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Welcome back to a new school year! Pardon the lack of information on the website — we are in the process of redesigning the OEA website — watch for a new and greatly improved version on September 13th! Same address: oaklandea.org.

In the meantime,continue to keep those calls coming in to the OEA office about class size, longer work days, etc. Huge appreciations to the Site Reps who have already written to their Administrators informing them of what our collective bargaining agreement says about the length of our work day (see Article 10.2.1). See your Rep for copies of "Know Your Contract" in case your principal needs some reminders.

Class sizes are on the increase around the district. Remember there is a "beginning grace period" of 10 days for elementary schools, 15 for secondary (Article 15.2). The bad news is that under imposition, class sizes in K-5 can go to the limits outlined in the contract: 27 in K, 30 in grades 1-3, and 31 in grades 4-5. The only exception is in QEIA schools.) This is an excellent opportunity for talking to and organizing parents — already in my visits to school sites I’ve talked to parents who are shocked at the large class sizes.

ECE UPdate: Thanks to the efforts of parents, teachers, students and community members working with Oakland Parents Together and OEA, On Friday, August 27, the district found $2.4 million to keep 5 of 7 Child Development Centers slated for closure open through December. With state cuts to pre-school education, it is vitally important for all of us to continue to advocate for our youngest and most vulnerable students.


 

What’s Important the First Weeks of School? Message from your President

I’m sure most, if not all, teachers would agree that it’s NOT poring over test score data and starting the inevitable test prep routine. I’m fairly certain that most, if not all, teachers would agree that in the first few weeks of school, the emphasis should instead be on establishing a safe, welcoming, and respectful environment where students are engaged and enthusiastic about what they’re learning. 

Hopefully the days are behind us when we were told that instruction should begin promptly at 8:31am, and that there was no time to "waste" on classroom meetings and building social skills. With all the talk about what makes an "effective teacher," let’s change the conversation and start asking what makes an "effective" administrator? An "effective" parent? An "effective" student? The new website will have blogging capabilities so we can get your opinions on these and other issues.

Thought for the days ahead: "Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." (William Butler Yeats)

Inform Parents of their Right to Opt Out of Testing!

Teachers: STAR Testing is fast approaching, and the pressure to practice for the tests is increasing. This is a reminder that according to the California Department of Education STAR Testing Regulations and the Ed Code, you have the right to inform parents of their right to opt out of the tests for their children (but not solicit or encourage).  (See below: emphasis added.) (http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/sr/documents/starregs0207.doc)

 

§ 852. Pupil Exemptions.

      A parent or guardian may submit to the school a written request to excuse his or her child from any or all parts of any test provided pursuant to Education Code section 60640. A school district and its employees may discuss the Standardized Testing and Reporting STAR Program with parents and may inform parents of the availability of exemptions under Education Code section 60615. However, the school district and its employees shall not solicit or encourage any written exemption request on behalf of any child or group of children.

NOTE: Authority cited: Sections 33031 and 60605, Education Code. Reference: Sections 60615 and 60640, Education Code.

 

For more information, including a sample letter that parents can give their principals, visit the CalCARE website at http://www.calcare.org/

 

 

Bargaining Update #3

OEA Bargaining Update #3

Quality Public Education is a Civil Right!

Organize to Save Oakland Public Education

State Administration Demands Salary Cuts

OEA Proposes Open Bargaining; SA Team Won’t Agree

Three days of bargaining just concluded between the OEA team and the team representing the state administration (SA) made one thing brutally clear: we need to organize and mobilize to save public education in our city. The SA team’s proposal would make the already unacceptable status quo intolerable. The SA team wants to cut salaries, eliminate staffed elementary prep, and increase workload in secondary schools. They want to do this behind closed doors. Here’s a recap:

Open Bargaining: Most of the three days was spent discussing OEA’s proposal that bargaining be open to all community members and all OUSD employees, but the SA team just would not agree. This is a critical difference, one that cuts right to the heart of our differences with the State Administration. OEA wants these negotiations—so crucial to the future of public education in our city—to be out in the open, for all to see and hear. The SA team does not.  Please see the reverse side for more details–including the OEA team’s rationale for open bargaining.

