Teachers in Oakland Friday headed into the second day of a districtwide strike, after parents and students supported their demands on Thursday by keeping classrooms largely empty.
The school district’s 3,000 teachers, nurses and counselors began their strike on Thursday over pay, class sizes and school resources, establishing picket lines in front of nearly every school, marching through downtown streets and holding a boisterous rally at City Hall.
Officials from the district and Oakland Education Association, the union representing the teachers, returned Friday morning to the negotiating table with district officials.
“Parents, teachers and students spoke with their feet today,” OEA President Keith Brown said Thursday evening, calling for a strong turnout on Friday. “Strikes are won on the streets, not at the bargaining table.”
Teachers have worked without a contract since July 2017. They are asking for a 12 percent raise over three years, covering 2017 to 2020, to compensate for what they say are among the lowest salaries for public school teachers in the expensive San Francisco Bay Area.
“I’m bleeding out every month, falling further into debt,” said Sarah Trauben, 30, who teaches English and government at Oakland Technical High School. She’s taken on a second job as an SAT tutor to make ends meet.
Teachers are also pushing for smaller class sizes and want the district to hire more full-time nurses and school counselors.
In Sierra Donaldson’s ninth-grade biology class at Oakland Tech, she worries about safety in lab classes.
“Class size is huge. I need to keep an eye on 32 14-year-olds, and I feel like it’s just not safe if we’re working with bacteria or other materials,” she said.
The starting salary in the district is $46,500 a year and the average salary is just over $63,000, which is considerably lower than most nearby districts.
“We cannot afford to live here,” said kindergarten teacher Elena Njemanze, who has been teaching in Oakland for eight years and has a master’s degree from Mills College. “I can only afford to pay rent because I have my parents helping me.”
The district initially offered a 5 percent raise covering 2017 to 2020, saying it’s squeezed by rising costs and an ongoing budget crisis.
In last-minute negotiations on Wednesday aimed at averting a strike, the district increased its offer to a 7 percent raise over four years and a one-time 1.5 percent bonus.
But union officials rejected the offer.
Oakland Unified School District spokesman John Sasaki said district officials hope to get a counter proposal from the union during Friday’s negotiations.
“We haven’t heard any proposal since last May, so we’re hoping they have something for us when we meet tomorrow,” Sasaki said.
Local radio host Sana G. posted on Instagram a short video with a dozen Bay Area celebrities, including comedians, musicians, sports stars and others each saying, “I stand with Oakland teachers.” Local celebrities like MC Hammer, Stephen Curry and Oscar winner Mahershala Ali showed support in a video to say they “stand with Oakland teachers.”
Parents also showed their support by honoring the picket line, said Will Lynch, a father with a second-grader at Glenview Elementary School, where nine children out of 460 turned up for school.
“What are we doing not paying teachers enough money? It reflects our society’s values in a very negative way,” he said.
The walkout affects more than 36,000 students at all 87 schools in the district..
“We did not have a single student come to school today,” said Katherine Carter, principal at Oakland SOL middle school.
“A couple kids were on the picket lines, but aside from that, no kids.”
No students turned up at West Oakland Middle School either, said Brown, the union president.
“It’s unfortunate that it’s come to this, but it shines a spotlight on larger issues,” he said. “Public education is a crisis in our country. The teachers are now lifting that up across different states.”
The union has also called for the district to scrap plans to close as many as 24 schools that serve primarily African-American and Latino students in the city’s flatlands neighborhoods. The union fears even more students will be lost to charter schools that it says drain over $57 million a year from the district.
Recent strikes across the nation have built on a wave of teacher activism that began last spring. Unions for West Virginia teachers, who staged a nine-day walkout last year, ended another two-day strike Wednesday. Last week, teachers in Denver ended a three-day walkout after reaching a tentative deal raising their wages.
And teachers in Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest school district, staged a six-day strike last month that ended when they settled on a 6 percent raise with promises of smaller class sizes and the addition of nurses and counselors.
Associated Press writers Janie Har and Olga R. Rodriguez in San Francisco contributed to this report.
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