As the directors of the teacher and principal education programs at UC Berkeley, we prepare passionate, committed, and talented future teachers and leaders in service of local districts like Oakland. We are pragmatic about the current working conditions, focusing our energies on how educators can optimize and leverage possibilities for change amidst limited resources. For decades, California has given public schools a herculean task with meager resources and support. Teachers and leaders are expected to be superheroes and are vilified when they can’t live up to unrealistic demands.
Now, teachers are sounding an alarm. Since last year, #RedForEd activism by teacher unions has spread across West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Colorado, often with broad-based support.
On the heels of the recent strikes in Los Angeles and Denver, teachers in Oakland are raising their voices. Like their peers around the country, they are also demanding better working conditions and more equitable learning environments for students. In addition, they are amplifying the calls to pay attention to the growing inequalities in schooling. Will California policy makers hear their cry and make good on this call to action?
Keeping public schools public matters. Many, including a few billionaires, have thrown their weight behind non-unionized charter schools as the silver bullet. In a climate of limited resources, they exert growing influence on the operation and reform of schools while undermining public control and democratic accountability. However, research shows that achievement differences between charter schools and traditional public schools are not significant and there is notable variation within both.
The $20 million deficit anticipated by Oakland Unified School District is looming, and it is the leadership’s legal responsibility to maintain fiscal stability and make contingency plans for a strike. Why do the 37,000 students and 2,300 teachers have to sustain more cuts to rectify the shortfall? How many more years of cuts can be sustained before the district is completely dismantled?
California has the fifth largest economy in the world, yet only recently increased per pupil spending to 41st in the country. U.S. teachers, in comparison to other developed democracies, work some of the longest hours and are among the worst paid when adjusted for their level of education. These are real choices we have made for many years as a society. We must face the legacy we have created and avoid being trapped in the false choice of pitting teachers against leaders or taxpayers.
We have allowed the chronic underfunding of public institutions and accepted spiraling levels of inequality in the United States. That the school board and leaders are forced to choose between grim financial options while absurd levels of wealth co-exist is unethical. Addressing this magnitude of inequality should be our No. 1 public priority. For perspective, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s increase in wealth in a mere two hours could erase OUSD’s anticipated deficit for next year.
Do we have the collective will and courage to address the growing wealth and income disparity in our state? If we want to have high quality public schools, then we need a coalition to advocate for increased school funding –– including teachers, leaders, and parents of children in traditional public, charter, or private schools; and, the residents who have no children enrolled in any type of school. Let’s thank and support Oakland educators for their service and the #RedforEd movement for the productive refusal to accept the status quo. Together, we can revive California’s robust levels of per pupil spending so that all of our children will be able to thrive, realize their great potential, and enliven our democracy.
Rebecca Cheung is the program director of the Principal Leadership Institute at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education. Thomas M. Philip is the faculty director of Berkeley Educators for Equity & Excellence, UC Berkeley’s teacher education program at the Graduate School of Education.