Sunshine proposals: On day three, the teams walked through their sunshine proposals:

OEA presented its proposals aimed at providing quality public education as the civil right of each and every member of our community, with the key demands of:

  • A 20% salary increase to reduce OUSD’s destabilizing and harmful high teacher turnover rate. This increase will make up for the 21% in cost of living adjustment revenue OUSD has received from the state over the past five years but has not passed on to staff.
  • Class size and workload reductions, including:

Class size maximum of 20 across the board.

Class size maximum of 15 in decile 1 and 2 schools.

The SA team presented its proposal including these blockbusters:

  • “Rolling back” salaries and possibly freezing positions on the salary schedule.
  • Allowing site administrators at secondary schools the “flexibility” to assign teachers six teaching periods per day—a 20% increase in workload
  • Providing elementary teachers with only one—unstaffed—prep per week, and eliminating staffed prep.

The two sides also discussed next year’s school calendar. No agreement was reached, and there was a mutual decision to have the calendar settled by expedited arbitration.

 

Open Bargaining: OEA vs. The State Administration Team

OEA proposed that bargaining be open to all members of the Oakland community and to all OUSD employees. Here is our rationale:

The OEA believes that open bargaining is in the best interest of our members and the community.  The provisions of this contract will determine much about the quality of public education that Oakland students receive over the next period.  The process of negotiations that determine those provisions should be open to observation by members of the OEA and the community.

 

The OEA is committed to a strong contract that protects public education, increases the ability of Oakland to recruit and retain teachers, and ensures that our schools are able to serve our students with high quality programs and smaller class sizes. We hold ourselves accountable to our members and to the students and families of Oakland. We call on the District to do the same. We call for a bargaining process in which sessions are open to OEA and community members.

The State Administration (SA) team countered with a proposal carefully designed to prevent the community and OEA members from witnessing these crucial negotiations. They insisted that, except for four people, observers must be limited to designated representatives of a short list of organizations—almost all of which were district advisory committees. Each organization would have a maximum of two observers, who would have to submit their names in March.  So although OEA was included in the list of organizations, we would have at most two observers and we would have to name them this month. Since teachers wouldn’t want to take off more than one day of teaching to attend bargaining this spring, our two OEA members would only be able to attend one day each of the seven bargaining days scheduled for April and May. Even the four “open” slots could be scheduled by District-affiliated observers. Here is our response:

      The OEA believes that our proposal allows for the widest segment of the community to participate in observation of bargaining. We do not believe that it is either desirable or workable to stipulate that an observer must be part of an established organization in order to participate in open bargaining. We believe that all members of our school community –many of whom belong to organizations not listed or no organization at all — have a tremendous stake in the outcome of bargaining and should have the opportunity to observe. Thus, while members of the organizations from the OUSD list would be welcome under the OEA proposal, we believe that to exclude other community members is counter to the spirit of the proposal. We also do not find it desirable, or practical to establish a pool of designated observers who have the exclusive right to observe, and who would presumably be expected to observe on a regular basis. Again, this would serve to make it impossible for many OEA and community members to participate in a process of truly open bargaining. We believe that in this case a flexible approach, as outlined in the OEA counter-proposal, is by far the most workable and democratic.

 

The OEA Bargaining Team will keep OEA members completely informed by putting out frequent OEA Bargaining Updates this year. We intend to keep our members fully informed of all developments at bargaining sessions. Your support and active participation are keys to winning what our students and we need and deserve.

 

Upcoming Bargaining Dates:  April 8, 9, 22, 23


  

OEA Action Alert!

OEA ACTION ALERT!

