In 2019, Oakland lecturers went on strike for well-deserved greater pay, and each household I knew supported their strike. Children, together with mine, joined them within the picket line.
In 2022, the Oakland Schooling Affiliation staged a strike to protest faculty consolidations. However the strike was solely in the future. Nobody truly likes faculty mergers, so we dad and mom took the time without work and obtained over it.
That is the third trainer strike in 5 years, and the union has misinterpret the room. This strike harms youngsters 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 fallacious aspect of historical past.
I’ve been a dad or mum chief at my sons’ elementary faculty for seven years. Most individuals know that my help for lecturers and for scholar 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 lots of different well-deserved union requests, now could be 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:
• Enormous numbers of Oakland households throughout town don’t help the strike. Similar 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 might be deceptive. It’s dad and mom who don’t have any voice right here, and from the place I sit, they’re extraordinarily offended.
• The union is holding our children hostage over “frequent good” rules that all of us agree on however which don’t have 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 things all of us may need proper now. Even when it did, preserving youngsters away from faculty but once more is a dangerous manner for one aspect to get what they need.
• The strike is cynically opportunistic and certain unlawful. Union representatives didn’t comply with the correct steps earlier than putting: There was no deadlock, bargaining was ongoing, and there was no state mediator after they walked out. A union that strikes thrice in 5 years doesn’t contemplate it an unlucky instrument of final resort.
Right here’s a thought experiment: Think about you might be shifting to the Bay Space, perhaps from out of state. You hear that Oakland lecturers are lastly paid higher. Perhaps 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 unattainable calls for and create a poisonous dynamic between lecturers and most dad and mom. Yay? Present us flats elsewhere, please, and sorry about your enrollment declines.
The lecturers’ union appears to consider that the tip justifies their damaging means, and they’re extra involved with activism at any price than they’re with enjoying by the principles and doing proper by youngsters. They chant for “justice” — as if any of us doesn’t consider in it — whereas skirting democratic course of, intimidating youngsters and households who come close to faculty, and above all doing youngsters the grave injustice of denying them the schooling that’s their proper.
I’m not okay with this, nor ought to anybody be. Lecturers might vote at the moment to approve the final truthful provide after which work inside our group to get different shared objectives met. Mother and father needn’t stand silent whereas our children are stored from faculty the place they belong.
Jesse Antin is a dad or mum of two boys attending faculties within the Oakland Unified Faculty District.
