San Francisco Unified opened the school year Monday with a statistic the district wants parents to remember: it says 96% of its teachers are permanent, and every classroom position is covered. The number is real. So is the year of strikes, layoffs and buyouts it took to get there.

Superintendent Maria Su is framing the 2026-27 opening as a stability milestone, a turn away from a previous year the district spent in fiscal triage. But the 96% figure is best read as a recovery marker, not a clean win: it lands one strike, one $100-million-plus deficit and hundreds of non-teacher separations later — and it sits alongside the biggest decisions, school closures and a new enrollment system, that Su has pushed past the end of her current contract.

San Francisco Unified welcomed roughly 49,000 students back Monday as the largest district in the Bay Area, and Superintendent Maria Su led with staffing. Ninety-six percent of teachers are permanent this year and 100% of classroom positions are covered, she said in an exclusive interview with Telemundo Bay Area (external source, opens in a new tab) — a level of permanence she cast as key for students and, in remarks to other outlets, as the first in a long time.

That framing is the tell. To understand why 96% counts as good news, you have to remember how bad the prior year was.

In May 2025, Su was presenting a plan to close a $114 million deficit under state fiscal oversight, warning the district was "not out of the woods yet." To protect classroom teachers, SFUSD cut elsewhere — counselors, paraeducators and central-office staff. The union's tally was blunt: more than 280 educators on temporary contracts had been let go, United Educators of San Francisco Executive Vice President Frank Lara told ABC7 (external source, opens in a new tab), warning that members were not "sticking around." Su said the district avoided teacher layoffs partly because staff took early retirement — which itself opened vacancies. By her own count that spring, 162 classrooms had just been cleared to fill, with roughly 150 more still open.

Then came February 2026 and the first San Francisco teachers' strike since 1979, as The San Francisco Standard reported (external source, opens in a new tab). Against that backdrop, a year that opens with nearly every room permanently staffed is a genuine reversal.

In May 2025, Su was presenting a plan to close a $114 million deficit under state fiscal oversight, warning the district was "not out of the woods yet."

But 96% permanent also means roughly one classroom in 25 is covered by a long-term substitute or interim arrangement rather than a permanent teacher on day one — the exact gap parents feel when a principal is hunting for subs. The district has not published a school-by-school map of where the non-permanent slots sit, and staffing holes in SFUSD have not historically fallen evenly across the city's neighborhoods.

The recovery also arrives with the hardest calls still deferred. Su's deputy for business, Chris Mount-Benites, narrowed a roughly $133 million shortfall to about $1 million this year, steering clear of a state takeover, the Standard reported. Yet at the board's first meeting of the year, Su declined to set a timeline for school closures, describing them as an "organic process" tied to a new enrollment system not due until April — a schedule she'd already pushed beyond her contract term. Commissioner Parag Gupta warned against letting the question "drag out indefinitely," calling that a potential "dereliction of my duty." Commissioner Supryia Ray argued the district's real risk was doing effectively nothing while families waited on a decision.

The safety package SFUSD paired with its back-to-school message — new crossing guards, cleared crossings, more speed cameras and a plan to drop school-zone limits to 15 mph — is real, but it is the city's project as much as the district's, and one The Dissent has covered on its own.

So the honest headline of opening day is narrower than "everything's fixed." A district that spent a year in fiscal and labor crisis got teachers into nearly every room. Whether it can keep them there — while finally deciding which schools stay open — is the test the 96% number doesn't answer.