The following motion was unanimously passed at the meeting of the OEA Executive Board of Directors on March 5, 2008:

“I move that the OEA Executive Board direct OEA members to take a unified action to support the class action grievance on paperwork (Article 10.6.4) for the Elementary Math Progress Assessment #2, and any other future district benchmark assessments.

OEA members are directed to:

not print out answer sheets.

not fill out answer sheets.

not scan answer sheets.”

             ENOUGH!

It is impossible to do all the paperwork required of us during our duty week.

Some things just can’t get done unless we volunteer to do it on non-paid time.

The last item on your list of things to do on non-paid time is completing paperwork that does nothing to inform or advance your practice.

This is the first of continuing actions to address the lack of response (for months) by the District regarding excessive paperwork and testing.

Not performing the above tasks is a UNION SANCTIONED ACTIVITY whenever you lack time to perform clerical work for the District.

WHAT YOU SHOULD DO:

Place this flyer in your principal’s box.

Get agreement with your staff to join their colleagues district wide in taking this action.

Give the District mandated test(s). Return completed test booklets to the office.

Do not download answer sheets, do not bubble in student answers, do not scan answer sheets.

You do the District’s paperwork only if you are given EXTRA time during the duty day, or if you agree to extra per diem pay for work done outside of the duty day.

Notify OEA immediately at 763-4020 if any concrete disciplinary action is taken against you

(threats do not count as they are expected from our more bullying principals).

 

President’s Report to Rep Council, March 3, 2008

 

President’s Report to Rep Council

March 3, 2008


Welcome, Sergio!
 

Last month you heard the distressing news that Ward Rountree is retiring. As much as his daily presence will be missed, he will continue to work part-time with OEA as an Emeritus, focusing on bargaining support.
 

I am happy to introduce you to our new Executive Director, Sergio Quintor. Sergio comes from the Instruction and Professional Development Department of CTA, but before that he taught in Oakland, and has made his home here for many years. He already professes to love working with OEA, despite (or because of?) the challenges of our district!

 

California Educator

 

How many of you have received your issue of the California Educator? Congratulations to Keith Brown, who’s this month’s handsome cover guy! Be sure to read the excellent articles on teacher retention, featuring Keith, Julie Palacios, Nikita Gibbs, and yours truly. It’s no mystery, as we all know: teachers will stay in even the toughest schools if they have the respect, the support, and the working conditions that allow them to thrive! Where those conditions are lacking, teacher turnover is bound to be an issue.

 

Update on the District

 

It’s always a challenge to try and condense into a very short report all the many things going on in the district over the past month. We stay busy responding to the many ways in which our members are feeling the pressure – and the list keeps growing, whether it’s problems with payroll, credentialing issues, benefits concerns, or administrators micromanaging lesson plans and/or otherwise interfering in our work as professional educators.

 

The top prize this month has to go to Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary’s Faculty Council, who submitted their minutes with a note at the top that read, “After reading the Faculty Council agenda, Mrs. Washington (Principal) said, ‘This is not an appropriate agenda if all you’re going to do is gripe and complain.’ Then (she) exited out the room.”

The so-called “gripes and complaints”?

1) QEIA Funds (no response regarding expenditures for 2007-08; no time allotted for teachers to collaborate re: QEIA funds)

2) SSC Minutes (no discussion of QEIA funds or budget for 2007-08)

3) Rodent droppings and ants (violation of the Williams Act)

4) Teachers’ Time (violation of Article 10.2.1)

We’ll be paying Mrs. Washington a visit soon! Meanwhile, our sympathy and appreciation to the hard-working staff at Martin Luther King, many of them veteran teachers, who are doing amazing things in a truly demoralizing atmosphere.

 

Most critical is what to expect with the Governor’s proposed budget cuts. We have been notified that 31 probationary teachers are receiving notices of non-reelection, and are holding a meeting with them next week. We have been assured that there will be no March 15 letters to permanent certificated teachers.

