Today marks one week since Portland Public Schools teachers began their strike and campuses have been closed. Negotiations are ongoing with no clear timeline on when an agreement will be met. In Oakland, California, a teachers strike in the spring lasted a week and a half and kept kids out of class for several days. Jill Tucker is the education reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle. She joins us to share more on why teachers went on strike there and how the resolution was reached.
This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Today marks more than a week since Portland Public School teachers declared a strike. It is the fifth day of instruction that nearly 43,000 students are missing. Negotiations are ongoing but there’s no sign that the two sides are anywhere close to an agreement. Portland is not alone. Teachers in Salem-Kaiser and Bend-La Pine schools are in tense negotiations with their districts these days. California has seen some significant strikes over the last year. A strike in Oakland in the spring lasted for a week and a half, causing students to miss eight days of class. The issues there over pay and class sizes and teacher prep time, among other things, are similar enough that we thought it would be valuable to hear what led to Oakland’s strike, how it was resolved and where the district is now. Jill Tucker is the education reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle and she joins us now. Welcome to the show.
Jill Tucker: Oh, thank you so much.
Miller: So after the union in Oakland called for a strike vote, hundreds of parents signed a petition calling on teachers to stay in school. One of the leaders of the group said “You can support teachers without supporting kids’ learning being disrupted. Don’t use our kids as a bargaining chip.” How widespread was that sentiment?
Tucker: It really depended on the parents’ perspective. Socioeconomics came into it. I think a lot of that sentiment, however, was perhaps amplified with this strike than in previous ones simply because kids lost a lot of time here during the pandemic. Schools were closed for a year and a half and they didn’t reopen like other parts of the country. So really, there was a lot of concern about kids missing more school and especially at the end of the school year when there’s so many events like graduation and prom and AP tests and a lot of those types of things, final exams, the list goes on. And I think parents were concerned about kids missing some of those iconic moments of their youth for yet another school closure. So there was a lot more sentiment than we had seen in the past for sure.
Miller: It’s interesting to see that in the context of Portland’s strike because I’m sure that Portland parents feel that way, some of them do. But I have not seen an organized group urging teachers to remain in schools the way I saw that when looking at your reporting, that was in the lead up to the strike. But let’s turn to the issues behind the strike, starting with pay. How far apart were the two sides on pay?
Tucker: Well, initially they start pretty far apart and kind of inch closer through bargaining. Ultimately, even as they started to go on strike, they were actually not that far apart in pay increases. There were some issues related to what the starting pay would be, how much the pay raises would be and who would get the most pay raise, whether it’s starting teachers or long tenure teachers. So there was a lot of debate on that, but at the higher end where they hit about 22% ultimately, the district and the union were pretty close to that when they were negotiating. There were a lot of other issues that kept them apart and ultimately sent them into a strike.
Miller: What were some of those other issues?
Tucker: I mean, things that you guys are grappling with, like class size and prep time and the number of counselors or psychologists or nurses, a lot of these types of things were coming into play. But in Oakland the union really dug their heels in when it came to these common good items that are becoming more and more popular. You probably [are] hearing a lot more about them - social justice type issues like Black reparation or a say in school closures, or prevention of school closures, or other types of environmental issues. Housing for homeless families, a lot of these things that are not required in the bargaining over teacher contracts and there’s sort of outside issues that may or may not directly affect teachers. So there’s a lot of tension over those issues between the district and the union and in the community as well, whether those types of things should be in a teacher contract or not.
Miller: Well, how did the administration respond to these various requests overall?
Tucker: Yeah, they basically dug their heels in too, and refused to add them to the contract. They said that they did not belong in the contract. They would only bargain over the required items in a contract which are working conditions, pay benefits, those types of things, and said they would not sort of open that Pandora’s box and start negotiating all of these other types of social justice issues that the union wanted to include.
Miller: Did the two sides eventually reach an impasse or exhaust the mediation process? That is what happened here in Portland.
Tucker: Yeah. No. You know, we’re seeing a trend down here that I think has a lot of folks on edge where districts are filing unfair labor pact practices as part of their negotiation process. And instead of following the impasse and fact finding and mediation, they’re basically circumventing that and saying we’re going to go on strike over these unfair labor practices rather than going on strike because they have reached impasse in all of the other steps for a strike. And it means that they basically can call a strike at any point, which Oakland did, and they followed Los Angeles’ example. And San Francisco got pretty close to that as well.
So it really is a different tactic that we’re seeing here in California, that they’re sort of skipping the normal steps and really pushing the envelope to a strike. And that’s what we saw in Oakland, really just rapidly moving forward in this strike process and voting and striking. It was a little jarring for the community, as you might imagine.
Miller: The strike started on May 4th, which was a Thursday. And my understanding is that unlike here in Portland where school buildings are closed, kids are not going to schools. In Oakland, kids could actually go into their schools despite the fact that teachers were not there and there was not instruction. So how did it actually work?
Tucker: So the district said that schools would be open for students for their safety. A lot of families in Oakland, there’s a lot of low-income communities, working families where they don’t have a lot of options. So they were able to send their kids to school where the principal would be there, other staff that was not part of the union. And they would basically provide a safe space with meals and other activities, learning activities, but not your normal instruction.
