Education

School District Faces Conflict Over Teacher Pay and “Redesign” of Five Schools

Published

10 years ago

January 30, 2015

The Oakland Unified School District’s three new school board members and newly hired superintendent have taken their positions just as two of the district’s most protracted conflicts are coming to a head – poorly paid teachers who are demanding decent pay and job security, and communities at five schools that are fed up with district-led reorganizations that have repeatedly disrupted and destabilized their schools over the last decade.

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Most everyone agrees that Oakland’s teachers desperately need a raise. According to the teachers’ union, they are the lowest-paid in Alameda County and lowest-paid in the nine-county Bay Area.

As a result, the district has a 20 percent turnover rate each year, meaning the schools are stuck on a treadmill – hiring and recruiting mostly untrained teachers.

Angry teachers came out in force Wednesday night, marching down Park Boulevard to rally and speak at this week’s Board of Education meeting at La Escuelita Education Center.

In protest, teachers at many schools are staging a slowdown, called “work to rule,” coming at the beginning of the school day and leaving when school ends, not giving or correcting homework or doing any of the myriad other tasks they generally do.

Dancers support teachers at a rally at Wednesday’s school board meeting. Photo by Ken Epstein.

The district is offering a 10 percent raise over three years – 3 percent this year, starting in January; 3 percent next January; and 4 percent the following year, depending on the funds that come from the state.

Oakland Education Association (OEA) President Trish Gorham says the mid-year 3 percent raise this year does not keep up with the 3.25 percent other Bay Area teachers have received.

“That just makes us fall further behind,” she said.

Supt. Antwan Wilson responded to teachers at the meeting and in an email to the school community.

“We need to finalize these negotiations so that we can focus all of our energy on the work that is before us to ensure quality schools for all – and there is a lot of work to do,” he wrote.

“I remain committed to making Oakland the leader in attracting, retaining and rewarding the best talent,” he continued. “While this vision cannot be achieved overnight, it is possible.”

He pointed to the constraints the district is facing. “We can’t forget that California remains 46^th out of 50 states in per pupil spending.” Further, he said the district still has to pay $6 million per year to the state to repay the $100 million bailout OUSD received when it went into bankruptcy and was taken over by the state in 2003.

In addition to salaries, OEA President Gorham says teachers are concerned about the district’s desire to weaken teacher transfer provisions in the contract, allowing the administration to unilaterally and involuntarily transfer teachers from schools and weaken seniority rights to open positions.

The three high schools facing “redesign” this year – Fremont, McClymonds and Castlemont – were reconstituted three years ago, and every teacher had to reapply for their job.

Now the district is going to do it again, Gorham said. “Where is the analysis of what they did then? What is going to happen to the teachers who don’t want to leave their school sites and are forced to leave?”

The administration and the school board have admitted that they have to do a better job explaining their plans to “transform” five “failing” schools this year – Brookfield Elementary and Frick Middle schools, in addition to the two East Oakland and one West Oakland high schools.

Most everyone agrees that Oakland’s schools must make deep changes in order to improve graduation rates and post-secondary admission rates, particularly for African American and Latino students.

But questions and concerns remain. A group of students from Fremont High and other schools came to this week’s board meeting to oppose the plan. A group from the McClymonds community called on the district to explain what it is planning and to include the community in making the changes.

The districts plan calls for an open competition period to submit to school redesign proposals, starting in February. Charter schools and other outside organizations are eligible to apply to run the schools.

This approach was adopted by the school board in 2013 and re-approved in 2014 under the leadership of then Board President David Kakishiba and acting Supt Gary Yee. Supt. Wilson was hired to implement it.

District spokesman Troy Flint told the Post that no school would be forced to become a charter over community opposition. If a school is opposed to “the idea of charter, it would naturally follow that a charter proposal would not prevail in the selection process at that particular school,” he said.

State law permits groups of parents or teachers at individual schools to apply to become a charter, said Gorham. But the district is adopting a different approach: open up a competition for charters to submit applications, and the board and superintendent will make the decision.

