By Lucy Kang
(Originally aired on the Pacifica Evening News on Friday, February 22)
It’s Day One of the Oakland teachers’ strike, Thursday, February 21st. Teachers across the city are holding picket lines at their schools in a walkout that been weeks in the making. The teachers union, Oakland Education Association (OEA) is demanding higher wages, smaller class sizes, and a stop to school closures. But teachers aren’t the only ones preparing. High school students have also been busy making plans.
Skyline High School students stand in the picket lines
The strike kicks off in the early morning. It’s 7:30, outside Skyline High School in the Oakland Hills. I count about 50 people marching across the main entrance to the school, chanting and holding signs that say “On Strike” and “Kids Deserve Better.” More than double will show up by mid-morning. At one point, an empty school bus pulls in, to cheers.
Joequesha Hill is one of the students who’s been organizing at Skyline with other schools in Oakland Unified School District (OUSD). She’s been here since 6:30am, on and off a megaphone. “Get up, get down! Oakland is a union town!” she chants to the crowd.
“OUSD really needs to get it together,” she says. “You’re putting money into several other things which are not putting money in investing in our future. And it’s going to lead to the downfall of Oakland if you don’t fund our future because without funding our future in the proper education, we won’t have the choice but to be nothing.”
“Without funding our future in the proper education, we won’t have the choice but to be nothing.” – Skyline High School freshman Joequisha Hill.
This is Joequisha’s first picket line, and she keeps her eye on it the entire time. She says she’s mostly worried about keeping emergency temporary teachers, who she calls “scabs,” out of the school.
“Scabs are substitute teachers that the district are hiring and are paying 300 a day, which is more than they pay our teachers,” she says. Applicants have to pass a background check to qualify.
“OUSD is funding these background checks, and it’s usually harder for a teacher, you know, because they have to pay for their own background check,” she says. “So I feel that they’re giving them unfair opportunities. It’s not fair that they get to take our teachers jobs, you know. These are teachers that stay in Oakland, that come every day from San Francisco, Antioch, Pittsburgh and they really love us and want to support us.”
Teachers report having to move out of Oakland because their salaries haven’t kept up with the cost of living, which also leads to high turnover. The average starting salary for Oakland Unified School District teachers is under $47,000, and teachers here are the lowest paid in Alameda County. Nearly one in five teachers leave the district every year, more than the state average. That number rises to nearly half when you look at a 3-year period, according to one analysis.
Castlemont High School students serve food on the picket lines
Castlemont High School lies in deep East Oakland. An OEA member tells me over 100 teachers, community members and students have shown up to the picket line in front of the school where they’ve gathered near a table brimming with food.
Lakisha Anderson, a senior at Castlemont and part of the Pacific Bridge Club, explains how her club is supporting the strike. “Right now we’re putting out chips to feed the teachers cause we’re getting ready to feed the teachers,” she says. “We gotta feed them while they’re picketing out here for us… We have peanut butter jelly sandwiches. We have donuts, mac and cheese, Peet’s Coffee. We have bagels, bananas, and we also have chips and just little snacks so they don’t get hungry.”
Pacific Bridge Club members have taken shifts to make and serve food on the picket line each day of the strike. The food is also offered to anyone who stops by – teacher, parent or student. Castlemont is a school where 92% of students qualify for free or reduced price meals, and many rely on the food they receive here – as well as care from support staff like nurses and counselors. According to OEA data, there’s only 1 nurse for every 750 students in the district.
Junior Heavenly Simpson is with the student group Real Hard.
“We have one nurse, and she’s not full time,” she says. “There has been a couple of altercations where my family members – I have family members that go here – have been injured really badly, and there was no nurse here and a doctor next door was not in either. So we had to take them in an ambulance to the hospital.”
“There has been a couple of altercations where my family members – I have family members that go here – have been injured really badly, and there was no nurse here and a doctor next door was not in either. So we had to take them in an ambulance to the hospital.” – Castlemont High School junior Heavenly Simpson
Heavenly also says that she has a strong connection with some of her teachers, which is why it’s important for her to be here today and also why high teacher turnover impacts the students so much.
