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California: Parent Opposes Berkeley’s Choice of Wendy Kopp as Commencement Speaker

By dianeravitch
March 21, 2019 //
13

 

Jane Nylund is a Parent Activist in Oakland who has fought the privatization machine. She wrote an open public letter opposing Berkeley’s selection of Wendy Kopp as its commencement speaker.

 

 

UC Berkeley should not support and condone school privatization: Rescind your offer to TFA Wendy Kopp as commencement speaker

As a public school advocate, and a product of California public schools (father and grandmother both attended UC Berkeley), I was outraged and saddened to find that UC Berkeley had extended an invitation to Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach For America, to be featured as the commencement speaker at UC Berkeley this year.

Oakland and other urban school districts have, for years, suffered under the constant threat of privatization. Teach for America is just one of many cogs in the privatization machine; there are many others, but TFA’s influence is not just felt at the school site level, but has also infiltrated higher levels of administration (such as the Oakland mayor’s office), as well as TFA acting as lobbyists for legislation favoring privately managed charter schools and ed reform groups.

TFA has a potent mixture of idealism and practicality; the concept of having the opportunity to “teach” in a high needs district such as Oakland is tantalizing for many young people eager to give something back to the community. According to TFArecruiting manager Jessica Rossoni, whose credentials included a stint at the Daily Californian, “UC Berkeley is one of the largest contributors to the organization in its number of students who join TFA, according to Rossoni. She said UC Berkeley students apply in high rates because of UC Berkeley’s values of equity and students’ desires to tie those values to a career.” Notice that she doesn’t mention the type of career. Could be anything but teaching, and usually is. But, here’s what TFA is really about:
1) Installing low-paid, unqualified, uncertified, non-union teaching labor into the most challenging schools. Leafy suburban schools would never accept a core group of teachers that enter their schools in significant numbers with only 5 weeks of experience. Charter schools actively employ non-union TFA teaching labor; charters’ teacher retention record is abysmal, typically 2 years. Not surprising, since this corresponds with the 2-year TFA teaching commitment.
2) Creating  a “teacher pipeline” to fill teaching positions is secondary to TFA’s true mission mentioned above. Despite TFA’s assertions, there isn’t a teacher shortage; that narrative is trotted out by TFA and is accepted as gospel by the ed reform echo chamber; teachers as a whole are woefully underpaid and unsupported, particularly in high needs districts (was everyone at UC Berkeley asleep during the Oakland strike?). TFA solves none of this; its existence exacerbates the problem by undermining the professionalism, credentials, and experience of authentic teachers committed to the job as a profession, and not just a career stepping stone or resume padding on the part of corps members.
3) TFA charges school districts a fee for hiring TFA members. This fee causes a significant burden for cash-strapped districts already grappling with expenses associated with supporting high needs students. There is no guarantee that these teachers will remain with the district, and in fact, collectively, TFA has a poor track record of teacher retention within the host district in which they serve. This disruptive model of teacher churn caused in part by hiring TFA is damaging to our students, who deserve highly-trained, certified teachers with a long-term commitment to the profession.
4) TFA is a privatization group that is actively supported by the Walton Family Foundation.  Why UC Berkeley would ever align itself with the worst of corporate school privatization supporters completely escapes rational thought. UC Berkeley is one of the most important assets and symbols of public education in California. Support for groups like TFA flies in the face of the core values that UC Berkeley represents. Its mission to serve public students and to serve in the public interest will forever be tainted by this ill-advised invitation to a group that undermines all we value as democratically represented public institutions.
Read here for the unflinching reality of what TFA truly represents, and ask yourself if this narrative aligns with the values of UC Berkeley. I was disheartened to note that UCBerkeley has been a part of what has become the education misery in Oakland and elsewhere by supplying a large pool of students as corps members. Again, while the Berkeley students may find this kind of service admirable, this model is actively undermining the teaching profession. Not surprising that it is our mostly black and brown students that are suffering the consequences because of it. There is nothing admirable or equitable about that.
While I understand that this decision was based in part by student input, it is sometimes advisable for other adults in the room to step up and explain the symbolism behind this TFA invitation. This generation of college students hasn’t been around long enough to understand what has happened regarding school privatization in this country, but someone (besides TFAer Ms. Rossoni) needs to explain it to them. The students’ wish to give back to their community has been hijacked by the very people like the Waltons that want publicly supported institutions like UC Berkeley to go away. The irony is not lost on those of us who have witnessed this calamity for far too long. Please do the right thing and rescind your decision to Ms. Kopp, offer her your sincerest apologies, and find someone like Diane Ravitch or Jitu Brown, both true champions of authentic public education in this country. Thank you for your consideration. .
Regards,
Jane Nylund
Categories California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Oakland, Privatization, Teach for America

Jan Resseger: How Charter Schools Have Plunged Oakland into a Fiscal Crisis

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2019 //
21

Jan Resseger writes here about the cause of Oakland’s fiscal crisis: the expansion and encroachment of charter schools.

