Oakland lecturers confront contractor outdoors administrative constructing development website
OAKLAND — Tensions rose early Thursday when a contractor at a site where an OUSD administration building is being built was confronted with a number of striking Oakland teachers.
The incident came at the beginning of the sixth day of the ongoing Oakland teachers’ strike. Teachers demonstrated outside the district’s new $57 million administrative center being built on the Cole campus at Union Street.
CBS
A video shows the teachers marching in front of the entrance to the construction site. A contractor coming to work slowly pushed his truck towards the protesters as he tried to get in, causing a standoff.
“You can’t block this drive like that. It’s illegal!” The contractor is heard telling the striking teachers that they have refused to move and allow him to cross their border.
The contractor eventually got out of his truck and instead of escalating the confrontation, left the vehicle at the gate.
Teachers argue that the project misuses Action Y funds that could instead be used to address health and safety issues at school sites.
“They are spending $57 million on this project and at the same time the facilities in our schools are deteriorating and we are demanding much-needed facility upgrades,” said striking Oakland teacher Divia Faris. “We have pollutants in a lot of schools, we have sewage leaks, we have roofs that are falling apart. That’s just ironic.”
A sticking point in negotiations between the Oakland Unified School District and the Oakland Education Association — which represents about 3,000 teachers and other employees — remains the “common good” proposals that the striking Oakland teachers are demanding.
School district officials said Wednesday night that the OEA’s proposals would cost more than $1 billion to implement. The teachers claim the district has not held negotiations with them for seven months and that their public service demands include important upgrades for “dilapidated” school facilities that need immediate attention.
With 11 days left in the school year for 35,000 students in the district, time is running out for classes and end-of-year events while the stalemate continues.
The district’s wage proposal on the table includes a retrospective 10 percent increase and a one-time bonus of $5,000 for union members. In addition, it offers every teacher a salary increase of at least 13 percent and even 22 percent.
The offer also cuts the time it takes teachers to get to the top of the pay scale from 32 years to 20 years.
But county officials continue to insist that the union’s proposals to tackle homelessness, use vacant lots and drought-tolerant landscaping should not be part of the negotiation process and are too expensive.
Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell said the teachers’ union would “trust the district with broader societal issues” that were outside their purview.
“While the district agrees that these issues should be addressed, and we are working on many of them, school district budgets alone cannot solve the problems. They require interagency government support,” Johnson-Trammell said in a statement released by the Quarter.
Measure Y, approved by ballot in 2020, allowed the district to issue $735 million in bonds to fund necessary improvements to schools and facilities throughout the district.
The teachers’ union says Measure Y funds will be used to fix sanitation problems that are causing raw sewage to enter classrooms, heating and cooling upgrades, and removal of hazardous materials on campus sites that have reported elevated levels of contaminants in water and soil. could be used.
Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao released a statement Thursday urging both sides to come to an agreement.
“One Oakland means we all work together to achieve the common goal of a unified city—a city where all residents have opportunities to live, work, play and learn. This includes our children, who deserve to be in classrooms and receive a quality education in a safe, just and joyful environment,” the statement said in part. “And that includes our teachers and school district staff whose job it is to educate our greatest asset: Oakland’s youth. We must support the needs of both for the benefit of our communities and the city as a whole.”