 

Budget Cuts

 

I spent this past weekend in Santa Clara at a meeting of Presidents and Staff from Richmond, Vallejo and Oakland, and then at the Urban Issues Conference. Much of our discussion centered around how to respond to the threat of budget cuts and the importance of making our voices as educators loud and forceful. As NEA Vice-President Dennis Van Roekel said, “If we’re not at the table, we’ll end up on the menu.” Two of our newer Site Reps attended the conference, and I urge anyone who’s never been to a CTA conference to talk to them or to any of your leadership to learn more about them. We always try to get scholarships or grants to cover or offset the costs, and I’m especially interested in finding new members to attend these very worthwhile events. 

 

Our Governator has done a fine job of beginning to mobilize the strangest bed fellows against his proposed 10% across the board budget cuts. The district has come out publicly against the budget cuts, and even taken a page from OEA by proclaiming that quality public education is a civil right in their website’s budget cuts tool kit! Seventeen Superintendents and State Administrators from Alameda and Contra Costa came to Oakland a few weeks ago to oppose the cuts. I spoke on behalf of OEA at that press conference, and I urge all of you to speak out forcefully, too – we MUST change the conversation from one that accepts ANY cuts to one that demands that we find alternative sources of revenue to fully and equitably fund not only public education, but health and social services as well. California is the fifth largest economy in the world – the money is there. As we’ve said consistently, we need to demand that corporations and wealthy individuals contribute to the common good and pay their share, and in Oakland that includes taxing the Port.

 

In your packet are materials from CTA about the proposed budget cuts. In response to the pressure from chapters throughout the state for statewide mobilizations and activities, they are working with the Education Coalition and other groups to develop more action plans; meanwhile, chapters are being encouraged to take local actions. The Executive Board meets this Wednesday to discuss an action plan to further develop OEA’s response. I am also talking regularly with the Presidents of several large urban locals to coordinate In the meantime, here are some suggestions:

  1. Go to cta.org and click on “State Budget Crisis” for information and contact information for legislators.
  2. Write your legislators – they need to hear from us that NO CUTS ARE ACCEPTABLE!
  3. Join San Francisco teachers March 11 at a Budget Cuts rally; 4:00-6:00 pm; see their website uesf.org for details
  4. Talk to your colleagues, parents, community members about our “Create Success” campaign – let them know that we cannot keep doing more with less!
  5. Hold a staff meeting to fill out the Community Survey in your packet – we need to lay the groundwork for more house meetings to build ties with our community around the issues we all face.

Sue Scott will speak about our beginning organizing efforts in Community Outreach.

 

Bargaining

 

In the spirit of transparency, the Bargaining Team has already issued two Bargaining Updates. Our Bargaining Chair, David de Leeuw, will present a short summary of what has occurred to date.

 

HBIC

 

Despite the challenges, we continue to make progress in negotiating collectively. We know we are entering unknown territory, so there are bound to be bumps along the way, but at the same time there is a strong desire and commitment on the part of all the unions to make this historic coalition work. The District has proposed a Side Letter which would have tied all the unions to timelines and legal language unacceptable to any of us. Nothing has been signed with them, and nothing will be signed that is potentially harmful to any of the unions.

 

At the January Rep Council we approved a motion to bargain health care collectively with the other OUSD unions. Part of that motion contained proposed agreements to guide our work with the other unions. These were discussed thoroughly, and the other unions took them back to their memberships for approval. In your packet is what we signed jointly, based on our proposal. Please note that our major goals were agreed to: no payments on premium, maintaining Kaiser and Health Net, veto power, and proposing that all bargaining with the district be open.