This context is important as background to understand the teachers’ strike.

She writes:

Like Los Angeles, Oakland’s financial crisis is related to California’s embrace of charter schools and the school district’s adoption of a portfolio school reform governance plan by which the district manages traditional public and charter schools as though they are investments in a stock portfolio. The idea is to establish competition—launching new schools all the time and closing low scoring schools and schools that become under-enrolled.  It is imagined that competition will drive school improvement, but that has not been the result anyplace where this scheme has been tried.

To better understand the issues underlying why Oakland’s teachers are on strike, it is worth examining Lafer’s in-depth profile of the Oakland Unified School District.

Lafer’s report explores the Oakland Unified School District as an exemplar of a California-wide and nationwide problem: Uncontrolled charter school expansion undermines the financial viability of the surrounding public schools. “In every case, the revenue that school districts have lost is far greater than the expenses saved by students transferring to charter schools.  The difference—the net loss of revenues that cannot be made up by cutting expenses associated with those students—totals tens of millions of dollars each year, in every district.” “California boasts the largest charter school sector in the United States, with nearly 1,300 charter schools serving 620,000 students, or 10 percent of the state’s total student body.”

“(W)ith a combined district and charter student population of over 52,000 in 2016-17—(Oakland) boasts the highest concentration of charter schools in the state, with 30 percent of pupils attending charter schools.” “By 2016-17, charter schools were costing OUSD a total of $57.3 million per year—a sum several times larger than the entire deficit that shook the system in the fall of 2017.  Put another way, the expansion of charter schools meant that there was $1,500 less funding available per year for each child in a traditional Oakland public school.”

Lafer identifies two problems at the heart of California’s enabling legislation for charter schools. First, a local school board has no control over whether charters can expand in the district: “Even when districts determine that there are already enough schools for all students in the community—or even if a charter operator petitions to open up next door to an existing neighborhood school—it is illegal for the district to deny that school’s application on the grounds that it constitutes a waste of public dollars. By law, as long as charter operators submit the required number of signatures, assurances against discrimination, and descriptions of their plans and program, school districts may only deny charter petitions for one of two substantive reasons: if ‘the charter school presents an unsound educational program,’ or ‘the petitioners are demonstrably unlikely to successfully implement the program set forth in the petition’”

The second problem, Lafer explains, is particularly serious as it impacts Oakland Unified School District: “While charter schools are required by law to accept any student who applies, in reality they exercise recruitment, admission, and expulsion policies that often screen out the students who would be the neediest and most expensive to serve—who then turn to district schools.  As a result, traditional public schools end up with the highest-need students but without the resources to serve them.  In Oakland, this can be seen in the distribution of both special education students and unaccompanied minor children who arrive in the district after entering the U.S. without their families.”

The problem is made worse because California does not allocate state funding based on the number of disabled students who require special services: “Special education funding is apportioned in equal shares for every student attending school, irrespective of the number of enrolled students with disabilities. Even in districts without charter schools, special education is an underfunded mandate, in that the dedicated funding for this purpose is insufficient to meet the needs that school systems are legally required to serve.”

Lafer reports that in 2015-16, Oakland’s charter schools served merely 19 percent of Oakland Unified School District’s students with special education needs: “The imbalance is yet more extreme in the most serious categories of special need.  Of the total number of emotionally disturbed students attending either charter or traditional public schools in Oakland, charter schools served only 15 percent.  They served only eight percent of all autistic students, and just two percent of students with multiple disabilities… Thus, charter schools are funded for a presumed level of need which is higher than the number of students with disabilities they actually enroll, while the district serves the highest-need students without the funding they require.”

The bottom line is that it is wasteful and inefficient to run two separate school systems, both funded by the public.

It is especially sad that Governor Jerry Brown, a progressive in so many ways, was blind to the depredations of the charter industry. He opened two charter schools where he was mayor of Oakland and never admitted that he was wrong.

