OAKLAND — Oakland's new superintendent of schools, Tony Smith, reported some sobering news at a meeting in the fall: The state's finances were so rocky that the district likely would be forced to slash up to $100 million in the near future.
"This is not about holding our breath," Smith said. "This is not simply about doing business as usual, and feeling like we can get through this and hang on."
If it wasn't clear at the time whether Smith considered collective bargaining to be "business as usual," it is now. On Wednesday night, he asked the school board to put an end to negotiations with the Oakland teachers union and impose its last contract offer, which included no changes to pay or benefits. It
Polls
did.
The vote was unprecedented in the city's public school system. Never before has an Oakland school board unilaterally implemented a contract under which its teachers work. In doing so, it ended a process that began in January 2008, 18 months before the district emerged from a six-year state takeover and Smith began to lead the newly empowered district.
"It is an unfortunate and sad time," Smith said during a news conference Thursday morning, held in the same room where teachers had registered their anger and disgust the night before. "This is the closing out of two years of hard bargaining that started under state administration."
Smith acknowledged many of the points the union leadership has made: Oakland teachers are
paid less, on average, than their peers in most districts in the area. Working conditions are often difficult. Turnover is high. The school district has failed to devote 55 percent of its budget to classroom teacher compensation, the minimum