I’m not an expert on this, I’ve just been around a while.  Get the people who know more to explain it all to you and to the rest of UESF.  Ask a lot of questions and share the answers.

SF already has a parcel tax, created by Prop A in 2008, the Quality Teacher Retention Act or QTEA.  UESF members worked really hard to get it passed, walking precincts, phone banking, etc.   It has been paying for sort of “difficulty pay” bonuses, and extra pay on the steps in the pay scales for new teachers and retention bonuses but NONE of this for paras.  Check the salary schedules at the back of your union contracts, online at uesf.org and also at the SFUSD website.  QTEA also pays for PD for paras and teachers both.  And thirty percent of the income from the tax goes to the school district and not to UESF.   My family benefited directly from this, I received stipends for hard to fill positions and hard to staff schools and a retention bonus.  QTEA sunsets in 2028, ten years from now.

I worked for UESF at the time and asked how the proposition would be written.  Former president Dennis Kelly told me himself that UESF was working with the SF Chamber of Commerce and Donald Fisher, owner of Gap, to write the law so that Mr Fisher would not put money in the game to oppose it, which is smart in a way, but do we really want the super rich to be determining what we can ask for?

How is the current proposed parcel tax being written?   According to the UESF powerpoint on the TA (at uesf.org)