Not very many kids participated in that. Only the families where they really needed an option for childcare did they take advantage of that. But they were quote unquote “open.” But the reality was, parents kept their kids home to either support the strike or because there wasn’t a lot going on in the schools. So you really only saw that for the younger kids. The older kids that don’t need childcare…high schools were basically just empty.
Miller: What did you hear from parents or families or caregivers about how they navigated the closure?
Tucker: Just like in previous strikes, you have things like strike schools where parents will be in together and do some educational activities. They had some pods or childcare sharing, these types of things. But again, those are the types of things that often only certain segments of the community are able to participate in - more privileged families that can arrange these strike schools or maybe have a flexible work schedule or not work, they’re able to do that. It’s families where they’re working two jobs and don’t have the ability to sort of shuttle their kids around or take other kids in their homes. So in general, teacher strikes disproportionately affect certain segments of the population and hit disadvantaged families often harder. And so we definitely saw that here as well.
Miller: This strike happened near the end of the school year, as opposed to say in November, like the one here in Portland. How did that affect negotiations?
Tucker: I think it really, to a certain degree, intensified the negotiations because it really was the very end of the school year in May and the last few weeks of school and there are so many activities and memories made and requirements. I talked to a lot of high school seniors who were planning on using that time to get their grades up so they could graduate to finish projects, Capstone projects that they had to finish in order to graduate. There’s a lot going on at the end of the year. So there was definitely a lot of pressure on the district to settle the contract and I think the timing wasn’t an accident. I think it was definitely a point to really put the pressure on the district and the union, essentially to find an agreement.
Parents were really frustrated, students were really frustrated, even those that supported the strike and supported either raises and things like that. It was just awful to see these kids who are pandemic kids. They were greatly affected by the pandemic, feeling like they were missing out on these moments in their high school lives. So it really did sort of light a fire to a certain degree as the days ticked off and the end of the year approached.
Miller: Is it fair to say that support for the union waned to some extent as the strike went on?
Tucker: Yeah, I think that that is always normal in teacher strikes. Even parents that are able to care for their kids are frustrated. That they’re not in school, the kids are bored, they wanna go back to school. And so it starts creating this cycle of frustration and anger and wanting to get back to normal. So we really do see it wane, although it’s more, I would say, for many people putting pressure for the two sides to settle. They support teachers, they want them to get paid more. They don’t want the district to go bankrupt. They want the people in power on both sides to figure it out. And that’s what we saw here. And I’m guessing you’re seeing that there as well.
A strike even at the start of school or in the middle of the school year is always difficult. It doesn’t really matter when a teacher strike occurs to a certain degree. It’s always frustrating. The kids are always missing out and it’s always really hard on families.
Miller: What do you think made the biggest difference in terms of the eventual deal that the two sides struck?
Tucker: Yeah, I think it was a number of things. I think that it became clear…there were online petitions as the strike went on, there was a lot going on, push back on the union which you don’t always see in strikes that loud, as you pointed out. And also, the state superintendent got involved, came down, tried to help mediate the situation. There was definitely a lot of attention on this strike. It followed the Los Angeles strike. So there’s a lot of eyeballs on it. And ultimately, I think the district really stood its ground saying we’re not going to include these common good items, but they did say we can have outside agreements, we can create these little memorandums of understanding on those issues. And I think it was a way that everybody could save face and come to a deal without feeling like they had completely given in.
Miller: For example, in the creation of a Black Reparations Task Force.
I’m curious if you feel like you’ve seen if there have been repercussions this school year from the strike last school year?
Tucker: I think the hard feelings of strikes always linger. I think it did help that there was the summer break to sort of ease people back in and forget a little bit, get a little amnesia about the anger and frustration. But sure, there’s still hard feelings. There’s still, I think, concerns about the stability of the district. The school board still has to figure out how they’re going to pay for this deal. We’re seeing that there’s gonna be a fiscal hangover that they’re gonna have to deal with in agreeing up to a 22% raise.
In addition, I think some parents are still frustrated that the teachers were willing to walk out and lose more instruction time. At one point, I think the district had noted, a day before the strike had ended, that they had lost 1.4 million hours of instruction. So when parents see things like that, when they realize that their kids lost more learning time when they’re already behind, some of that lingers and I think there’s still mistrust of the district and the union and we’re gonna see that for a little while.
Miller: Meanwhile, it seems like you’re still on the strike beat. Is there going to be a strike in San Francisco schools?
Tucker: Yeah, we got really close. They took a strike authorization vote that passed overwhelmingly with about 98% support of the teachers that voted. And they were ready to go on strike. They’ve been bargaining for a while. Again, it was based on unfair labor practice rather than going through the entire strike process. But they came to an agreement right at the end. In fact, the teachers are voting on that contract right now and we should have news tomorrow whether or not they have approved of the tentative agreement. If they don’t approve the tentative agreement, we are back to square one and on strike watch. Everybody has their fingers crossed that San Francisco will avert a strike and kids will keep going to school here.
Miller: Jill Tucker, thanks very much for your time. I appreciate it.
Tucker: Thank you.
Miller: Jill Tucker is the education reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle.
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