In 2019, Oakland lecturers went on strike for well-deserved larger pay, and each household I knew supported their strike. Youngsters, together with mine, joined them within the picket line.
In 2022, the Oakland Training Affiliation staged a strike to protest faculty consolidations. However the strike was solely someday. Nobody truly likes faculty mergers, so we dad and mom took the time without work and bought over it.
That is the third trainer strike in 5 years, and the union has misinterpret the room. This strike harms kids unnecessarily and is deeply unpopular with dad and mom throughout town. Organizations and leaders are quickly lining as much as oppose it. The union is on the flawed facet of historical past.
I've been a guardian chief at my sons’ elementary faculty for seven years. Most individuals know that my assist for lecturers and for pupil fairness has been steadfast. I'm pro-public faculty, pro-labor and pro-fair pay.
However I'm additionally pro-child. So, with the strike persevering with even after the promise of historic pay will increase and plenty of different well-deserved union requests, now's the time for me to talk up for the sake of youngsters in asking for the strike to finish.
Supporting hard-working lecturers and supporting a disastrous strike will not be the identical factor. Right here is why:
• Large numbers of Oakland households throughout town don't assist the strike. Identical to throughout the pandemic yr, dad and mom endure from having no organized illustration to advocate for our views. Many individuals discover native media protection typically biased in favor of the union, whose speaking factors will be deceptive. It’s dad and mom who haven't any voice right here, and from the place I sit, they're extraordinarily offended.
• The union is holding our youngsters hostage over “widespread good” rules that all of us agree on however which haven't any place in a labor contract. Most of us are liberal individuals who select to stay in a liberal metropolis, however activism has a time and place, and this isn’t it. OUSD doesn’t have the authority or cash to do all the pieces all of us would possibly need proper now. Even when it did, retaining youngsters away from faculty but once more is a dangerous manner for one facet to get what they need.
• The strike is cynically opportunistic and certain unlawful. Union representatives didn’t comply with the right steps earlier than hanging: There was no deadlock, bargaining was ongoing, and there was no state mediator after they walked out. A union that strikes 3 times in 5 years doesn't think about it an unlucky instrument of final resort.
Right here’s a thought experiment: Think about you might be shifting to the Bay Space, possibly from out of state. You hear that Oakland lecturers are lastly paid higher. Possibly trainer retention will enhance, and the lecturers who keep can higher afford to stay right here. However you additionally hear that the lecturers’ union will strike usually, make not possible calls for and create a poisonous dynamic between lecturers and most dad and mom. Yay? Present us residences elsewhere, please, and sorry about your enrollment declines.
The lecturers’ union appears to imagine that the tip justifies their damaging means, and they're extra involved with activism at any value than they're with taking part in by the foundations and doing proper by youngsters. They chant for “justice” — as if any of us doesn’t imagine in it — whereas skirting democratic course of, intimidating youngsters and households who come close to faculty, and above all doing kids the grave injustice of denying them the training that's their proper.
I'm not okay with this, nor ought to anybody be. Academics might vote immediately to approve the final truthful supply after which work inside our neighborhood to get different shared objectives met. Mother and father needn't stand silent whereas our youngsters are saved from faculty the place they belong.
Jesse Antin is a guardian of two boys attending colleges within the Oakland Unified College District.