Oakland Schools

Teachers in Oakland, Calif., have been working without a contract since 2013.  Negotiations are continuing every two weeks, and it is said the two sides are near a settlement.

So I was surprised to read the other day that teachers in 15 Oakland schools are conducting an industrial-style, work-to-rules slowdown.

Elementary and middle-school teachers are leaving their schools as soon as the bell rings, 6.75 hours after they arrive.  High school teachers are staying a little longer, for seven hours.

The teachers' union claims it did not initiate the work slowdowns.  Such decisions, it said, are taken by individual school faculties.

There is a word for this kind of behavior:  unprofessional.

Teachers will have their jobs, plus back pay, once a contract is signed.  But children only get one shot at first grade.  Teachers who fail to give their best efforts to students are committing educational malpractice.


Contract Negotiations

Here are the basic elements of Oakland's latest offer to its teachers:  a 10 percent raise over the next 18 months, plus another 1.5 percent if expected state funding increases arrive.  The district also has agreed to the union's request to reduce class size at the K-3 levels from 30 to 24 students.

The union says it wants raises of 14 percent to 17 percent and caps on special education class sizes.

The teachers say their pay -- which averages $55,000 --  is low for the area.   The administration says it pays much more for benefits -- $13,750 per year -- than other districts in the area.

The district wants to be able to pay teachers to work extended hours or days at struggling schools.

When teacher openings arise, the district wants schools to select new hires.  The union wants the jobs filled based solely on seniority.

And why wouldn't they?  According the district's own evaluations, 94 percent of its teachers are "highly qualified."

If only the results matched the numbers.


Oakland Unified School District

Oakland lies just across the bay from San Francisco.  It has a bifurcated population:  a small group of relatively wealthy people, mostly white, who live in the eastern hills above the city, and a much larger, much poorer, heavily minority population in the flats below.

The bifurcation also is evident in district results.  The schools in the heights are well regarded, and the ones in the flats struggle with the usual inner-city problems.

In 2012, the district's graduation rate was 62.6 percent.  Of those graduates, only 42.3 percent met state standards (grade C or above) for college readiness.

Ten years ago, the district was so broke and badly managed that the state took it over and ran it for five years, possibly to little effect.  Oakland is said still to be heavy on bureaucracy, but there have been many initiatives aimed at groups of students -- African-American males, students from non-English-speaking families, the more than 10 percent of students who are chronically absent  -- who need more help.  More than 10,000 students of the district's 47,000+ enrollment attend district-authorized charter schools.


New Superintendent

One ray of hope in Oakland is its new superintendent, who took the job in 2014.  He is a son of a hard-working African-American single mother, and his life story resonates, particularly with poor families.

In interviews, he asserts that schools "can't ask young people to adapt to the way we want to teach them.  We must teach them in a way that is conducive to how they learn."  He often quotes an education professor who once told him, "If they didn't learn it, you didn't teach it."

He seems to mean what he says.  His early actions included cutting administrative staff and redirecting money to teaching.

Still, the new superintendent is young, 42, and this is his first job leading a school district.  Previously, as a principal, he turned around a tough high school in Denver, and he later served as an assistant superintendent in that larger district.   But Oakland is a great big challenge, and he has his work cut out for him.


Back to the Teachers

An article in the San Francisco paper this week quoted several people in Oakland.

A first-grade teacher who leaves her building within 10 minutes of each day's closing bell:
"It's really hard not doing what I want to do.  Kids from last year or the years before are stopping and wanting to chat.  It's hard to cut that off and leave it behind."  She said she normally would work two or three more hours each day and also several hours weekly at home, but the district's offer isn't good enough.  Teachers at her school also want the seniority rights issue taken off the table.

The superintendent:  "The talks at the table have been very open and straightforward and collegial.  To have actions outside the table that don't align with that and suggest that we aren't interested in supporting our teachers isn't accurate."

A school board member: "The teachers are organizing the parents.  Parents are somehow under the impression that we haven't made any kind of offer, that we're stonewalling the teachers.  That is just not true."

A parent:  "I do support (the teachers), but I'm a professional and I don't get paid for all the hours I work.  Work it out.  I don't think you need to do it at the expense of my child."