Although the mayor’s race will grab headlines this year in Oakland, another big story is the potential walkout by Oakland teachers.  The teachers are working without a contract after rejecting an offer by the district last spring which did not give them the pay increase and protected benefit package that they wanted. 

For the teachers unions, it always comes down to money.  That’s why the Oakland Teachers Association is talking more and more about striking, likely in the early part of 2006.  They want district officials to restore a four percent cut in pay they agreed to 2003 and don’t want to pay any additional money for their health care coverage.  Unfortunately, Oakland teachers work for a district that went bankrupt two years ago and had to accept a state administrator.  And while you can’t help to feel bad for employees of a company that files for bankruptcy, I don’t feel much sympathy for the teachers.  Their labor union holds an enormous amount of power in Sacramento.  Their “people”—education bureaucrats—run the State Department of Education.   And the administrators that they love to hate come from within.   

Despite reforms imposed by Dr. Randall Ward, the state administrator who now runs the district, the district is projected to run a deficit through 2008—even with $100 million in bailout money from the state.  In a September report by the federal government, 13 of Oakland’s schools failed to meet test-score goals seven years in a row, which will result in a forced restructuring under the fed’s No Child Left Behind Act.  According to the report, Oakland had more failing schools than any district in the Bay Area. 

So, as the district continues to bleed money, as many Oakland schools continue to fail academically, the teachers want higher pay and want protection from any hike in health insurance premiums.  If the district was financially healthy and the schools were mostly decent, I would have no problem restoring their 4 percent pay cut.  But the way I see it, as long as the lunatics continue to run the hospital, they can deal with the consequences of the financial mess they’ve created. 

The president of the teachers’ labor union, Ben Visnick, says they have about $300,000 in the bank in preparation for a strike.  In 1996, the last time Visnick was head of the union, the teachers struck for about a month.  Visnick is clearly looking for a showdown with Ward, as he told the San Francisco Chronicle in December:  “The ball is in Dr. Ward’s court.  This is Oakland.  He’s going to see how tough we are.”

As Visnick beats his chest in preparation for their walk out, Senate Pro Tem President Don Perata (D-Oakland) told San Francisco radio station KCBS today that it was time for the state legislature and the governor to determine if per pupil funding needs to be raised to $10,000 (general funds).  General fund spending in the current budget is at roughly $7400 per pupil.  Perata said the higher spending will help the state address its literacy and dropout problem.  Right.  Throwing more money at the schools has always made the public system work well.  If that were true, after Prop 98 went into effect, we should have created a stellar statewide school system.  But that didn’t happen because money is not the root of the California’s school system’s problems. 

The Democrats, and the education labor union that supports them, think that results from last fall’s special election means that the voters are ready to endorse their “higher taxes means better schools” approach to the state’s budget.  I have news for them:  the voters are not going to support the giant tax increase it would take to bring general fund spending to $10K per student, especially since the money is so poorly spent now—just look at Oakland Unified.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 2nd, 2006 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.