#teacher-pay

#teacher-pay

"On Friday, we ended a two-week process where members voted to give our executive board and our president authorization to call a strike," says Olivia Udovic, who is one of 60 teachers on the Oakland Education Association's (OEA) bargaining team. "We have not decided on a strike date. We will be providing the community with 48-72 hour notice of an impending strike. It is not what we what to do."

Right now, OUSD educators are the lowest paid in the region, and as a result, the District loses nearly 400 hardworking, dedicated educators per year, costing the district $7.5 million annually, President Kampala Taiz-Rancifer said in a news release. This is a waste of resources, destabilizes classrooms, and especially hurts our most vulnerable students. Oakland educators have been in this fight for the schools our students deserve for a long timeand we remain committed to stabilizing our schools.

"The current salary schedule is so low that thousands of LAUSD educators qualify as low-income for affordable housing," the union said in a recent statement. Thousands of teachers more "are barely getting by just above the median income, living paycheck to paycheck after decades working for the district," the union statement said.

One after another, educators, counselors, students and concerned parents spoke last week of classrooms that have reached nearly 90 degrees for days in a row, high-needs students going without vital support like speech services, a lack of elective courses, crowded classrooms, high teacher turnover and routine pressure for educators to double as substitutes during prep periods. This is not just bad management; this is a betrayal of our trust.

"Nobody goes into education to become rich, but we deserve what was guaranteed to us," Cindy Sexton, president of the Teacher's Association of Baltimore County (TABCO), told Truthout. After months of renegotiations regarding a pay-raise deal for teachers for the 2025-2026 school year, in mid-July, both TABCO and the school district reached an agreement that grants teachers less than they'd bargained for.