According to Gorham and others, the district approach dooms the existing schools. “If you publically call them ‘failing schools,’ how many parents are going to enroll their kids in the schools next year?”

“It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. You destabilize, reconstitute, and then you convert to charter,” said Gorham.

Instead, a number of the opponents of the plan say the district should listen respectfully with the school communities, find out what they need, and pour in resources and other support to make them schools that students want to attend and where parents want to send their children.

Flint denied that anyone at OUSD referred to the schools as failing.

“I’m not aware of anyone publicly referring to these schools as ‘failing schools’. Perhaps this was mentioned at a meeting I didn’t attend, but that’s not what we’ve been saying in our official communications,” he wrote to the Post. “We do refer to patterns of relatively low academic performance and under-enrollment.”

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Five Years After COVID-19 Began, a Struggling Child Care Workforce Faces New Threats

Five years ago, as COVID-19 lockdowns and school closures began, most early educators continued to work in person, risking their own health and that of their families. “Early educators were called essential, but they weren’t provided with the personal protective equipment they needed to stay safe,” said CSCCE Executive Director Lea Austin. “There were no special shopping hours or ways for them to access safety materials in those early and scary months of the pandemic, leaving them to compete with other shoppers. One state even advised them to wear trash bags if they couldn’t find PPE.”

Published

1 week ago

March 24, 2025

Oakland Post

UC Berkeley photo.

UC Berkeley News

In the first eight months of the COVID-19 pandemic alone, 166,000 childcare jobs were lost across the nation. Significant recovery didn’t begin until the advent of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) Child Care Stabilization funds in April 2021.

Today, child care employment is back to slightly above pre-pandemic levels, but job growth has remained sluggish at 1.4% since ARPA funding allocations ended in October 2023, according to analysis by the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE) at UC Berkeley. In the last six months, childcare employment has hovered around 1.1 million.

Yet more than two million American parents report job changes due to problems accessing child care. Why does the childcare sector continue to face a workforce crisis that has predated the pandemic? Inadequate compensation drives high turnover rates and workforce shortages that predate the pandemic. Early childhood educators are skilled professionals; many have more than 15 years of experience and a college degree, but their compensation does not reflect their expertise. The national median hourly wage is $13.07, and only a small proportion of early educators receive benefits.

And now a new round of challenges is about to hit childcare. The low wages paid in early care and education result in 43% of early educator families depending on at least one public support program, such as Medicaid or food stamps, both of which are threatened by potential federal funding cuts. Job numbers will likely fall as many early childhood educators need to find jobs with healthcare benefits or better pay.

In addition, one in five child care workers are immigrants, and executive orders driving deportation and ICE raids will further devastate the entire early care and education system. These stresses are part of the historical lack of respect the workforce faces, despite all they contribute to children, families, and the economy.

The economic impact was equally dire. Even as many providers tried to remain open to ensure their financial security, the combination of higher costs to meet safety protocols and lower revenue from fewer children enrolled led to job losses, increased debt, and program closures.

Eventually, the federal government responded with historic short-term investments through ARPA, which stabilized childcare programs. These funds provided money to increase pay or provide financial relief to early educators to improve their income and well-being. The childcare sector began to slowly recover. Larger job gains were made in 2022 and 2023, and as of November 2023, national job numbers had slightly surpassed pre-pandemic levels, though state and metro areas continued to fluctuate.

Many states have continued to support the workforce after ARPA funding expired in late 2024. In Maine, a salary supplement initiative has provided monthly stipends of $240-$540 to educators working in licensed home- or center-based care, based on education and experience, making it one of the nation’s leaders in its support of early educators. Early educators say the program has enabled them to raise wages, which has improved staff retention. Yet now, Governor Janet Mills is considering cutting the stipend program in half.

“History shows that once an emergency is perceived to have passed, public funding that supports the early care and education workforce is pulled,” says Austin. “You can’t build a stable childcare workforce and system without consistent public investment and respect for all that early educators contribute.”

The Center for the Study of Childcare Employment is the source of this story.