 

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Oakland, Privatization, Teachers

Oakland: The Art of the Strike

By dianeravitch
February 24, 2019 //
9

 

You’ve heard of Donald Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” where he boasts of his great success as a deal-maker and negotiator. We now know that the book was ghost written by Tony Schwartz and is completely inauthentic. His read Art of the Deal consists of bluster, threats, and intransigence.

Here is the art of the strike. Oakland teachers speak out.

https://www.kqed.org/arts/13851435/drawing-the-oakland-teachers-strike

Categories Art, Oakland

Oakland: Teachers Will Strike Thursday

By dianeravitch
February 20, 2019 //
2

 

Contacts:

–Mike Myslinski with CTA on cell at 408-921-5769, mmyslinski@cta.org

–Jamie Horwitz at 202-549-4921, jhdcpr@starpower.net

On Twitter: @oaklandea, #Unite4OaklandKids, #WeAreOEA, #RedForEd, #WeAreCTA

OEA on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OaklandEA/

 

FOR MEDIA PLANNING PURPOSES

Picketing, Rallies, Marching Set for Thursday, Feb. 21, Start of Oakland Education Association Strike 

Here is Schedule of Events and Logistics for Media Planning

 

OAKLAND –The 3,000 members of the Oakland Education Association (OEA), joined by parents and other supporters, will begin picketing schools and other sites in Oakland Thursday morning, Feb 21. Below, for planning purposes, is a preliminary schedule of picketing locations, rallies and marches scheduled for the first day of the work stoppage in the Oakland Unified School District:

 

6:30-10:30 a.m. — Picketing at all school sites.

 

7:30 a.m. – Media Availability:  OEA union President Keith Brown, California Teachers Association President Eric Heins, teachers and parents will speak on the picket line at Manzanita Community School, 2409 East 27th St., Oakland, 94601. Teachers will be joined by members of the California Teachers Association Board of Directors.

 

11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. — Rally and March:Oakland City Hall in Frank Ogawa Plaza, and then a march to the headquarters of the Oakland Unified School District at 1000 Broadway. Speakers will include Becky Pringle, vice president of the 3 million-member National Education Association.

 

2:30-4 p.m. – Picketing at all OUSD schools.

 

5:30 p.m. – OEA press briefing: OEA offices,272 East 12th St., Oakland, 94607. The briefing will be broadcast live on the OEA Facebook page:https://www.facebook.com/OaklandEA/

 

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The Oakland Education Association represents 3,000 OUSD educators, including teachers, librarians, counselors, nurses, psychologists, psychiatric social workers, therapists, substitutes, and early childhood and adult teachers. OEA is affiliated with the 325,000-member California Teachers Association and the 3 million-member National Education Association.

 

Categories Accountability, Oakland

Oakland Teachers Will Strike February 21!

By dianeravitch
February 16, 2019 //
5

BREAKING BAY AREA NEWS: In a news conference this afternoon, the 3,000-member Oakland Education Association union set a strike date of Thursday, Feb. 21. Please see OEA news release below…..

 

Mike Myslinski

Headquarters Communications

California Teachers Association

1705 Murchison Drive

Burlingame, CA 94010

650-552-5324

408-921-5769 (cell)

www.cta.org

 

NEWS RELEASE 

February 16, 2019

 

Oakland Education Association

272 East 12th Street

Oakland, CA 94606

510-763-4020

www.oaklandea.org

 

Contacts:

–OEA President Keith Brown on cell at 510-866-8280.

–Mike Myslinski with CTA Communications on cell at 408-921-5769.

On Twitter: @oaklandea, #Unite4OaklandKids, #WeAreOEA, #RedForEd, #WeAreCTA

OEA on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OaklandEA/

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Oakland Education Association Sets Strike Date

of Thursday, Feb. 21, to Fight for Oakland Schools 

Priorities Remain – Smaller Class Sizes, More Support for Students,

Living Wages and a Halt to Destructive School Closures

 

OAKLAND – To stand and fight for the quality schools that all Oakland students deserve, educators in Oakland Unified School District will go on strike on Thursday, Feb. 21, the president of the 3,000-member Oakland Education Association (OEA) announced at a news conference today where he was flanked by parents, students and teachers standing in solidarity.

 

“Bargaining with the district has not — in two years — produced an agreement that will pay teachers enough to allow them to stay in Oakland, or make class sizes more conducive to teaching and learning, or provide our students with the supports they need to thrive,” OEA President Keith Brown said.  “The only option that Oakland teachers, parents and students have left to win the schools Oakland students truly deserve, and to take control of our school district back from the control of billionaire campaign donors, is for the 3,000 members of the Oakland Education Association to go on strike.”

