Budget FAQs - Budget Development for 2025-26

On June 24, 2025, the San Francisco Board of Education adopted a balanced budget for the 2025-26 school year. SFUSD will send the adopted budget to the state of California by July 1.

This budget is a significant step toward closing the district’s long-term structural deficit and exiting state oversight. This is a key milestone in the implementation of its multi-year fiscal stabilization plan, which will require additional reductions in the coming years. 

Superintendent Dr. Maria Su focused on three key areas when shaping the 2025-26 budget: 

• Student-Focused Learning:
  • Focusing on foundational skills to improve key indicators in 3rd grade literacy and 8th grade math
  • Prioritizing college, career, and life readiness skills
  • Strengthening special education services
  • Investing in early intervention to prevent students from falling behind
• Strong and Supported Schools
  • Prioritizing hiring a teacher for every classroom
  • Expanding language and enrichment programs
  • Improving student dining experiences
• Systemwide Stability and Accountability
  • Modernizing our internal systems with tools like Frontline and Red Rover
  • Investing in our facilities
  • Moving toward exiting state oversight 

After becoming Superintendent in October 2024, Dr. Maria Su promptly engaged SFUSD Parent Advisory Committees to share her top priorities: balancing the budget to retain local control, rebuilding community trust, and addressing operational challenges to improve student learning environments. This past spring, Superintendent Su held eight town halls and engaged with 12 parent advisory groups, both virtually and in person across the city, to gain perspective and feedback about what families value.

To close the district’s $114 million deficit for 2025-26, SFUSD made significant reductions in certain areas such as administrative support, reducing some professional development, and pausing or reducing non-essential programs like the Environmental Science Center and Shared Schoolyard Program. Salary savings from employees who participated in the Supplemental Employee Retirement Plan (SERP) also helped SFUSD close this deficit. 

On June 24, 2025, the Board also approved a Fiscal Stabilization Plan that includes an additional $59 million in reductions for the 2026-27 school year to end deficit spending. This number does not take into account any future negotiated salary increases for SFUSD staff. 

SFUSD’s budget balancing strategy has prioritized core educational services.

Essential services will remain intact. All mandatory health services will be provided to students. However, non-essential programs will be reduced, paused, or eliminated to prioritize student support. 

The district is prioritizing legally required translation services while making budget reductions in other areas. These include cutting professional development, pausing the Environmental Science Center and Shared Schoolyard programs, reducing access to student internships and work-based learning opportunities, and reducing funding for non-classroom school positions.

The district is also focusing resources on successfully implementing Frontline while streamlining operations and reprioritizing services. Changes include redistributing strategic initiatives across existing departments, reclassifying upper management roles, outsourcing fingerprinting, and prioritizing essential communications and selected digital tools aligned to curriculum. Students and staff may experience delayed response times for technology service requests. 

SFUSD is still under a negative certification from our CDE Advisors. The district is working to address its fiscal challenges to avoid further state oversight and return to a “Qualified” or "Positive” certification. 

If SFUSD fails to address its financial challenges adequately, our school district will fall into state receivership. This means that the state of California will take over the district’s governance and its financial, operational, and programmatic decisions for years to come. This would strip families and school site communities of their voice and their ability to shape their children’s educational experiences. It will further deplete resources directed to our schools, erode our collective decision-making power, and likely compound educational disparities for our most vulnerable students.

SFUSD, the Board of Education, and the California Department of Education continue to closely collaborate on budget balancing solutions in order for SFUSD to maintain local control of its budget.

For the second year, SFUSD used a School Staffing Model to determine how staff are allocated to schools. The Staffing Model served as a starting point for school leaders as they developed their school plans.

Funding through the School Staff Model is divided into base and supplemental funding: 

Base funding is what each school gets to cover essential costs, which is determined by factors such as student numbers, grade levels, and required staff. Examples of base funded positions include principals, teachers, and clerks. 

Supplemental funding can be used to keep current eligible staff members or hire additional staff, based on the unique needs and priorities of a school community. Examples of supplemental funded positions include social workers, instructional aides, counselors, assistant principals, and paraeducators.

While most school allocations are determined through these guidelines, schools may receive additional site-specific grants from federal, state, or local sources based on eligibility and/or unique programming offered at the school. 

SFUSD spends about 80% of our $1.2 billion budget on employees. 

In 2023, SFUSD and the United Educators of San Francisco (UESF) reached a historic agreement that included a $9,000 salary increase for teachers in the 2023-2024 school year. Teachers also received an additional 5% raise for the 2024-2025 school year. Also in 2023, SFUSD reached an agreement with Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1021 for a 6% salary increase for 2022-23 and a 10% salary increase for 2023-24. 

Right now, approximately 25% of the budget is spent on the Central Office. In the adopted balanced budget for 2025-26, the percentage of the budget being spent on the Central Office will be reduced to 16%. 

Districts are funded by enrollment and get a certain amount of money per student. As our enrollment goes down, we receive less revenue. Our enrollment has declined by 4,000 students over the past seven years. This means the district receives approximately $80 million less in revenue than it would if it were still fully enrolled. Yet the district has not adjusted our expenditures or the number of schools we have to reflect this decline in enrollment. 

SFUSD has engaged in marketing and outreach efforts to recruit students, including traditional and digital marketing initiatives and engagement with the community through community-based organizations (CBOs), community workshops, and the annual enrollment fair. In addition to these outreach and marketing efforts, beginning with enrollment for the 2025-26 school year, SFUSD has made the enrollment process simpler for families where applicants only need to apply once and have the ability to be placed on several schools' waitlists. 

Families can visit sfusd.edu/budget and find Board presentations, press releases, and Superintendent messages about the budget.