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Activism

District Delegates to State Democratic Party Central Committee Meeting Celebrate Election Victory

Delegates and elected officials were excited for the future of the Democratic Party and making its focus on 1) creating more affordable housing, 2) supporting education, 3) helping working families, and 4) protecting the environment and addressing climate change, with a focus on practical and realistic policy efforts that could have a meaningful impact.

Published

1 week ago

March 23, 2025

Oakland Post

Front row: Megan Imperial, Genice Jacobs, Bobbi Lopez, Courtney Welch, Janani Ramachandran, Hercules Councilmember Dilli Bhattarai, Sarah Bell, Laura Babitt, Ashlee Jemmott, and Shawn Danino. Rear row: Ben Gould, Sam Davis, Victor Flores, Zac Bowling, Nate Hanson, Teddy Gray King, Cathy Adams, Neil Tsutsui, Sam Gould, Lauren Wilson, and Nick Pilch. Courtesy photo.

By Ben Gould
Special to The Post

Winners of the February 2025 Assembly District Election Meetings (ADEM) for Assembly Districts 14 and 18 met on Sunday, March 16 to discuss priorities for the California Democratic Party convention in Anaheim coming up in May.

The winners for Assembly District 18 are Genice Jacobs, Bobbi Lopez, Shawn Danino, Ben Gould, Zac Bowling, Nate Hanson, Cathy Adams, Sam Gould, Lauren Wilson, Ashlee Jemmott, and former Oakland School Board Director Sam Davis.

The winners for Assembly District 14 are: Sarah Bell, Neil Tsutsui, Hercules Councilmember Dilli Bhattarai, former Berkeley School Board Director Laura Babitt, former Piedmont Mayor Teddy Gray King, and former Albany Mayor Nick Pilch.

They were joined by Oakland Councilmember Janani Ramachandran, Emeryville Councilmember Courtney Welch, and BART Director Victor Flores to help celebrate their victory.

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Activism

Actor, Philanthropist Blair Underwood Visits Bay Area, Kicks Off Literacy Program in ‘New Oakland’ Initiative

These community activations were coordinated with the San Francisco-based non-profit program “Room to Read.” Ray said he is also donating his time to read and take pictures with students to encourage their engagement and to inspire them to read more. The inspirational book “Clifford Ray Saves the Day” highlights Clifford Ray’s true story of saving a dolphin.

Published

1 month ago

February 18, 2025

Oakland Post

Blair Underwood (left) and Barbara Lee (right). Courtesy photo.

By Paul Cobb
New Oakland Series
Opinion Part 3

The Post mentioned three weeks ago that a number of our local luminaries were coming together to support the “New Oakland” movement. As this current national administration continues to eliminate our “legacy” institutional policies and programs left and right, most communities find themselves beyond “frozen” in fear.

Well, esteemed actor, long-time Bay Area supporter, and philanthropist Blair Underwood returned to Oakland this week to speak with city leaders, community trust agents, students, the Oakland Post, and local celebrities alike to continue his “New Oakland” initiative.

This week, he kicked off his “Guess Who’s Coming to Read” literacy program in some of Oakland’s middle schools. Clifford Ray, who played the center position of the 1975 World Champion Golden State Warriors, donated close to 1,000 books. Ray’s fellow teammate Charles “The Hopper” Dudley also gave Converse sneakers to students.

Underwood also spent quality time with the Oakland Ballers ownership group and visited the amazing Raimondi Park West Oakland community revitalization site. In the 1996 TV film Soul of the Game, Underwood played the role of the legendary first Black Major League Baseball player Jackie Robinson and commended the Ballers owners.

“This group of sports enthusiasts/ philanthropists needs to be applauded for their human capital investment and their financial capital investment,” Underwood said. “Truly putting their money and passion to work,” Underwood said.

Underwood was also inspired by mayoral candidate Barbara Lee’s open-minded invitation to bring public-private partnership opportunities to Oakland.

Underwood said he wants to “reinforce the importance of ‘collaborative activism’ among those most marginalized by non-empathic leadership. We must ‘act out’ our discomfort with passionate intentions to create healthy change.”