 

In key areas such as salaries and hiring more counselors to support students, a new report by a neutral state-appointed fact-finder comes somewhat closer to what educators are demanding than what the district is offering, but still does not go far enough, Brown said. The new report is non-binding. It’s release means that educators can legally strike.

 

For example, the report by fact-finder Najeeb Khoury recommends 6 percent in retroactive raises – 3 percent in 2017-18 school year and 3 percent this year – but no guaranteed raise for 2019-2020, while the last final offer by the district was only 5 percent over three years. Oakland educators are seeking 12 percent over three years to help halt the district’s teacher retention crisis. The report also supports hiring more counselors and reducing the student-to-counselor ratio from 600:1 to 500:1. OEA had sought a 250:1 ratio.

 

Years of district neglect, overspending at the top, and the unregulated growth of the charter industry have starved Oakland schools of necessary resources, OEA President Brown said. One in five Oakland educators leaves the district each year due to low pay, leaving nearly 600 classrooms without an experienced teacher last school year. Class sizes are high, and students are without full-time nurses and an adequate number of counselors. Yet, OUSD received $23 million in additional revenue this year, and receives 25 percent more funding per student than the average unified school district statewide, Brown said.

 

“There is only one party in our bargaining with Oakland Unified School District that is pushing to improve our public schools for 36,000 Oakland students, and that is the Oakland Education Association,” said Brown. “It is time for the Oakland school board and our superintendent to make a choice – are they on the side of the billionaires who fund their campaigns and are pushing for more draconian budget cuts and school closures that will further hurt our kids, or are they on the side of teachers, students, and parents fighting for the schools Oakland students deserve?”

 

In an open letter to Oakland teachers, parents and students on Friday, Brown declared, “We are in a struggle for the soul of public education in Oakland, and billionaires can’t teach our kids.” He criticized school board members who were backed by billionaires for pushing a competition-based “portfolio” model for Oakland that “has led to a patchwork of privatization, school closures, and unimproved student outcomes in districts like New Orleans, Newark and Detroit.”

 

Brown said the fact-finder supports OEA’s bargaining goals by finding that the district’s “teacher retention crisis is much worse than the state average and must be addressed, that lower class sizes will help improve educational outcomes for students, and that more supports for students are possible. Further, the report affirms that the unchecked growth of charter schools is creating a systemic inequity that is starving our public schools of the resources they need to thrive.”

 

The entire fact-finder’s report is posted on the union’s website: www.oaklandea.org. The full and comprehensive OEA presentation to the fact-finder – titled “Remedying Educational Malpractice,” with extensive data supporting the union’s positions – is also posted on the website and can be foundhere.

 

Oakland educators plan to strike for smaller class sizes, more school counselors and nurses to adequately support students, and living wages to allow educators to stay in Oakland. Teachers are also calling for a halt to a billionaire-backed plan to close up to 24 neighborhood schools in primarily African American and Latinx Oakland neighborhoods. In addition to being disruptive and destabilizing for students and communities, school closures will also lead to further loss of students to charter schools – privately managed, but publicly funded schools that make up 30 percent of student enrollment in Oakland, and are already costing Oakland schools over $57 million a year, according to a key study.

 

The OEA union announced Feb. 4 that 95 percent of educators who took part in a strike authorization vote cast ballots in favor of allowing their union leaders to call a strike, if necessary, and strike preparations are continuing. The OEA Executive Board backed the strike option.

 

There is a groundswell of community support for Oakland educators. OEA is a co-sponsor of theBread For Ed campaign that has raised more than $46,000 to feed students in a district where an overwhelming number of children are low-income and depend on free or reduced-price meals during school. The OEA Membership Assistance Fund has raised more than $20,000 through a Go Fund Me drive. In addition, over 25 Bay Area CTA teachers’ union chapters have donated more than $20,000 to the Membership Assistance Fund as well.

 

The OEA is affiliated with the California Teachers Association, which coordinated a statewide#RedForEd day of action at public schools on Friday, Feb. 15,  to show support for Oakland educators in their fight for the quality schools all students deserve – see more information here. The Oakland showdown comes after many recent teacher strikes around the nation about protecting public schools and students, including the successful January strike in Los Angeles Unified School District by more than 30,000 members of the United Teachers Los Angeles union.

 

Oakland educators have been working without a contract since July 2017 and are the lowest-paid in Alameda County.

