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OAKLAND — Plummeting student attendance is costing the debt-ridden Oakland Unified School District around $1 million in state funding each day that teachers strike for more pay and better working conditions, according to figures released Tuesday by the district.
Of Oakland Unified’s approximately 37,000 students, only about 6 percent have shown up to class during the four-day strike, district spokesman John Sasaki said. That has meant a net loss of $4 million — the drop in average daily attendance funding from the state minus what the district saves by not paying teachers.
“Our numbers show the impact that the student absences are having on the district in support of our teachers. It lends greater urgency to the need to settle our contract negotiations with the Oakland Education Association,” Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell said via email. “Our teams have been working diligently all day to come to a resolution so we can get all our teachers and students back in the classroom and back to the work of teaching and learning.”
Oakland Education Association officials estimated that only 3 percent of students crossed the picket lines, but did not clarify how they arrived at that estimate.
Negotiations were continuing as of 5 p.m. Tuesday, according to a union official. Barring a sudden breakthrough, that ensures the strike will continue for a fifth day on Wednesday.
The union, which represents 3,000 teachers, nurses, counselors and other staff, had not budged as of Sunday from its original demand of a 12 percent raise over three years, as well as smaller class sizes that would require hiring more teachers, and the hiring of more nurses and counselors. It’s unknown whether the union has dropped its demand since negotiations resumed on Monday after breaking down in an about an hour on Sunday.
The raise alone would cost the district $60 million over three years, district officials said over the weekend. The district had countered with an offer of a 7 percent raise across two and a half years and a 1.5 percent one-time bonus; the offer also addresses class sizes and support staff but falls short of the union’s demands.
District officials have maintained the offer is the best they can do. If they go higher, they will have to cut more than a planned $21.75 million from the 2019-20 budget. The school board is scheduled to vote on those cuts — which could involve laying off more than 100 employees and slashing school sites’ discretionary funds by $3 million — on Wednesday.
The district faces a budget shortfall that will reach an estimated $56 million by the 2020-21 school year if no cuts are made, and is under tight fiscal oversight by the Alameda County Office of Education, as well as the state — which the district still owes more than $30 million after going into receivership in 2003.
“It is unclear as yet how the loss of any funding because of the strike will affect the overall budget issues,” Sasaki said Tuesday. “But in a school district with tight financial constraints such as OUSD, any money that’s lost adds to the challenge of balancing the budget.”
The bargaining teams conferred late into the evening Monday, calling it a night around 10 p.m. and returning to the table Tuesday morning, union officials said. Oakland Education Association vice president Chaz Garcia, at a news conference Monday, said talks that were fruitless before were reinvigorated when state Superintendent Tony Thurmond intervened. Thurmond stuck around for bargaining talks on Tuesday.
“Being that it wasn’t going anywhere before and talks were ending, clearly his presence is helping,” Garcia said, without elaborating.
Oakland Education Association president Keith Brown — who has been at the bargaining table this week and did not return calls from this news organization Monday or Tuesday — issued a statement around 5:45 p.m. Monday decrying the district for still not making an offer “that will keep experienced teachers in Oakland,” stressing again that the strike is not just about a raise in wages.
“The administration would lead you to believe this is only about salary; the state trustee has now joined this disinformation campaign,” Brown said in the statement.
This strike has lasted longer than the most recent Oakland teachers strike in 2010, which ended after one day. The last strike before that was in 1996 and continued for 26 days.
After walking the picket lines Tuesday morning, teachers marched two miles from Verdese Park to Roots International Academy — an East Oakland middle school that the school board voted earlier this year to close — around 11:30 a.m. The school board voted on a plan to close up to 24 schools — though district officials stress that’s a worst-case scenario — over the next five years to adjust to a 30 percent drop in enrollment over the past 15 years, from 54,000 to 37,000 students.
The union did not address school closures in its original contract proposal but asked to include the issue in negotiations before the board voted on the school closure plan and again before it voted to close Roots. Lawyers for the district said at the time it wasn’t appropriate to talk about school closures in bargaining.
At Tuesday’s rally at Roots, award-winning “Sorry to Bother You” director Boots Riley spoke to the crowd, encouraging them to keep up the fight.
“This fight, it might seem like it’s just right here, but there are people looking at it all over the world, trying to figure out what they should do in their life, and they’re looking to Oakland teachers, looking to L.A. teachers, looking to y’all as an example, and you’re giving a great one,” Riley said.
This story is developing.