Overview:
As of early Friday evening it's unclear when the unions and the district will meet again to continue negotiations.
It's possible they could meet over the weekend.
On Friday an estimated 2,500 people rallied in support of the strike at Richmond park.
The West Contra Costa County Unified School District announced early Friday evening that it will hold two separate negotiating meetings Saturday with the teachers union and Teamsters.
The teachers union will hold a community rally beforehand at Alvarado school, 5625 Sutter Ave. at 3 p.m. followed by a candlelight vigil at 4:30 p.m., it said in an email Friday.
“Our message is being heard loud and clear across the city and the pressure is building for district leaders to give us the contract we deserve,” the email said.
An estimated 2,500 people rallied on the second day of the WCCUSD strike, while the district’s school board held a closed-door emergency meeting for most of the day.
The United Teachers of Richmond said yesterday that it successfully solicited nearly 5,000 people to email school board members, urging them to settle the strike.
An estimated 90% of the district’s 25,000-student population did not attended classes yesterday, and because schools are funded based on their average daily enrollment, such low attendance numbers could financially impact the already cash-strapped district.
A district official who spoke on the condition of anonymity estimates that the strike could cost the school district to lose more than $1 million in revenue a day.
The official said 2,815 students went to school Thursday along with 192 staff members. The district still receive funding for students enrolled in independent study and 1,300 students chose that option.
This means that the district likely lost more than a million dollars in attendance revenue alone. While WCCUSD does not have to cover the payroll for the roughly 3,000 employees who went on strike, the district still has to contract out for services such as meal delivery, independent study, security and likely trash pick up because the non-school Teamsters will not cross the picket line.
WCCUSD has contracted with a program called IXL to provide independent study.
Also on Friday, the district’s union that represents certain supervisory roles, at least 60 positions, began a sympathy strike.
Friday’s rally theme, UTR said in a press release, was the district’s special education services, which it says are “inconsistent, behind schedule, and increasingly contracted out to virtual providers.” For example, some children in early childhood education as young as 5 receive speech therapy online rather than in-person.
“We are fighting for something as basic as keeping trained paraeducators, speech pathologists and nurses in our schools when we continue to lose our most dedicated and talented educators,” former WCCUSD Parent Tashiana Edgley-Johnson said. “That is not a budget issue, that is a system failure.”
Edgley-Johnson told the crowd on Friday that she pulled her student from WCCUSD because she couldn’t get the special education services that her daughter required.
California Teachers Association President David Goldberg spoke at the event, saying 80,000 teachers statewide have expiring contracts and are poised to follow WCCUSD’s lead.
“You have won this strike. It’s over. I don’t know when it’ll end, or what the deal is going to be, but the district is no match for this,” Goldberg said at the rally.
How to get in touch and learn more
What do you think about the WCCUSD strike? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment below, emailing us at hello@richmondside.org, or sending us a story tip.)
For more info: Read our guide for families; see information pages compiled by the teachers union, Teamsters and WCCUSD; visit Richmondside’s strike page to read all of our stories; and text “Richmondside” to 510-781-9051 to receive news updates by text.
WCCUSD isn’t alone in its labor union struggles
While this is the first strike in the district’s 60-year history and strikes like this are somewhat unusual, other school districts statewide are struggling.
San Francisco educators yesterday voted overwhelmingly to approve a strike, and the United Teachers of Los Angeles, by far the largest CTA union, hasn’t yet declared an impasse but is threatening to do so, according to a recent EdSource story, along with Oakland Unified and Twin Rivers Unified near Sacramento.
This week, The Berkeley Unified School District and the Berkeley Federation of Teachers have declared an impasse in their contract negotiations. Similar to UTR, Berkeley’s teachers union is asking for higher salaries and more robust benefits to reduce teacher turnover.
One of the rallying cries of education unions statewide is “We can’t wait,” which is adorning the bright gold and red signs, flags and banners being waved by Richmond teachers and supporters as they set up picket lines and march around Richmond.
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The slogan is part of a statewide campaign launched earlier this year by 32 unions aiming to jointly put public pressure on school districts, although each contract is bargained separately in each district.
The strife between unions and school districts over pay and working conditions are only the tip of the iceberg, according to a new report released Dec. 1 that EdSource reporter John Fensterwald delved into.
California’s school governance system needs to be overhauled to make it more accountable, clear up confusing lines of authority and address uneven assistance, according to the report.
These and other systemic weaknesses are undermining the potential success of state landmark programs like universal kindergarten and support for school districts to tackle the achievement gap, chronic absenteeism and other challenges under local control, the report from the research center PACE asserts.
The expected cuts in federal education funding and transfer to states of oversight responsibilities by the Trump administration add urgency to reorganize a complex and flawed multiagency system, starting with the California Department of Education, the 94-page report titled TK-12 Governance in California: Past, Present, and Future argues. The state must now “meet the demands and opportunities of this moment,” the report said. (There are two versions of PACE’s report on school governance. Go here for the full 94-page version and here for a summary.)
“Given shifting federal responsibilities, declining enrollment, and widening achievement gaps, California can no longer postpone reforms that have been overdue for a century,” Julie Marsh, professor of education policy at USC and one of the report’s three co-authors, stated in a press release. “We must take on the challenge of modernizing our governance system now.” PACE, which stands for Policy Analysis for California Education, is a research center led by faculty at Stanford, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UCLA and USC.
A key and likely controversial recommendation would transfer control of the state Department of Education from the elected state superintendent of public instruction to the governor and the governor-appointed State Board of Education. The state schools superintendent, in turn, would become the independent ombudsman and “elected chief champion for students.” That shift in role would provide what’s been missing under the current system — an independent evaluator of the effectiveness of multibillion-dollar programs and school improvement efforts, the report says.
Reporting from EdSource contributed to this report.
This is a developing story and we will update it when further details are available.
Thank you for this article, Jana! Just one edit. They are “para educators,” not “parent educators.” This role can also be rederes to as paraprofessionals or student aides. Thank you!