 

The news conference today was broadcast live on the Oakland Education Association Facebook page and is archived there:https://www.facebook.com/OaklandEA/

 

“We will strike with our parents, whose overwhelming support in the last few weeks has been felt by every single teacher in Oakland,” said OEA President Brown, who is a teacher at Bret Harte Middle School. “We will strike for our students, we will strike for educational justice, we will strike for racial justice, and we will strike for the future of public education in Oakland. Our students, families, and community are the center of everything Oakland educators do, and we are all in the fight for the schools Oakland students deserve together.”

###

The Oakland Education Association represents 3,000 OUSD educators, including teachers, librarians, counselors, nurses, psychologists, psychiatric social workers, therapists, substitutes, and early childhood and adult teachers. OEA is affiliated with the 325,000-member California Teachers Association and the 3 million-member National Education Association.

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Class size, Education Reform, Oakland, Resistance, Teacher Pay

TFA Warns Its Oakland Recruits Not to Strike or Risk Losing Thousands of Dollars

By dianeravitch
February 16, 2019 //
19

 

Teach for America has received huge sums from Walton and other anti-union foundations on the assumption that they would be the teachers in nom-unioncharters. But what happens when they work in a union district like Oakland? This AP article by journalist Sally Ho says that TFA warns its corps members to cross the picket line or risk losing Americorps funds that lure them into TFA. The young people who are tempted to join TFA should be aware that they will be expected to act as scabs.

Categories Oakland, Teach for America, Union

Denver Teachers End Strike; Oakland Teachers Likely to Strike Next

By dianeravitch
February 15, 2019 //
9

 

Denver teachers ended their strike and settled with the district for a substantial pay raise, CNN reports:

“Denver educators have been promised pay raises as part of a tentative deal they reached with their school district after three days on strike.

“Under the tentative agreement between Denver Public Schools and the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, educators would see between 7% and 11% increases to their base salaries and a 20-step salary schedule, the union said in a statement Thursday.
“Teachers went on strike to demand higher, stable salaries, because the district uses unpredictable bonuses to compensate for low base pay.
“They also hoped higher salaries would keep more educators from leaving the city, where the cost of living has skyrocketed in recent years, one teacher told CNN.
The agreement would also put an end to “exorbitant five-figure bonuses” for senior administrators, the union’s statement said.
“This agreement is a win, plain and simple: for our students, for our educators, and for our communities,” union President Henry Roman said.”

Meanwhile, Oakland teachers authorized a strike and will do so if necessary.

This historic wave of teacher militancy seems to have a multiplier effect.

Teachers in most states are underpaid and finally have the public support they need as media coverage accurately portrays the national underinvestment in education over the past decade amp longer.

Back to Oakland.

Poor Oakland has been a Petri dish for Reform. State takeovers. Near bankruptcy. A series of Broadie Superintendents who opened multiple charters, stripping the district of resources.

No wonder teachers are talking Strike.

As teachers in Oakland prepare for a possible strike, the district office is trying to hire substitutes (scabs) to replace the teachers, offering double what subs usually earn. The Oakland teachers will have none of it.

https://eastbaymajority.com/oakland-unified-school-district-treats-scabs-better-than-teachers/?fbclid=IwAR1jZyKck5lrmS18PMFrfyfJX8HbqEGlDyVRjC4Uz4SC6njV6clETbg0jUY

Oakland teachers, you have the support of your allies across the nation!

Save public education in Oakland!

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, California, Charter Schools, Denver, Oakland, Privatization, Teachers

California: Teachers in Los Angeles and Oakland Preparing for Confrontation

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2018 //
9

Bill Raden of Capital & Main reports on potential strike developments in Los Angeles and Oakland.

Two California teachers unions, which are currently deadlocked in separate contract talks with their respective school districts, are on the verge of launching the West Coast’s biggest teacher walkout since 1989. What happens next will decide far more than fair wages for career educators. At stake are broader principles of equity, expressed as contract demands for smaller class sizes and less testing, the addition of sufficient health and social services staff, and an investment in community schooling and fair funding — aimed at restoring public education as a public good for all Californians, rather than as a private interest granted to the lucky few…

Meanwhile, an estimated 90 Oakland Unified teachers skipped classes December 10 in a one-day wildcat sickout to protest some of the state’s lowest teacher pay — against a backdrop of California’s fast-rising living costs. But a more fundamental grievance is with the $60 million that Oakland Unified must cut over the next two years. It has led superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell to adopt a draconian district downsizing plan that could close up to 24 mostly low-income neighborhood public schools and coordinate the remainder of the 87-campus district with the city’s 34 charters on things like enrollment and transportation. The strategy has been likened to a “portfolio model,” the controversial template for privatized district governance that favors charter expansion at the expense of traditional public schools.

