OAKLAND — The first day of school Monday for Oakland’s children will be unlike any other first day. Most of them will remain home and interact with their teachers for a single hour online, when they’ll be given some materials to study and basically left alone.
That routine could be repeated every day for a couple of weeks unless the adults — school district officials and teachers union representatives — hash out a different approach to the distance learning that’s been forced in school districts throughout the state because of the coronavirus pandemic.
As of Friday evening, the Oakland Unified School District and its teachers union were still locked in negotiations over such issues as how much live instruction should be given and how long teachers’ work days should be.
And until further notice, the union says teachers intend to do their teaching just the way they’ve been asking to, at least through Aug. 21.
“Our team worked into the night but still no MOU,” the Oakland Education Association posted Thursday on its Facebook page. “That means, according to the OEA Strong Start Plan, today is five hours of TEACHER-LED PD, PLC, and Planning.”
In other words, that means five hours of professional development (PD) and getting together to work collaboratively to improve teaching skills (PLC).
During the one-hour live interaction with students, teachers intend to check their wellness, communicate with their families about the distribution of technical materials and take daily attendance.
The union has declined to comment about the status of negotiations or to elaborate on its distance-learning plan.
The district meanwhile has insisted it cannot release clear detailed plans to reopen schools without reaching an agreement with its labor unions, including the Oakland Education Association.
The two sides have been negotiating for four weeks, district spokesman John Sasaki said.
“There are some differences in what the union has been asking and what we’ve been asking, so we’re just trying to bridge that and to come to an agreement between the two,” Sasaki said at a Friday press conference.
Meanwhile, all of this uncertainty — and the start of school Monday — has created confusion for parents.
“It’s all so weird,” said Jill Karjan, a parent of a second-grade daughter at Manzanita SEED Elementary.
Karjan said she had spent the day emailing teachers and other parents to find out what was going on. “Nobody knows how to plan, and there are a lot of people who don’t know anything.”
Karjan said she was resigned “to the fact” she’ll essentially become a teaching assistant on Monday, helping her daughter’s education.
“I have no idea what Monday will look like,” Karjan said.
The union has been pushing a plan that entails two full weeks of teacher prep time, a five-hour flexible workday and six hours of professional development led by administrators. The workday would include 90 minutes of “wellness time” for teachers as well as some physical activity.
The district is proposing one full week of prep time and four consecutive Wednesdays for a total of nine days, a seven-hour workday, and 17 hours of professional development.
The state requires districts to provide 180 days of instruction through distance learning — 230 minutes, or 3.8 hours a day, to students in first through third grade, and 240 minutes, or four hours, to students in fourth to 12th grade, as well as “daily live interaction” between students and teachers.
The district, on the other hand, wants elementary school teachers to put in 6.25 hours of daily instruction and secondary teachers and other certificated staff to work 6.5 hours.
The district is also proposing 100 additional minutes of live interaction between special education teachers and “students with the highest needs,” including those with disabilities, African-American and Latino students, foster youth, newcomers and students behind grade level.
In April, Oakland teachers struck an agreement with the district to be paid for full-time work the rest of the last school year even though they were required to work just four hours a day because of the coronavirus pandemic’s impact.
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August 08, 2020 at 01:48AM
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Oakland students to get one hour of daily online instruction when schools open Monday - The Mercury News
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