Education

School District Faces Conflict Over Teacher Pay and “Redesign” of Five Schools

Published

11 years ago

January 30, 2015

The Oakland Unified School District’s three new school board members and newly hired superintendent have taken their positions just as two of the district’s most protracted conflicts are coming to a head – poorly paid teachers who are demanding decent pay and job security, and communities at five schools that are fed up with district-led reorganizations that have repeatedly disrupted and destabilized their schools over the last decade.

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Most everyone agrees that Oakland’s teachers desperately need a raise. According to the teachers’ union, they are the lowest-paid in Alameda County and lowest-paid in the nine-county Bay Area.

As a result, the district has a 20 percent turnover rate each year, meaning the schools are stuck on a treadmill – hiring and recruiting mostly untrained teachers.

Angry teachers came out in force Wednesday night, marching down Park Boulevard to rally and speak at this week’s Board of Education meeting at La Escuelita Education Center.

In protest, teachers at many schools are staging a slowdown, called “work to rule,” coming at the beginning of the school day and leaving when school ends, not giving or correcting homework or doing any of the myriad other tasks they generally do.

Dancers support teachers at a rally at Wednesday’s school board meeting. Photo by Ken Epstein.

The district is offering a 10 percent raise over three years – 3 percent this year, starting in January; 3 percent next January; and 4 percent the following year, depending on the funds that come from the state.

Oakland Education Association (OEA) President Trish Gorham says the mid-year 3 percent raise this year does not keep up with the 3.25 percent other Bay Area teachers have received.

“That just makes us fall further behind,” she said.

Supt. Antwan Wilson responded to teachers at the meeting and in an email to the school community.

“We need to finalize these negotiations so that we can focus all of our energy on the work that is before us to ensure quality schools for all – and there is a lot of work to do,” he wrote.

“I remain committed to making Oakland the leader in attracting, retaining and rewarding the best talent,” he continued. “While this vision cannot be achieved overnight, it is possible.”

He pointed to the constraints the district is facing. “We can’t forget that California remains 46^th out of 50 states in per pupil spending.” Further, he said the district still has to pay $6 million per year to the state to repay the $100 million bailout OUSD received when it went into bankruptcy and was taken over by the state in 2003.

In addition to salaries, OEA President Gorham says teachers are concerned about the district’s desire to weaken teacher transfer provisions in the contract, allowing the administration to unilaterally and involuntarily transfer teachers from schools and weaken seniority rights to open positions.

The three high schools facing “redesign” this year – Fremont, McClymonds and Castlemont – were reconstituted three years ago, and every teacher had to reapply for their job.

Now the district is going to do it again, Gorham said. “Where is the analysis of what they did then? What is going to happen to the teachers who don’t want to leave their school sites and are forced to leave?”

The administration and the school board have admitted that they have to do a better job explaining their plans to “transform” five “failing” schools this year – Brookfield Elementary and Frick Middle schools, in addition to the two East Oakland and one West Oakland high schools.

Most everyone agrees that Oakland’s schools must make deep changes in order to improve graduation rates and post-secondary admission rates, particularly for African American and Latino students.

But questions and concerns remain. A group of students from Fremont High and other schools came to this week’s board meeting to oppose the plan. A group from the McClymonds community called on the district to explain what it is planning and to include the community in making the changes.

The districts plan calls for an open competition period to submit to school redesign proposals, starting in February. Charter schools and other outside organizations are eligible to apply to run the schools.

This approach was adopted by the school board in 2013 and re-approved in 2014 under the leadership of then Board President David Kakishiba and acting Supt Gary Yee. Supt. Wilson was hired to implement it.

District spokesman Troy Flint told the Post that no school would be forced to become a charter over community opposition. If a school is opposed to “the idea of charter, it would naturally follow that a charter proposal would not prevail in the selection process at that particular school,” he said.

State law permits groups of parents or teachers at individual schools to apply to become a charter, said Gorham. But the district is adopting a different approach: open up a competition for charters to submit applications, and the board and superintendent will make the decision.

According to Gorham and others, the district approach dooms the existing schools. “If you publically call them ‘failing schools,’ how many parents are going to enroll their kids in the schools next year?”

“It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. You destabilize, reconstitute, and then you convert to charter,” said Gorham.

Instead, a number of the opponents of the plan say the district should listen respectfully with the school communities, find out what they need, and pour in resources and other support to make them schools that students want to attend and where parents want to send their children.

Flint denied that anyone at OUSD referred to the schools as failing.

“I’m not aware of anyone publicly referring to these schools as ‘failing schools’. Perhaps this was mentioned at a meeting I didn’t attend, but that’s not what we’ve been saying in our official communications,” he wrote to the Post. “We do refer to patterns of relatively low academic performance and under-enrollment.”