It also bears an uncanny resemblance to “Re-Imagine LAUSD,” the prematurely leaked but still mostly secret pet portfolio plan of L.A. Unified supe Austin Beutner — just one of the issues behind the takeover by 50 placard-carrying protesters at the L.A. school board meeting last Tuesday. Students, parents and teachers seized the floor and unfurled a banner of union-aligned demands: an end to random student searches; reductions in class sizes and testing; and the hiring of more health workers, community schools and per-pupil funding. For good measure, they also chanted down attempts by board president Mónica Garcia to restore order, a caterwaul that eventually drove Beutner and his board allies from the room…

If November’s blue wave means the tide has indeed turned against California’s market-driven ed reformers, grassroots activists aren’t resting on any laurels. That’s why they are circulating a petition launched by the Oakland Public Education Network (OPEN), asking Governor-elect Gavin Newsom to abide by four seemingly common sense hiring principles:

*No conflicts of business interests

*Education-related appointments must strictly mirror California’s 90/10 proportion of public-to-charter-school enrollments

*No more Betsy DeVoses guarding the regulatory henhouse (i.e., appoint only seasoned, public school-committed educators to the Advisory Commission on Charter Schools)

*Genuinely partner with the public schools community to uproot what OPEN considers the predatory incentives and equity barriers that it says are the legacy of California’s 25-year-long ed reform wrong turn.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Oakland, Privatization, Resistance, Teachers, Unions

Oakland Teachers: Enough Is Enough!

By dianeravitch
December 10, 2018 //
5

Teachers in Oakland, California, are preparing to strike. The following press release explains why.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE * FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE * FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACTS:

The Wildcat Underground, Oakland High School Educators United

Twitter:​​ @WildcatUndrgrnd
IG:​​ wildcat_underground
FB:​​ Wildcat Underground

Miles Murray,​​ English Teacher, Oakland High OEA Rep: (510) 684-2956
Suzi LeBaron​​, Science Teacher and Department Head/Pathway Director: (707) 695-6873 Cole Margen​​,
History Teacher and Oakland High OEA Rep: (925) 300-8634
Alex Webster Guiney​​, Special Education Teacher: (415) 722-7668

Oakland Unified does not remember the past and is condemning its teachers and students to repeat it.

The teachers of Oakland Unified School District have been working without a contract since 2017.

Oakland Education Association (OEA, AFL-CIO) bargaining with the district reached an impasse last spring. Like a glacier calving in global warming, the rumbling and cracking is escalating in Oakland public schools.

Teachers at Oakland High School are some of the most vocal in the district and are organizing for the inevitable fight.

In the coming weeks, there will be a series of actions, including an Educators Day Out, which will include a march and rally at Oakland City Hall by 70 Oakland High educators, plus students, families, and supporters, on a scheduled school day before winter break.

“You can call it a walk-out or a work stoppage if you want. It is not an official OEA action. Our union has been following the rules in negotiations for almost two years and the district continues to stall, except when moving in the wrong direction. Teachers at Oakland High have had enough. We need to take action to be heard, and the actions will only escalate from here, and hopefully spread to other sites before the School Board does more damage. We must make our city government realize that that the health of our city depends on strong, equitable, public​ schools,” said Miles Murray, English teacher and Oakland High OEA representative, who said that a strike is not off the table. “In fact, it’s looming and hopefully this and, other ‘Wildcat Underground’ actions will show the district, city officials, and our fellow teachers the high level of solidarity, organization, and fortitude we have. If the district finally offers a raise to match inflation, sane class sizes, and all the rest of our demands that will truly benefit our students, we won’t have to strike.”

In 1996, Oakland teachers went on strike in January and didn’t return until spring. Unfortunately, many of the issues teachers face in Oakland have not changed substantially since 1996. In fact, they look eerily similar. Oakland continues to lead state school districts in the percentage of its budget paid to consultants and top-salaried district-level administrators.

“Systemically, nothing has changed in 22 years, since our last strike. It’s scary that OUSD has not figured out how to evolve and improve in more than two decades,” said Alex Webster Guiney, a Special Education teacher and school site OEA rep. “OUSD administration still does not recognize the inherent value of teacher satisfaction and longevity,” she added.

