Trailing All Teachers in County, Oakland Teachers March for Better Pay

By Doug Oakley
OAKLAND -- A 13.5 percent raise offered to Oakland's 2,400 teachers still leaves them wallowing near the bottom in pay compared with the other school districts in Alameda County, say teachers frustrated with the pace of negotiations. 

The average salary without benefits in the district is $55,000 a year, well below any other school district in the county, according to the California Department of Education. The closest to Oakland is Albany, at $67,193 a year. The highest in the county is Pleasanton, where teachers get an average $85,595 a year. 

On March 30, about 500 teachers, parents and students rallied at San Antonio Park and then marched to school district headquarters, on Broadway, to show their displeasure with what teachers are being offered. 

"I'm here to show the school district that they need to bargain fair and give teachers a good contract," said Kathleen Boergers, the parent of a child at Cleveland Elementary School. "I have a good friend who was recruited to teach in Oakland from another district in the county, and in order for her to come here, she would have to take a $20,000 pay cut. The teachers who stay are sacrificing." 

When you factor in benefits, Oakland teachers are closer to their peers in the county but still near the bottom. With benefits, an Oakland teacher with five years of experience makes $57,990 a year, coming in on top of San Lorenzo and Alameda teachers, according to the Oakland Education Association. The highest salary in the county for a teacher with five years of experience, including benefits, is Albany, at $71,956. 

In addition to Tuesday's march, teachers at 38 of the 86 schools are "working to rule," meaning they are doing the bare minimum amount of work called for in their contracts. 

Both schools spokesman Troy Flint and Oakland Education Association President Trish Gorham said the 13.5 percent raise offered over 18 months has a lot of catches. 

The offer includes a base raise of 10.5 percent. An additional 1.5 percent is based on 30 minutes extra work a week for teacher collaboration. And the last 1.5 percent is contingent on state funds and on a portion of teachers transferring their medical benefit provider from Health Net to Kaiser. 

"To call this a 13.5 percent raise is disingenuous," Gorham said. "There is increased work time, which is simply getting paid for more work, so I don't consider that a raise. This salary increase does not move us forward. The surrounding districts continue to move forward, but we stay in the same place." 

Flint said the district must break from making "emotional decisions" on finances, because that's the kind of thinking that put it in bankruptcy followed by years of decline. 

"We have to be very focused on making decisions that are going to benefit the kids," Flint said. "That's how we organized our contract offer. We have to be very fiscally prudent." 

He said he is optimistic "we can get the deal done by the end of the school year." 

In the negotiations, which have gone on well over a year, the two sides have agreed on reducing class sizes in transitional kindergarten through third grade to lower the average student-to-teacher ratio of 27"'to"'1 to 24"'to"'1, and increasing the starting salary for teachers. 

Whitney Lee, a transitional kindergarten teacher at Madison Park Academy, who attended the Tuesday march, said reducing her class size from 27 to 24 students is not going to help that much. 

"This school is in the middle of Sobrante Park, one of the most dangerous places in Oakland," Lee said. "Many of my kids have experienced trauma, so our biggest issue is safety and keeping them from hurting each other. Some of them are volatile, and you really have to watch them. For me, the issue is definitely class size." 

In addition to pay, the two sides remain apart on class size caps for teachers leading special education classes and on involuntary transfers from one school to another. 

Flint said the district cannot commit to capping special education class sizes because it would cost too much. 

"We have the same goal as the teachers, which is to reduce caseloads and get special education class sizes down, but we can't commit to hard caps because that locks us into expenditures without knowing if we will have the revenues to cover it," Flint said. 

Gorham said teachers and the district have five more bargaining meetings scheduled before the end of the month. 

"At that time we will schedule a membership meeting to decide whether we are moving toward an agreement or an impasse," Gorham said. 

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