Oakland Teachers Are on the Verge of a Strike
After two wildcat strikes in recent months, Oakland teachers are now on the verge of a district-wide strike. Like other recent teacher walkouts, Oakland educators are up against a school-reform agenda pushed by billionaires.
Wherever there’s a battle over public education lately, a billionaire is somehow involved. Los Angeles, Newark, the “education reform” project as a whole — the ultrarich always have their hands in efforts to antagonize teachers.
One city they’ve now set their sights on: Oakland, where teachers are in the middle of union contract negotiations and just authorized a strike. Some teachers stayed out of school in one-day wildcat strikes in December and January, joined by many of their students. According to posts circulating on Facebook and Instagram, Oakland students have planned to call out sick in solidarity with teachers today.
Just like other teachers’ union battles these days, the contract fight pits students and working people against billionaire pro-corporate school reformers and the politicians backing them.
Big Education Ape: Hundreds of OUSD Students Walked Out of Class Today: Student Organizers tell us what’s next for their movement. | East Bay Majority #Unite4OaklandKids #WeAreOEA #WeAreCTA #strikeready - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2019/02/hundreds-of-ousd-students-walked-out-of.html
The superintendent of the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD), Kyla Johnson-Trammell, wants to cut teachers’ already low pay and expand class sizes. Independent of the contract fight, she also intends to replace public schools with more unaccountable charter schools.
Johnson-Trammell claims a budget crisis is forcing these moves. But the district’s “crisis,” like so many other claimed budgetary crises around the country, comes after school privatization advocates helped drain the district’s funds through previous charter expansions; their allies in the superintendent’s seat and on the school board have overspent wildly on administrative salaries and corporate consultants.
Charter schools are the thin wedge of the privatization movement. They open opportunities for profiteering, weaken teachers’ unions, and expand the control of the wealthy over the public school system. The superintendent’s plan to further expand charter enrollment would drain more resources from Oakland public schools, which would be used to justify more privatization. But the Oakland Education Association (OEA), the teachers’ union, is demanding that the district adequately fund its schools. They are asking for higher teacher pay, smaller class sizes, and lower workloads for staff.
Who caused OUSD’s budget woes? What political circumstances have enabled the school privatization movement to flourish in Oakland? And why do billionaires care so much about charter schools?
The OEA Contract Fight and the OUSD Budget
Oakland schools are currently experiencing a series of crises. OUSD has a severe problem keeping teachers in classrooms: about one in five teachers leave the district each year. High teacher turnover results in disruptions to student learning and a reliance on untrained teachers with emergency credentials. (In 2017–18, at least 15 percent of new OUSD teachers had emergency credentials, and at least 30 percent of teacher applicants did.)
The cause of the teacher retention crisis isn’t a mystery. As the cost of living in Oakland skyrockets, CONTINUE READING: Oakland Teachers Are on the Verge of a Strike