 

There are three changes from our original motion:

 

  1. Our proposal included: “Any and all members of HBIC’s labor organizations may attend HBIC meetings as observers.” A compromise was proposed and agreed to: “HBIC labor caucus will have a monthly meeting that will be open to any and all District employees throughout the period of negotiations.” (Bullet #2)
  2. Our proposal included: “Consistent with our united stance in HBIC, if any union feels it necessary to strike over the main contract, all unions will honor the picket lines.” This was not included for a number of reasons: UAOS cannot strike; other unions thought that it was premature and possibly legally dangerous to agree on the picket line question.  Morris said (as he did at Rep Council) that Labor HBIC is a confidence-building coalition. If it succeeds where we have a major common interest, health care, then as a union President he knows what picket lines mean.
  3. We suggested an addition, which was accepted: “There will be no confidentiality agreements with the District.”

 

We are bringing this revised “Internal Agreement” to Rep Council and asking for your approval of it.


 CSO/CTA Grievance

 

Some of you know that six years ago a grievance was filed by our former Executive Directors, Bruce Colwell and Ara Prigian, charging that OEA was not providing them with sufficient Associate Staff support, as required under the Uniserv agreement with OEA.
Some measures were taken to improve office procedures and atmosphere, but the grievance was never formally resolved until recently. The settlement requested by the California Staff Organization (CSO), representing both our Executive Directors and our Associate Staff, was for CTA to provide an additional Associate Staff person dedicated to them. CTA was advised that they wouldn’t win going to arbitration, so they agreed to settle by housing our Executive Directors in another location in Oakland, providing them with an Associate Staff person, and turning Oakland into a Regional Resource Center.

 

This has been extremely upsetting to all of us – your leadership, your Executive Directors, and our Associate Staff. We have met with CTA to search for alternatives, and are doing whatever we can to make sure this doesn’t impact our membership. Nicole, Sergio and Ward will continue to have offices in OEA to keep any disruption to a minimum.

 

Contrary to any rumors you may have heard, we are NOT being put in receivership. CTA is NOT attempting to take over OEA. This is the settlement of a grievance that had its roots in a host of issues predating your current leadership and staff. We have been told that we will be able to reapply for Option I status, should we choose to in the future.

 

Central Labor Council

 

We were notified last week that the AFL-CIO and NEA have reached agreement on affiliate status with four CTA locals: Oakland, Hayward, San Leandro and Fremont, and that we are being accepted as affiliate members. I have asked our Community Outreach Chair, Sue Scott, to go to San Diego this Wednesday to represent us at the national meeting of the AFL-CIO, where we will be welcomed as new affiliates.

 

Dr. John Alfred Dennis, Jr.

 

Some of you may know that we lost a valued member of the OEA community a few weeks ago. Dr. John Dennis, a 35-year veteran Adult Ed teacher as well as educator at Merritt, City College of San Francisco, and  St. Mary’s, was murdered by one of the at-risk young men he’d mentored decades earlier. In his honor and memory, the staff at Shands Adult School are giving a scholarship in his name. Please contribute if you can.

 

Elections

 

Some years ago, after I had already been a Site Rep for a number of years, I was approached by several different OEA members and encouraged to run as a delegate for the RA. I had no idea at the time what the Representative Assembly was. Had I not been approached individually, I don’t think I would have ever thought about running. So, this is not a substitute for getting a personal nudge, but I want to urge any and all of you who are getting more interested in being involved in OEA to fill out a candidacy form to be a delegate. We have 17 slots this year, and are always looking for new members to join us and 10,000 national delegates at this amazing annual event. This year’s RA is in Washington, DC. Expenses for delegates are paid by OEA.

 

Finally, thank you again for being Site Representatives.

 

In unity,

 

Betty Olson-Jones

 

Rep Council

March 3, 2008
4:00 pmto6:30 pm

Oakland International High School (formerly Carter M.S.)

4351 Webster St., Oakland 

Oakland Education Association: 272 E. 12th Street, Second floor, Oakland, CA 94606 | Hotline: 510-763-0900 | Ph 763-4020 | Fax 763-6354 | Sitemap