Oakland Teachers OK a May Day Strike Amid District’s Budget Cuts

Oakland public school teachers voted to authorize an unfair labor practices strike, according to an email sent to union members and viewed by KQED, meaning thousands of educators could walk off the job next week on May Day.

The union has accused Oakland Unified School District leadership of withholding requested financial information and manufacturing a budget crisis to justify teacher layoffs and significant budget cuts. If the parties don’t come to an agreement by Wednesday, nearly 3,000 members of the Oakland Educators Association could take part in a one-day work stoppage on May 1.

Projections of the district’s shortfall for the 2025–2026 academic year have swung wildly in recent months, ballooning to $95 million in December and recently shrinking to $12 million after factoring in some cuts. This year, the district is operating at a deficit of $70 million, it said.

“We’ve attempted to gather information all year. OUSD’s response to those requests has been delayed,” OEA President Kampala Taiz-Rancifer told KQED last week. “They have cut members’ jobs, and we have to … understand what are the resources in the school district, along with whether or not the job losses are actually necessary.”

In the email sent to members, Taiz-Rancifer said the union’s bargaining team was focused on finding a resolution with the district through negotiations.

“We have asked the district to meet with us on Monday and Tuesday to reach an agreement that gives our impacted members and community peace of mind heading into the final weeks of school,” the letter reads. “The door remains open to OUSD to meet before April 30th.”

The potential strike would be the fourth by OUSD teachers since 2019.

Tensions have mounted between top district officials and the teachers union since a union-backed school board majority voted on Wednesday to remove Oakland’s longtime superintendent, Kyla Johnson-Trammell, two years before the end of her contract. At the same meeting, the union representing Oakland school administrators alleged that its members had been threatened by teachers union leadership.

Cary Kaufman, president of the United Administrators of Oakland Schools, said a teachers union leader told a district principal: “We control the board. We got [Johnson-Trammell] fired, we can get you fired.”

The teachers union responded Thursday, alleging that one of its organizers, who works at Fremont High School, had been retaliated against by the campus’ principal for his union involvement.

Taiz-Rancifer said her union has had significant labor challenges with the district, pointing to the three strikes that have taken place during Johnson-Trammell’s eight-year tenure. A strike in 2022 closed schools for more than a week and ended after educators were promised a retroactive 10% raise and continuing wage increases, which the district has blamed in part for its budget shortage.

In December, the teachers union accused OUSD of manufacturing its budget crisis to justify layoffs of about 100 teachers and hundreds of contract changes that will result in lower salaries for its members. The district also gave administrators the option to make more than 30 spending reductions in its upcoming budget proposal, including centralizing services and eliminating some contracts.

In February, school board President Jennifer Brouhard and Vice President Valarie Bachelor proposed an alternative budget solution plan that puts caps on some central office spending. Although the union supported that proposal, it said it still wants access to financial documentation that it hasn’t received.

In the fall, it also vehemently fought against an attempt by district leadership to merge five pairs of co-located schools. Independent financial audit results released this month found that Oakland is operating 30 more public schools than is fiscally responsible in the face of enrollment declines.

Last year’s merger proposal was ultimately dropped after the board refused to take a vote at its final meeting in December. That came after the board approved some school closures in 2022 but reversed the decision before it took effect the following year.

OUSD Chief Business Officer Lisa Grant-Dawson, a close ally of Johnson-Trammell, warned the board in December that refusing to make the cuts would lead to an irreversible deficit.

“We are a billion-dollar organization, which is why you have got to make billion-dollar organization decisions,” she said at the time.