California’s Teachers Are Finally Going After the Original Sin That Wrecked the State’s Public Schools
“There’s no reason that California shouldn’t be the state that spends the most on students.”
On February 20, just before Oakland’s teachers went on strike, Carmelita Reyes organized a carpool of 35 city principals to travel to Sacramento to meet with state lawmakers. Their plan: to urge legislators to spend more on schools, cancel the Oakland Unified School District’s $36 million in outstanding debt, and revise the state’s laws on charter schools.
A day before the trip, Reyes, the co-principal of Oakland International High School, had laid out their argument in an open letter to the state that she’d written with 74 other school leaders. “If our education budget is a reflection of our values, then we are morally bankrupt when it comes to our children,” they wrote. That letter echoed a San Francisco Chronicle op-ed written in early February by Oakland school board president Aimee Eng and board member Jody London, who warned that the district’s issues “will be the problems that far too many California school districts will face in a few years if the state does not step up to solve the basic problem: inadequate funding.”
When the principals got to Sacramento—dressed in red in a nod to the #RedForEd teacher protests that swept the nation last year—they split up and met with lawmakers, staffers, and Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond. Cliff Hong, the principal of Roosevelt Middle School, said he left the capitol that day feeling empowered, noting that legislators offered “some assurances” they would spend more money on education.
Now comes the hard part. The recent strikes in Los Angeles and Oakland are over, with teachers winning raises and calls for checks on charter schools, CONTINUE READING: California’s Teachers Are Finally Going After the Original Sin That Wrecked the State’s Public Schools – Mother Jones