“I have a couple of teachers that I conclude as parents,” she says. “We actually build great relationships teachers, so when they leave it’s heartbreaking.”
Oakland Technical High School join hundreds in march to City Hall
By now, it’s almost noon. Students from Oakland Technical High School are joining hundreds in a march to a rally in front of Oakland City Hall over two miles away. At the very front, students are holding up a red and black banner that reads “Oakland Tech is on Strike!”
Meti Sima is one of the students holding the banner. She says Oakland Tech students have been organizing for weeks to support the strike.
“We had a walk-out like three weeks ago where a lot of students participated,” she says. “We had a sick-out for all of OUSD’s high schools. And I remember our squad of 2000, only like 200 showed up to school. So we’re showing the district that we stand with our teachers, and they essentially have to listen to us because yeah, we can put pressure on them to meet these demands.”
“We’re showing the district that we stand with our teachers, and they essentially have to listen to us because we can put pressure on them to meet these demands.” – Oakland Technical High School student Meti Sima
Sophomore Liam Riels says lack of resources can be a problem. “We have three counselors at our school, and I’m pretty sure my counselor doesn’t know my name,” he says. “And sometimes I can’t even find the nurse. Most of the time I can’t find the nurse or know where they’re located.”
Another junior I speak to holds a sign reading “Low test scores do not equal bad schools. Low test scores equal lack of resources. Fund our schools now. No school closures.” She says smaller class sizes and lack of resources are very important to her, as well as an end to school closures.
“They’re trying to close my elementary school Kaiser Elementary,” she says. “I’ve been in OUSD since I was in kindergarten. I just felt like it was important to come out and support.”
The district is planning to close and merge 24 schools due to what it says is low enrollment, though the OEA disputes this. These schools include Kaiser Elementary and Roots International Academy, which the school board voted to close in late January. The OEA is demanding an end to these closures, arguing it punishes students who need the most support and paves the way for an expansion of charter schools.
Oakland High School students help run solidarity school for Cleveland Elementary K-12 graders
Thousands turn up for the rally in Oscar Grant Plaza, aka Frank Ogawa Plaza. But Oakland High School freshman class president Jasmine Vo is elsewhere. It’s afternoon at FM Smith Recreation Center, and Jasmine is supervising 17 students from Cleveland Elementary. She’s in the middle of the basketball court.
When asked about her day, Jasmine says, “It’s really fun. It’s been chaotic, but I’ve been having super fun with the kids. I just came out of the basketball game, and I was just playing some Legos with some other little kindergarteners. It was really fun.”
Jasmine’s mother Taniseia Vo, who helped organize the solidarity school, told me that Cleveland teachers prepared work packets for the students before leaving on strike.
“One the kids got mad cause they thought they was going to have to do any school work today,” she says. “We’re like, no your brain is a muscle, we still got to work it and stimulate it.”
The solidarity school gives another option to parents who can’t watch their children during the day, but don’t want to cross the picket line. Unexcused absences from the strike are costing OUSD roughly $85 per student a day from the state, putting additional pressure on the district.
“[Teachers] should get better working conditions and more pay.” – Cleveland Elementary third-grader Liam Finnegan
Liam Finnegan, a Cleveland Elementary third-grader, says he supports the teachers on strike “because they should get better working conditions and more pay.”
“As long as it takes”
Across Oakland, high school students are supporting the teachers’ strike in different ways. When I ask, many tell me they’re prepared to stay out here as long as it takes for the teachers demands to be met.
“I’m prepared to stay out here… pretty much as long as it takes to get the quality of my education and the quality of my peers education,” says Skyline freshman Joequisha Hill.
“Honestly, I’m here to support them every day if that’s what they want me to do because I honestly do care about my education,” says Castlemont senior Jose Ceballos. “It’s not just about me. It’s also about the people from the next year, to the next year, to the other year.”
“It’s not just about me. It’s also about the people from the next year, to the next year, to the other year.” – Castlemont High School senior Jose Ceballos
“I will stand there as long as I need to honestly at this point,” says Castlemont junior Heavenly Simpson.”It’s like, we’re here for a reason. Our demands are necessary. So as long as this keeps going on here.”
