On the agenda: Charters, protests and Tilden
By Katy Murphy
Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 5:58 pm in School board news, charter schools,union contract.
Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 5:58 pm in School board news, charter schools,union contract.
Oakland Unified’s hard-line charter schools office says the district should renew its contracts with two schools: Oakland School for the Arts, a middle and high school located in the renovated Fox Theater building downtown, and Berkley Maynard, one of six charters in Oakland that are run by Aspire Public Schools, a management organization.
image by Nick Bygon, flickr.com/creativecommons
Also on Wednesday’s school board agenda is a “conditional endorsement” of the March 4 Statewide Day to Defend Public Education, which will include public schools, colleges and universities.
Translation: The district will support a “teach-in” and demonstrations before and after school — as long as the actions don’t “impede student learning,” according to OUSD Spokesman Troy Flint.
Betty Olson-Jones, the teachers union president, says there is not a strike planned for March 4, but that some teachers and students plan to be out of school that day. Others, she said, will picket before school starts or, possibly, take their children on a “walking field trip” to demonstrate.
“What we’re trying to do is make it a very educational event,” she said.
Olson-Jones said the union sees the purpose of March 4 activities as twofold: to bring attention to the reduced education funding in the state, and to rally support for the Oakland teachers union, which is in the final stage of contract negotiations with the school district. (Status update: A fact-finding panel is scheduled to hold a hearing the week of Feb. 22 and could come out with a report in early March.)
