Wages have also been the major sticking point in recent OUSD contract disputes, as teachers say their pay fails to keep up with neighboring districts. In 2023, OEA held a weeklong strike that ended after teachers won a 15.5% raise over two and a half years.<\/p>\n
According to the union\u2019s analysis, OUSD teachers are the lowest paid among 10 Bay Area districts, and OEA president Kampala Taiz-Rancifer told KQED that about 60% of district teachers can\u2019t afford to live in Oakland. That analysis was affirmed by a neutral mediator earlier this month.<\/p>\n
Now, the district will need to figure out how to pay for the new deal. The district has estimated that 11% raises will cost more than $55 million alone. Without factoring in the price of the new deal, OUSD is eyeing $102 million in cuts by June.<\/p>\n
Interim Superintendent Denise Saddler told the school board this week that without those reductions, \u201cwe won\u2019t be able to pay all the people on our payroll in the fall. We don\u2019t have the money in the budget for next year.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, OUSD approved cutting nearly 400 staff positions, including 180 filled by OEA members, through early retirement buyouts, elimination of vacant positions, and layoffs. Altogether, that is estimated to save about $11 million annually.<\/p>\n
Saddler said that the district\u2019s finance team has identified about $65 million in cuts so far in total.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not yet clear if all of those proposals, which include increasing enrollment to recoup some funds and major changes to special education services, are feasible, though. And the union is also expected to fight this week\u2019s preliminarily layoff notices.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know our collective power brought us here, and we know our collective power will continue to move OUSD to ensure all our schools are fully staffed by rescinding preliminary layoffs as well,\u201d Taiz-Rancifer said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The deal still needs to be ratified by OEA\u2019s membership, and approved by the school board, before it is finalized.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wages have also been the major sticking point in recent OUSD contract disputes, as teachers say their pay…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196634,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144],"class_list":{"0":"post-196633","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-oakland","9":"tag-oakland-headlines","10":"tag-oakland-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}