Oakland Teachers Spar With District Over Back-to-School Plans
OAKLAND (KPIX) -- Oakland schools are scheduled to open for distance learning in less than two weeks but the district and teachers are at odds with no concrete plan in place.
The Oakland teachers' union is making some striking allegations against the Oakland Unified School District.
The union directly attacked the superintendent, Kyla Johnson-Trammell, for her lack of leadership. The union says that, after three weeks of negotiations, there's no distance-learning plan or any agreement on what's expected from teachers.
"I have to say it's very disappointing that the district took the time to disrespect the work educators yesterday," said Oakland Education Association president Keith Brown.
Brown took offense to a labor negotiations update released by the Oakland Unified School District on Wednesday.
"OUSD's update to families that attempted to blame hard-working teachers for the failure of leadership in the central office was outrageous," Brown said.
The update by OUSD took aim at teachers wanting to do the state-required minimum. It centers around daily instruction time, how much of it will be live and the proposed work day.
The union wants a 300-minute work day while the district insists on their regularly contracted 375 to 390 minutes. The teachers' union also wants time to put together an improved distance-learning program.
For the first week of school, OEA proposed spending just an hour with the students and using the rest of the time to plan and prepare.
The Oakland Unified School District released a statement saying, "We will continue to work with OEA to reach a compromise to ensure that both students and OEA members are positioned for success as we launch the new year."
OEA wants an agreement reached by next Monday. If that doesn't happen, an OEA representative says, a strike is not something that's being discussed and the priority is providing quality education for the students.
