Oakland teachers entered their fourth day of striking Tuesday, with the end date unclear.
Until an agreement is reached, the Oakland Education Association’s nearly 3,000 educators are out of the classroom as they push for competitive pay and additional "common good” resources around school facility conditions, housing and transportation for students, and reparations. The Oakland Unified School District has countered that its proposed raise, totaling another $70 million, is historic, further arguing that any remaining asks are outside of its domain.
“We’re fighting for the students in our most neediest schools,” said Ismael Armendariz, the union’s interim president, at a rally on the first day of the strike. “It’s about respect. We’re bargaining for the common good. That’s what our students need.”
So what are parents of the district’s roughly 34,000 students doing to fill the time?
“He’s just at home,” said Lakisha Young, co-founder and CEO of literacy nonprofit the Oakland Reach, of her middle schooler. “I’m at work. That’s just where we’re at right now. People are in limbo. Our kids’ learning should never have been disrupted because of where they are around bargaining.”
Young, who is critical of what is technically the union’s third strike since 2019, said some parents are keeping their children at home like her while others are still dropping them off at school—and confusion abounds. With the last day of school just over two weeks away, she doesn’t see much likelihood of parents taking up the daunting responsibility of educating their children.
Schools technically remain open to students, with administrators and support staff looking after them, but with no teachers for instruction. Meals are served, and many afterschool programs remain intact, the school district told families in a guide on the strike.
To satisfy teacher demands and bring the strike to an end, the district proposed significant remedies. Starting salaries would go up to about $63,000 a year, and teachers would receive a retroactive 10% raise—plus an additional $5,000 bonus for union members—along with a 13% to 22% salary increase and shortened steps to further salary increases. The union is pushing to enshrine additional resources and policies from a memorandum of understanding around school closures to “equitable and culturally relevant teaching.” Oakland teachers went on a one-day strike in 2022 to protest school closures.
“We’ve put all our money on the table to take care of our teachers and there is not much room to do anything else,” Oakland Unified wrote in a statement to families on Sunday. “We continue to focus on finding common ground with OEA to get this deal done.”
The Oakland NAACP chapter on Monday also asked the union to call off the strike and end the disruption to students.
“We’ve put all our money on the table to take care of our teachers and there is not much room to do anything else,” Oakland Unified wrote in a statement to families on Sunday. “We continue to focus on finding common ground with OEA to get this deal done.”
On the other hand, parents like Adrian Maciel back the teachers’ efforts. He is keeping his United for Success Academy sixth grader at home, waiting out the strike until it’s over. There is always someone to watch over his son at home in between Maciel going to work or joining teachers on the picket lines.
“He’s helping us around the house,” Maciel said in Spanish through a translator. “He’s being productive here.”
Across the bay, Meredith Dodson of the San Francisco Parent Coalition said parents and educators hope a brewing labor conflict in the San Francisco Unified School District doesn’t reach the same point. The SF school district and United Educators of San Francisco are still negotiating an agreement, which has resulted in strikes or strike votes among other teacher unions elsewhere in the state this school year.
“We’re hearing that things are much more cordial in San Francisco than they’ve been in Oakland,” Dodson said. “It makes me hopeful that there will be a deal done. We would love to see greater transparency from the district on the budget situation—we just don’t know what the reality is.”