1996 STRIKE HISTORY HERE:

https://libcom.org/library/oakland-teachers-strike-1996-iww?fbclid=IwAR1BscKe60H-EQSnkJ63Ag3VCJrhjMid PiWhdFuqk4RGkqyxd9RlcNtoIIY)

Oakland teachers make considerably less than teachers in surrounding districts in the Bay Area where the cost of living is similar, or even less than in Oakland. The cost of living in Oakland has risen astronomically as San Francisco has tapped it for commuter tech housing, and as the city has experienced a renaissance in restaurants, bars, and shopping. With all of this, rents have skyrocketed as Oakland educators continue to fall behind.

“It is ridiculous that the majority of educators in Oakland can barely afford to live in the community in which we teach,” said Oakland High OEA rep Cole Margen, a history teacher in Oakland High’s RISE Academy, which serves a population of recent immigrants and students learning English as a second language. “Our salary caps out at 80 thousand after 20 years in the district and that is nowhere near enough to live on, or retire on, if we want to support ourselves and our families -– especially with the housing bubble that has so lovingly accommodated the tech exodus from San Francisco.”

By comparison teachers in surrounding districts rise to higher salaries earlier in their careers, and finish much higher with more secure retirements for their time spent teaching.

“The primary difference between Oakland and many of these districts is the percentage of black and brown students we educate,” said Suzi LeBaron, a science teacher, department head, and pathway director at Oakland High. “You can look at the demographics and the comparative salaries and see a clear trend. This is institutional racism at work and no one is talking about it. Vultures in the form of consultants and top-salaried administrators continue to circle and pick our district apart, because that is OUSD’s history.”

A newly credentialed teacher with a BA starts in Oakland at $46,570. Our median rent for a 1-bedroom apartment is $2,330/month. (Oakland demographics, 25.3% Hispanic/Latinx, and 28% African American).
In Fremont, where the median rent is $2,086, a teacher starts at $66,398, nearly $20,000 more. (Fremont demographics, 14.8% Hispanic/Latinx, and 3.3% African American).

In Mountain View-Los Altos district, where the median rent is about $450 higher than Oakland, the starting salary is $82,819. (Mountain View demographics, 21.7% Hispanic/Latinx, and 2.2% African American).

In fact, even though Mountain View teachers don’t get a raise in the first five years, at the end of those five years they have earned ​$170,611 MORE ​​than a 5-year teacher in Oakland. That’s the difference between home stability and no home stability. Oakland teachers cannot continue to work to better the lives of our students while their own livelihood is at risk. They can no longer tolerate a system of attrition.

Another point of contention is the education of children with special needs: “These children are disproportionately assigned to our public schools because their applications can be rejected by charter schools,” Guiney said. Charter schools are NOT obligated to provide services to children with special needs, but public schools are. As a result, OUSD wants to raise the cap on Special Ed class sizes in order to balance out overcrowding in general ed classrooms. “Adding more high-need children to a Special Ed classroom in order to reduce the number of children in general ed classrooms is an inefficient way of handling overcrowding, and will only end up reducing the quality of education for all students,” Guiney added.

Unfortunately, OUSD’s continued financial woes are the result of continuing sloppy mismanagement due to the historic attitude that students in Oakland didn’t, and still don’t, matter as much as students in surrounding communities.

OUSD supports a larger percentage of consultants, upper-level managers, and administrators than other state school districts, and a smaller percentage is spent on direct services to students (include the salaries and retention of their teachers). This is a classic example of educational redlining.
Instead, the district is increasingly relying on additional sources of revenue (parcel taxes and state support for career and technical education, as two examples) to keep programs robust for students. The actual work of teachers, however, continues to be minimized.

Additionally, the growth of private and public charter schools in Oakland (staffed with non-unionized teachers) has resulted in a well-documented “white flight” from Oakland’s public schools, further emphasizing inequities.

While OUSD talks about the possibility of closing 24 public schools, the district has approved a large number of largely-unregulated charter schools that continue to drain resources and students from public schools, with no proven outcomes. In fact, OUSD has recently hired another top-level (highly paid) administrator to oversee the Office of Charter Schools, all the while refusing to bargain with its nearly 3.000 public school educators represented by OEA.

Categories Accountability, California, Oakland, Racism, Teacher Pay, Unions

Oakland: The Laurene Powell Jobs XQ School That Never Happened

By dianeravitch
September 13, 2018 //
34

Jane Nylund, a parent activist in Oakland, read about the Guide prepared by XQ Project, the vanity program of billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs. She felt inspired to share the Open Letter that she wrote to Powell-Jobs in 2016. It is about a “super-school” that didn’t happen.