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Black History

NAACP Announces $20m Voter Registration Drive at National Convention in Chicago

GARY CRUSADER — The NAACP announced a $20 million voter registration campaign at its 117th annual convention in Chicago. The campaign aims to register between six and 10 million voters who did not participate in the last two elections.

Published

16 minutes ago

July 27, 2026

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NAACP Announces $20m Voter Registration Drive at National Convention in Chicago

With just over three months before the midterm elections, the NAACP at its 117th annual convention in Chicago announced an unprecedented $20 million voter registration campaign ahead of the midterm elections.

The announcement kicked off the NAACP’s national convention at McCormick Place where thousands of visitors and delegates participated in workshops and seminars that stressed the organization’s theme of “We the People” and purpose of educating Blacks about their constitutional rights.

Throughout the week-long convention, vendors sold merchandise, media organizations held onsite interviews in “The HUB,” and visitors signed a massive “We the People” mural.

Governor J.B. Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson were among the dignitaries who reinforced the NAACP’s message during the convention’s opening plenary.

Black voting rights have been under attack in the last several months when Louisiana, Tennessee, Alabama and Florida gutted historic Black congressional districts after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled such districts were unconstitutional and were no longer needed in modern times despite protections under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The NAACP, the nation’s oldest civil rights organization, is concerned those decisions will roll back political and economic gains Blacks have made in the last six decades.

NAACP Board Chairman Leon Russell told the opening session that the NAACP would undertake a $20 million voter registration and mobilization drive “to motivate six million to 10 million voters” who did not cast ballots in the last two elections to do so.

As part of the campaign, the NAACP plans to recruit “tens of thousands of volunteers to join the crusade to turn out millions of us this November.”

The plan will target voters in 14 states and 33 congressional districts, with the full list expected to be disclosed later.

“We must move 60 percent or more of all eligible voters to the polls,” Russell said.

The NAACP has a history of leading voter registration drives in Black neighborhoods across America.

In his speech, Pritzker said, “In Washington and across the country, extremists holding high office are working to erase Black history rather than learn from it, to take away voting rights instead of strengthening them, to divide us rather than unite us,” he said.

He added, “These are not simply disagreements over policy. These are challenges to the very idea that democracy belongs to all of us. Challenges to the very idea that we are all created equal.”

Pritzker said the phrase “We the People” reflects America’s ongoing effort to expand equality, noting that the nation’s founding ideals initially excluded enslaved people, women and other groups.

Mayor Brandon Johnson said, “For 117 years this incredible organization has helped bend the arc of history towards justice. And not because progress was inevitable, but because ordinary people made the extraordinary decision to organize, advocate and refuse to accept injustice as the reigning form of governance. That work has never been easy, and today it remains as urgent as it has ever been.

“Across this country we are witnessing wicked efforts to undermine fundamental rights, weaken Democratic institutions, and to turn neighbors against one another.

“We see attempts to silence the truth and erase our history and convince people that somehow division is stronger than solidarity. But history has taught us something very different. Every time people have been told to accept injustice, they have risen together to reject it. “

During Trump’s second term in office, the NAACP has filed more than 70 lawsuits to stop his grasping and often unconstitutional moves to grab total power.

Pritzker said “Illinois has been at the forefront of the struggle for freedom and equality” ever since Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, a non-white, was the first permanent resident of what is now Chicago, Pritzker noted.

Pritzker also said Illinois also gave the nation the crusading African American journalist Ida B. Wells, and it elected more African American members of Congress than any other state. He said Illinois gave the nation the late civil rights leader Jesse Jackson and “a young community organizer” who eventually went from Chicago to the White House, Barack Obama.

“But such progress is not inevitable,” the governor warned. “It requires people willing to sacrifice. None of this is by accident. It is because Black America shows up, reminding us of the painful part of our history while giving us hope for the future.”

Based on reporting by Gary Crusader.

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Black History

Opinion: When Politicians Start Sanitizing One Chapter of History, They’re Coming After The Whole Book

OAKLAND POST — The White House recently released a report criticizing the Smithsonian for supposedly promoting “anti-White activism” and other ideological sins. Buried inside is something even more troubling. The report argues Americans shouldn’t think of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 primarily as a racist law. Instead, we’re told it was about national security.

Published

13 hours ago

July 26, 2026

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AI-generated illustration created by Open AI.

By Emil Amok Guillermo

I came to Winnipeg to perform my one-man show, 69, Emil Amok: Anchorman—The News Made Me Do It.

I didn’t expect to leave with another lesson about America.

It came over dim sum.

After the show, Shirley—a Chinese Canadian—and her friend Chris, a Sri Lankan-Mauritian Canadian—insisted on taking me to a restaurant in Winnipeg’s Chinatown.

