insurance provider Kaiser or offering an annual allowance of $24,000 for teachers to choose their health care plan.

Lurie, who helped broker an agreement that ended a hotel workers union strike after he was elected and before taking office, said that the city agencies were coordinating with the district on how to offer support to children and their families.

“I know everyone participating in these negotiations is committed to schools where students thrive and our educators feel truly supported, and I will continue working to ensure that,” Lurie said in a social media post Sunday.

The strike has left parents scrambling to find programs or care for their children.

Rachel Machta, who has a 4-year-old daughter in transitional kindergarten, said her family has been lucky that an after-school program her child attends is offering a full-day camp this week.

“They have been extremely flexible and wonderful to work with and have offered a donation-based camp this week,” Machta said.

Machta, who, along with her husband, works full-time, said that other mothers in their Mission Terrace neighborhood are offering to hold camps for parents who may have no other place to take their kids.

“Everyone is sharing resources, and our community is coming together to make sure there is coverage," she said. “I just want to give a huge shout-out to Mission Terrace,” she said.

Teachers in other major California cities were also preparing to strike. San Diego teachers indicated they're ready to walk off the job next month for the first time in 30 years over a stalemate with the school district about special education staffing and services. And members of United Teachers Los Angeles voted overwhelmingly last month to authorize their leadership to call a strike if negotiations with the LA Unified School District fall apart.

A similar strike-authorization vote by the school system’s other largest union, Local 99 of Service Employees International Union, is scheduled to begin next week.

Associated Press reporter Christopher Weber contributed from Los Angeles.

English and Physical Education teacher Alison White leads a chant as teachers and San Francisco Unified School District staff join a city-wide protest to demand a fair contract at Mission High School, Monday, Feb. 9, 2026, in San Francisco. (Brontë Wittpenn/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)

Math teacher Mar Martinez, center, joins teachers and San Francisco Unified School District staff join a city-wide protest to demand a fair contract while at Mission High School, Monday, Feb. 9, 2026, in San Francisco. (Brontë Wittpenn/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)

Teachers picket in front of Mission High School in San Francisco on Monday, Feb. 9, 2026. (Brontë Wittpenn/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)

Teachers picket in front of Mission High School in San Francisco on Monday, Feb. 9, 2026. (Brontë Wittpenn/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)

FILE - A pedestrian walks past a San Francisco Unified School District office building in San Francisco, Feb. 3, 2022. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, file)

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The Las Vegas Review-Journal announced Friday that it will no longer print its rival the Las Vegas Sun for the first time in decades, amid an ongoing legal dispute over the nation's last joint operating agreement stemming from a 1970 law designed to preserve newspapers.

Readers “will not find a printed Las Vegas Sun insert inside,” the Review-Journal said in an editorial, noting the Sun maintains a website, has a few hundred thousand followers across social media platforms, and is free to produce its own newspaper.

“We encourage them to do so. The Review-Journal competes with countless sources of news and entertainment, but we would welcome one more. We just don’t want to foot the bill. It is time the Sun stood up on its own two feet,” the editorial said, without specifying the cost.

The two publications will be in court Friday and the Sun hopes a judge will order printing to immediately resume, attorney Leif Reid said in an email. It will be the first day in 76 years that the Sun hasn’t been printed, he said.

“This does irreparable harm to our community, as no one benefits when a local newspaper is prevented from being published,” he said.

The now-rare joint operating agreement required the Sun to be printed as a daily insert in the Review-Journal, while both companies remained editorially independent with separate newsrooms and websites.

A lower court had found the agreement was unenforceable because a 2005 update was never signed by the U.S. attorney general, and in February the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by the Sun.

The Review-Journal editorial called the Supreme Court decision a decisive victory, saying that halting publication of the Sun on Friday was “a result of 6½ years of litigation between the newspapers, precipitated by the Sun.”

Such agreements between rival publications have dwindled as part of a "long, slow goodbye of newspapers as we knew them,” said Ken Doctor, a news business analyst. The Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News ended a 40-year agreement last year. USA Today Co., which owns the Detroit Free Press, recently announced its plans to purchase the Detroit News.

In 1950, the Sun was founded in response to the Review-Journal’s refusal to negotiate with typesetters from the International Typographical Union. The union started its own newspaper and reached out to businessman Hank Greenspun for financial backing. The Greenspuns still own the paper.

The Review-Journal has been publishing since 1909, first as the Clark County Review. It is owned by the Adelson family, casino magnates and mega GOP donors, and remains the state’s largest newspaper.

The Review-Journal’s editorials lean more conservative, while the Sun’s lean liberal. The 1970 law signed by then President Richard Nixon, called the Newspaper Preservation Act, was designed to save newspapers costs while maintaining competition and editorial variety in cities as newspapers began to financially struggle.

The papers first entered into a joint operating agreement in 1989 when the Sun was struggling to stay afloat financially. The agreement made the Sun an afternoon newspaper during weekdays and a section within the Review-Journal on weekend mornings, while the Review-Journal handled production, distribution and advertising. The Review-Journal also collected all revenue and was required to pay the Sun monthly to cover the Sun’s news and editorial expenses.

In 2005 the agreement was amended to make the Sun an insert in the Review-Journal every morning.

Review-Journal owners sought to end the agreement in 2019, and in response the Sun’s owners filed a lawsuit alleging that ending the agreement violated anti-trust laws.

The 1970 law allowing such agreements was signed at a time when news options weren't as prevalent and there was more concern over news monopolies.

Las Vegas — and Nevada as a whole — today have more strong, independent news organizations compared to other places, said Stephen Bates, a journalism and media professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

The Sun also publishes online. But it has argued in court that losing its print product could make it harder to recruit staff, cause a loss in readers, and even force it to close.

Genelle Belmas, a journalism professor at the University of Kansas who specializes in media law, said it would be disappointing if the last joint operating agreement in the country ends. During visits to Vegas, she's enjoyed being able to pick up the Review-Journal and see the Sun folded inside, offering two differing points of view in one place. Online news outlets make it easier for consumers to stay in their echo chambers, she said.

“Every local news outlet we lose — and that includes big towns, small towns, whatever — is a loss of perspective and a loss of a potential alternative view,” Belmas said.

FILE - This Dec. 17, 2015 file photo shows a sign outside the building housing the Las Vegas Review-Journal in Las Vegas. AP Photo/John Locher, File)