A Fair Contract Will Keep Good Teachers in Oakland

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A Fair Contract Will Keep Good Teachers in Oakland
By Jonah Zern
jzern1 [at] yahoo.com

The Oakland Unified School District’s unions getting a fair contract has everything to do with the education of our children. It is, of course, also about the basic rights of teachers, food-workers, counselors, custodians, nurses, librarians and others who are
union members.

As I listen and learn more, it is clear to me that it is our children who have the most at stake in this struggle against State Superintendent Jack O’Connell’s and Senator Don Perata’s attacks on Oakland’s schools through their appointee Randy Ward.

First, Perata and O’Connell are threatening to cut the very programs that we remember being the heart and soul of our own educations - art and music teachers and counselors. Fighting to maintain and create more of these positions has everything to do with our
children receiving a quality education. We are also fighting to maintain the threatened adult education department that serves over 25,000 Oakland residents.

Second, the issue of teacher and staff salary and benefits, as well as class sizes has everything to do with whether or not our children are taught by qualified teachers. Will our children be allowed to sit in classrooms without a permanent teacher, but
substitute upon substitute, as too many of our students are already doing.

Further, 75% of Oakland teachers polled at the eight Oakland elementary schools that are threatened to be turned into top down charter schools say they will
leave Oakland rather than accept the destruction of their schools. Most of these schools are proposed to be run by “Education for Change” a new charter company that is directed by Kevin Wolridge, who worked, until a fews weeks ago, under State Administrator Randy Ward; Whittier Elementary is threatened with being turned into a privately owned charter, Mosaica, with a record of failure, performing below other similar schools in 9 of 11 cases studied by the American Federation of Teachers.

As I travel the hallways of Oakland’s schools and overhear and participate in conversation upon conversation about the teacher contract negotiations, I hear similar comments over and over. Teachers and other members are saying that if our rights, including salaries and benefits, continue to be eroded they will leave Oakland and go work in another district.

Again and again, I hear people talking about how much they care about the children of Oakland (many of us are Oakland parents as well) and how important it is
to us to stay here. But, teachers and staff say, we can no longer afford to work in the more difficult conditions thrust upon us by over-crowded classrooms, lack of resources and challenges our students face due to poverty and violence that exist in our community,
while receiving lower pay and less support than teachers and staff receive in other school districts.


Another major factor pushing qualified teachers and staff out of Oakland is the deep disrespect, standardized curriculum and “teach to the test” attitude forced upon us by administrators who offer little support, but endless criticism and distrust of Oakland teachers (this is not true of all administrators but a large number, and much of this
pressure is coming from No Child Left Behind, which makes standardized testing the sole measure of student and school success).

The best teachers do not go into teaching to be drones; we teach because we love children and we love to think creatively and help our students do so as well.

Very simply, there are not enough qualified teachers in California. So, there is always a need for teachers elsewhere. If we are not offered better in Oakland, many of us will leave, not because we don’t care, but because we are being pushed beyond our limits. We want to work in schools where we can be a positive presence
in the children’s lives.

It is time for us to join together and fight for our children’s rights. We need quality teachers and staff, sufficient resources, clean, safe and up-to-date facilities, and culturally relevant curriculum. We need a democratically controlled district and democratically controlled schools, a unified district, so we can fight for the common good of our students (not one divided by Randy Ward haphazard internal charters).

And and we need California to fully fund education- money for our schools is available, not from other social programs, but from California’s wealthy, its corporations, its prison system (the largest per capita in the world!) and the US military.

We need to provide incentives to bridge the divide shown in the study recently printed in the Oakland Tribune that exists between the experience and salaries of teachers working for wealthy white students and poor students of color.

As conditions get too hard and many of us see ourselves forced into roles where we no longer feel capable of supporting and loving our students, we will leave Oakland and go where we can make a living and love our work again. The ones who will be left behind
are our students.

____________________
Jonah Zern is a teacher and resident in Oakland and
acommunity organizer with the Education not
Incarceration Coalition (http://www.ednotinc.org)