A Filipino American. A Chinese Canadian. A Sri Lankan-Mauritian Canadian.

The United Nations, if it served dumplings.

Then Shirley told me about her father.

He arrived from China at 14 years old, speaking no English. The school put him in second grade just to learn the language. Once he caught up, they skipped him to ninth grade.

Two years later, he was working.

He opened a restaurant.

It burned down.

He opened another.

Eventually he bought a café in rural Manitoba serving chop suey, burgers, steaks and fries.

The Good Way Café became the place everybody gathered. Rock and roll played from the jukebox until midnight.

Her father, Arthur Mar, built a business, employed people and became part of his community.

Sound familiar?

It should.

It’s the same immigrant story Americans love to celebrate.

Until politics gets involved.

Because before Arthur Mar could build anything, Canada made him pay a $500 Chinese head tax—a fortune in the 1920s.

When that didn’t keep enough Chinese out, Canada passed its own Chinese Exclusion Act.

Different country.

Same racism.

Canada has spent decades admitting what it did.

The Trump administration wants America to do the opposite.

The White House recently released a report criticizing the Smithsonian for supposedly promoting “anti-White activism” and other ideological sins.

Buried inside is something even more troubling.

The report argues Americans shouldn’t think of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 primarily as a racist law.

Instead, we’re told it was about national security.

Funny how those two words have always been available whenever politicians want to discriminate against somebody.

Black Americans have heard that song before.

Slave patrols became public safety.

Jim Crow became states’ rights.

Mass incarceration became law and order.

Same melody.

Different verse.

History has a way of putting racism in a respectable suit.

When politicians begin sanitizing one chapter of history, they’re coming after the whole book.

Communities of color don’t have identical histories.

But we recognize familiar tactics.

About the Author

Emil Guillermo is an award-winning journalist, commentator and comic monologist. He performs “69, Emil Amok: Anchorman—The News Made Me Do It” at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival, July 16–26.

Get Tix: https://www.winnipegfringe.com/performer-detail.aspx?kw=Emil+Amok+Productions

Follow him at YouTube.com/@emilamok1.

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Community

Rep. Garamendi, House Democrats Demand Trump Administration Abandon Illegal Plans to Dismantle Civil Rights, Special Ed Offices

OAKLAND POST — “The law is clear: Congress created OCR and OSERS and Congress alone can eliminate them. The use of Interagency Agreements to accomplish your ‘final mission’ – to eliminate the Department in all but name – is counter to the will of Congress and rests on questionable legal ground. Even Congressional Republicans have expressed reservations and attempted to keep money appropriated to the Department within the Department, rather than being outsourced through IAAs…,” the members of Con

Published

14 hours ago

July 26, 2026

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By Post Staff

Congressman John Garamendi (CA-08) joined 85 House Democrats this week calling on the Department of Education to immediately abandon its plan to transfer the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to the Department of Justice (DOJ).

In their letter, the members argued that the Trump Administration’s plan to dismantle OCR and OSERS through Interagency Agreements (IAAs) is unlawful because Congress established both offices and only Congress has the authority to eliminate them or alter their responsibilities.

“The law is clear: Congress created OCR and OSERS and Congress alone can eliminate them. The use of Interagency Agreements to accomplish your ‘final mission’ – to eliminate the Department in all but name – is counter to the will of Congress and rests on questionable legal ground. Even Congressional Republicans have expressed reservations and attempted to keep money appropriated to the Department within the Department, rather than being outsourced through IAAs…,” the members of Congress wrote.

The members also warned that transferring OCR and OSERS functions would weaken services for students, families, and individuals with disabilities because DOJ and HHS are ill-equipped to carry out the offices’ core functions.

“The movement of OCR and OSERS also disrespects the very people who rely on those services. Specifically, these moves effectively segregate special education from the rest of the education system, moving it to an agency that has indicated it intends to treat disabilities as a health issue to be remedied, against the wishes of groups that advocate on behalf of disabled children and their families. Such action is particularly concerning given the inaccurate and harmful comments from the HHS Secretary regarding children diagnosed with autism.

“Comments such as these will leave those relying on special education services fearful about whether their rights will be upheld and their needs met. Regarding OCR, given the sensitive nature of many of the cases it handles, victims may be hesitant to seek support knowing the investigation will be run by the nation’s primary law enforcement agency. Such delays may cause cases of discrimination to fester and worsen while sending the wrong message to vulnerable communities,” concluded the members.

In February, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that the Department of Education paid OCR investigators up to $38 million not to work.

In April, the Senate HELP Committee released a report that in 2025, OCR reached zero resolution agreements involving sexual harassment, sexual violence, seclusion or restraint, racial harassment, or discriminatory school discipline — despite more than 2,700 pending cases.