Thousands of Oakland students will return to school today, after about 3,000 striking public school educators reached a tentative deal with district officials to raise salaries for teachers and take some unconventional steps to improve students’ lives, including creating a Black reparations task force and using district property to help homeless students.
Teachers, librarians, nurses and other staff members in the Oakland Unified School District walked out on May 4, the latest in a string of labor standoffs at academic institutions in California. Over the nearly two weeks that Oakland educators were off the job, the district’s 80 schools remained open to its 34,000 students, but there was no instruction.
Oakland’s teachers, among the lowest paid in the Bay Area, secured raises of roughly 15 percent over three years under the agreement struck on Monday between the district, one of the largest in the state, and the Oakland Education Association, the union representing the educators. The starting salary for a first-year teacher in the district will increase to $62,696 from $52,905, according to a draft provided by the union.
District officials say they are investing $70 million in educators’ wages in the deal, making progress toward a long-term goal of paying them “what they deserve,” Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell said.
“We realize we’re not there yet, but this is one crucial step toward getting there,” Johnson-Trammell said at a news briefing Monday afternoon. “It’s always been important to me to move O.U.S.D. from a history of crisis toward a culture of stability and achieving quality for every student, family and employee in our district. We have moved the needle significantly in that direction today.”
The tentative deal, which still needs to be ratified by union members, also includes changes aimed at improving social and economic conditions for parents, teachers and students in Oakland Unified, including the creation of a Black reparations task force that will focus on providing services to schools where 40 percent or more of the students are Black. The district also agreed to include parents, teachers and staff members in decision-making about how to best spend millions of dollars in new state grant money for education, according to union officials.
These kinds of “common good” clauses — provisions that aren’t directly related to workers’ pay or benefits — were first seen during the 2012 Chicago teachers’ strike, and have continued to pop up across the country in recent years, according to Steven K. Ashby, a labor studies professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and co-author of a book about the seminal Chicago strike.
Striking teachers in North Carolina called for the state legislature in 2018 to expand Medicaid to improve community health. In West Virginia, teachers who walked off the job managed to secure raises for all state employees.
This emerging trend reflects labor leaders’ broader, more progressive view of the power and role of organizing, Ashby told me. “The 2012 strike shook up the labor movement,” he said. “The basic idea is: Instead of just bargaining for ourselves, let’s bargain for the community — it’s a new twist.”
Several districts in California have bargained over common-good demands recently, including Los Angeles Unified (where employees went on a three-day strike in March), San Diego Unified and West Contra Costa Unified, according to the Oakland Education Association.
The proposed Oakland contract includes a promise from the district to hire more full-time librarians and counselors and to use its resources to assist its 1,500 homeless students, either by helping them obtain housing vouchers or by directly providing free showers, laundry or housing. There’s also a clause requiring that the district work with AC Transit, which serves Oakland and some surrounding areas, to offer free bus passes to all students in the district.
“We’re teachers because that’s what we want to do; we’re trying to change the system because we lived through the system,” Ismael Armendariz, president of the Oakland Education Association, said in a video posted on the union’s Twitter page on Monday, adding, “We want to do better for everybody.”
Where we’re traveling
Today’s tip comes from Mary Ann Mitchell, who lives in Folsom:
“One of my favorite things to do in spring is to take a drive in our Honda S2000. My husband and I put the top down and drive through the foothills. The most recent drive was to Coloma to visit the Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park. We cruised through the hills, spotted wildflowers and took a break at the park. We wandered the dirt paths, read about the gold mining town and sites, saw people panning for gold and watched the American River rush by. Boy, is it running fast now.
We found a wonderful spot for coffee called the Argonaut Farm to Fork Cafe and had lattes, tea and a cookie. After that treat, we got back in the car to continue the drive through the green hills, with the trees leafing and wildflowers blooming. A little drive is a great way to welcome spring! Get outside and find the joy in the world.”
Tell us about your favorite places to visit in California. Email your suggestions to CAtoday@nytimes.com. We’ll be sharing more in upcoming editions of the newsletter.
Tell us
My colleague Jill Cowan reported on the enduring fame of P-22, a mountain lion that became an icon for Angelenos.
While there have been plenty of famous domesticated animals, we want to hear about any wild animals that became celebrities to you. Did you have a bird, bear or deer in your community that you became attached to? Tell us about it and why you became a fan. Email us at CAtoday@nytimes.com with your suggestions.
And before you go, some good news
The northern lights, or aurora borealis, are usually seen in the northernmost regions of the world. In recent months, however, they’ve become visible to those farther south, including to some central California residents last month.
That’s not a fluke, but is part of a trend that will allow a wider swath of the world to get a rare glimpse of the phenomenon for the next few years, scientists say. The expanded visibility of the lights will peak in 2025.
Thanks for reading. I’ll be back tomorrow. — Soumya
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword.
Briana Scalia and Johnna Margalotti contributed to California Today. You can reach the team at CAtoday@nytimes.com.
