OAKLAND — As more Oakland students returned to the classroom Monday morning, the teachers union and district declared they also reached an agreement to return to the classroom full time this upcoming fall.
After weekend negotiations, the Oakland Education Association (OEA) and Oakland Unified School District announced in a joint statement Sunday that they had reached a tentative agreement for a return for full in-person instruction for all students for fall 2021 and the academic calendar for 2021.
On Friday, OEA had declared an impasse with the district over several bargaining issues that the union said remained unresolved for the current school year. Those issues included changes to special education teachers’ workloads, including preparation time for teaching both in-class and remote learners, and accommodations for child care and leave time for teachers whose families are at risk for contracting the COVID-19 virus, according to OEA.
OEA’s second vice president and bargaining chair Chastity Garcia said Monday in an interview that those issues were resolved over the weekend.
“We hadn’t worked out different pieces around what it would look like to start school today (Monday). We’ve been really been struggling,” Garcia said.
Although she said the district had been responsive to teachers’ needs in terms of accommodations (such as working from home while teaching virtually), the communication from the district didn’t reflect that. For example, a teacher may have been told they didn’t need to report in-person to the classroom because of their circumstances, but then an administrator at the school told them they had to. Negotiations have now smoothed out those details, she said.
As part of the negotiations, teachers who need to can now do their distance-learning teaching from home rather than be physically in their classroom at school, according to the district.
Also included in those negotiations was a stipend special education teachers will receive for the last six weeks of this school year. Garcia said special ed teachers have been working longer days in person than general education teachers, as well as juggling virtual classes. Some teachers returned to in-person teaching last month.
“We want to make sure we’re not moving away from the foundational understanding that everyone has the same rights and responsibilities,” Garcia said.
The tentative agreement between the district and union also announced the calendar for next school year, with school beginning Aug. 9, and 180 instructional days for the 2021-22 school year.
When asked if families would be given the option to remain in distance learning for fall, Garcia said that is still a conversation to be had. Now that the district and teachers union have an agreement, they can start to address the needs for fall, she said.
“While we do not always agree on the details, both OEA and OUSD are passionate about serving Oakland’s students and families,” said the joint statement signed by Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell and OEA President Keith Brown.
A state mediator had been called in to help facilitate the weekend negotiations. The district announced on Friday that classes would begin Monday, April 19, as scheduled, despite the ongoing negotiations at the time with the teachers union.
The OEA and district reached a reopening agreement to resume in-person instruction last month, with some students returning to the classroom as soon as March 30, and most OEA teachers returning to the classroom in person on April 14.
“Unfortunately, yesterday OUSD was notified of OEA’s request that PERB, the Public Employment Relations Board, declare that the parties are at impasse with respect to negotiations over additional impacts and effects of the Reopening MOU. However, unless the parties agree, only PERB can declare an impasse,” the district said in a statement Friday.
A pre-impasse mediator was appointed and both sides began meeting with the mediator Friday for negotiations.