She wrote me a few days ago:

Enjoyed the post about Ms. Jobs and the XQ project; this was an old msg from 2 years ago I wrote as a response to a lot of ego and self-promotion; not much has changed, but thankfully, the door did hit Ms. Jobs on the way out. The project miraculously went away, along with Antwan Wilson, who was its champion. As we now know, Antwan Wilson was hired from Oakland to be the chancellor in D.C., but fired in D.C. after he pulled strings to get his daughter into a favorable school, violating a policy he had just promulgated.

———- ———
From: Jane Nylund
Date: Sun, Sep 18, 2016 at 11:25 PM
Subject: An Open Letter to Ms. Laurene Powell Jobs
To: oaklandpublicschoolparents@yahoogroups.com

After hearing about the new Summit School experiment that Laurene Jobs plans to fund here in the city of Oakland (once again, corporations telling us what we need, because they know better!), I just had to put together a really good rant. Here are some links to information regarding my rant. It would be laughable if so many of those power brokers didn’t think it was just the greatest school project ever for the city of Oakland:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/09/14/100-million-jobs-widow-aims-remake-schools-high-tech-age/90353636/
http://xqsuperschool.org/abouttheproject

Dear Ms. Jobs:

I read with great interest your newest philanthropic project: to bring a brand new super(!) school to the city of Oakland, I am writing you to please consider rethinking that $10 million bet (that’s what it’s called in the USA Today article) and consider the following:

While your idea of “virtual chemistry labs” sounds utterly fantastic to your software programming team, the fact is that children require actual hands-on lab training in order to properly study science. While I understand that the procurement of Pyrex glassware, microscopes, lab benches, hoods, and other equipment isn’t quite as sexy as, say computers and software, it’s really what’s needed in Oakland schools (and elsewhere). What you are telling us is that even though you have the means to distribute all kinds of school equipment and supplies (have you even heard of Pyrex), none of this makes you or your Silicon Valley friends and relations any money. So instead of providing students what they need and deserve, you provide them with your idea of the kind of chemistry labs that are good enough for you, and your friends and relations. There is also the added plus of another glowing screen for our kids to stare at during the day.

So from the website, here is your idea of a Super School in Oakland. The other schools on your site sounded a lot cooler, but this is what Oakland gets:

“Summit Elevate will bring world-class education to Oakland and innovate further, taking student achievement to new levels. At Summit Elevate, students will benefit from learning that integrates fine arts, architecture, and arts and sciences. Partnering with California College of the Arts and Oakland Unified School District, students will truly be “in the driver’s seat” of their own educations, whether selecting their own network of personal advisors and mentors from education and industry, or using Basecamp’s digital platform to ensure college- and career-readiness.”

Well, you kind of missed the boat on that one. Oakland already has high schools that integrate most, if not all those subjects (Oakland Tech and Skyline). Other high schools have struggled for years to provide a similar curriculum, but programs were cut. We old-fashioned types call this newfangled idea of yours an enriched curriculum, the kind I grew up with and which disappeared during the Prop. 13 days. There’s nothing new about it; sorry you didn’t get the memo. Oakland already has charter schools that focus on the arts (OSA and COVA), technology (BayTech and EBIA), and language immersion (Francophone, Yu Ming).

So, in conclusion, how about spending that $10 Million this way:

1) The Montera woodshop teacher needs some upgraded tools and safety equipment-maybe a student taking the class will end up building you some world-class kitchen cabinets. The local community just ponied up the first $5000 for the teacher; hey, go crazy and do a company match!

2) The Montera music teacher needs supplies and funds for music purchases, chairs, and field trips/band camps-maybe one of his students will end up becoming a jazz/blues/classical/rock/pop/latin musician. You could see him/her performing at Yoshis

3) The Montera art teacher needs newspaper, yogurt containers, milk jugs-get ’em from your friends and drop them off

4) Every teacher in the district needs Kleenex and paper towels. They can’t reuse those (well, they could, but there’s a serious yuk factor), but they reuse practically everything else. They also each need a raise and a mani-pedi

5) Oakland Tech (Tech stands for Technical-maybe you didn’t know that) needs plotter ink and copy paper

6) Several schools need earthquake safety retrofits-no explanation needed, I hope

7) Castlemont recently started its music program back up again-see #2

8) Restart some industrial arts classes in the schools again, but not virtual ones. The students need to use real tools.

Thanks for thinking of us here at OUSD. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

Categories Billionaires, Failure, Oakland, Resistance
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