Oakland Teachers Strike Day 1

by Jack Gerson

Retired  Oakland Teacher

Former member OEA Executive Board and Bargaining Team

I just returned from the Oakland Education Association’s (OEA’s) rally in front of Oakland City Hall, on Day One of the Oakland teachers’ strike.  It’s hard to judge crowd size, but I’d say that it was about 5,000. OEA has fewer than 3,000 members, so that’s a good start. Certainly the biggest and most positive energy I’ve seen from this union since the 1996 strike. It’s clear that the red state teacher strikes touched off something. Teachers’ energy and their expectations have been raised. The Los Angeles teacher strike, while settling for pretty modest gains in salary and class size reduction, nevertheless beat back the worst of a vicious attack orchestrated by local billionaires (Broad; Bloomfield; etc.) who funded and controlled a majority of the school board. Teachers here in Oakland certainly see themselves as part of an incipient but growing movement against privatization and the overall corporate assault on public education.

The rally was upbeat and energetic, but not exuberant. When I drove to the picket line at my old school this morning — it’s located in a very high poverty area of “Deep East” Oakland known locally as “Murder Alley” — I passed a couple of elementary schools in the area where teachers were out picketing, but although I was in a line of about half a dozen cars, I was the only one who gave support horn honks. Another teacher who passed other area schools told me that he had observed the same thing. And when we were on the picket line this morning, there were some supportive honks from passing cars, but not many. On the other hand, back in a more affluent part of Oakland where I live, I’ve been told that close to half the passing cars honked in support. This may mean nothing, or it may mean that the support in high poverty areas is not as strong as in more affluent areas — and most Oakland students live and go to school in high poverty areas. So we’ll see whether this is meaningful.

Oakland teachers are the lowest paid in Alameda County, despite living in an area where housing costs, and apartment rents, are sky high and still soaring. Young teachers at the low end of the pay scale can’t afford to live in the area unless they share a rental with several roommates. Even veteran teachers at the high end of the pay range can only afford to live in the area if they locked in a low mortgage or a rent controlled apartment decades ago. This is one of the reasons why Oakland has one of the highest teacher turnover rates in the country — 70% of teachers leave in less than five years; 20% leave in their first year. On top of this instability, the school administration and the school board seem determined to create more: they want to close 24 of the district’s 87 schools. The school board pumps public money to private contractors at more than three time the average (per student) of all California school districts, and has twice the administrative overhead. And as I showed in what I wrote last week, the school board continues to fudge the books to hide unallocated revenue and then funnel it to still more private contracts, rather than to what teachers, students, and staff need. Clearly, the priorities are upside down.

OEA is demanding:

A 12% salary increase over three years (3% retroactive to last school year; 4% retroactive to the start of this school year; and 5% next school year;

Class size max reduction (by 4 in the highest needs schools; by 2 elsewhere);

Caseload reduction (for special ed teachers; counselors; etc.)

These are modest demands. More is needed, but it’s a start. And there’s one more demand: no school closures.

The school board and the superintendent claim that they just don’t have the money to meet these demands. That’s almost obscene, given the outrageous level of outsourcing and the indefensible level of administrative overhead noted above. By my calculations, the district has the money to meet OEA’s salary demands for last year and the current year without running a deficit. The class size and caseload demands won’t kick in until next year (it’s too late to implement them for this school year), so the cost of these demands won’t be incurred until next year (2019-20 school year. That leaves time enough to redirect adequate funds by reducing the level of outsourcing and eliminating redundant highly paid executive positions from administration.

But to rebuild and improve Oakland public education, more will be needed. Over the past 15 years, great damage has been done. The adult education program, which had over 30,000 students, has been cut by over 90%. Libraries have been closed and librarian positions eliminated in most middle schools and high schools. Many academic and vocational programs have been eliminated. Public school enrollment has fallen by one-third over the past fifteen years, while charter school enrollment has increased eight-fold, to 30% of total enrollment (Oakland has the highest percentage of charter school enrollment of any large school district in the state, and the ninth highest among large school districts (enrollment greater than 25,000) in the country. A recent study estimated that charter schools drain $57 million from Oakland public schools.

So more money is needed to provide what’s really needed. But the fact is, the current school board is addicted to shoveling money to their friends and allies — awarding private contracts or handing them $150,000+ / year executive positions. Consequently, additional money that comes in — for example, increased state funding, as recommended in Newsom’s proposed education budget — needs to be locked down for teachers, students, and school maintenance and programs, so the board can’t shovel it down the privatizing drain.

Back to the OEA strike. Today has been a successful day.  Tomorrow teachers from around the state will be demonstrating solidarity with the Oakland strike, teachers from around the region will be converging on Oakland to join picket lines, and there will be a noon rally and march “against the corporate billionaires”.  Hopefully, the energy and enthusiasm shown today will continue to build, and community support will grow. It seems likely that if the strike continues and the militancy grows, big Democratic Party players — like Senator Harris and Governor Newsom — will try to step in and orchestrate a settlement, with the likely collaboration of the CTA leadership. So maybe right now, the Dems and the CTA tops are just trying to let frustrated Oakland teachers blow off steam. But there’s always the chance that when the lid is lifted a bit to allow out steam, it just might provide an opening to blow the whole lid off.