More than 3,000 teachers in Oakland stood on picket lines for a second straight day Friday to demand better pay, smaller class sizes, and more resources for their district’s beleaguered schools.
On Thursday, I joined my colleague Edwin Rios as he reported on the first day of the teachers’ strike from Roots International Academy, an East Oakland middle school the district recently decided would close at the end of the school year. Later, I headed downtown for the noon rally, where hundreds of educators, students, and supporters protested before marching to the district’s headquarters. “It’s almost impossible for me to provide what my students need,” Amber Perkins Ellis, a social science teacher at Coliseum College Prep Academy, told me. “It’s not my fault, but it feels like it is. They deserve better.”
The strike comes on the heels of a similar work stoppage in Los Angeles and other successful teacher strikes in West Virginia and Denver. Union officials in Oakland said educators were prepared to continue protesting until their demands were met.
Hundreds of teachers, students, and supporters rally in downtown Oakland on the first day of a district-wide teacher strike.
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Magdaline Armstrong (right), a first-grade teacher, and her daughter Nilaya, eight, rally on a picket line with kindergarten teacher Grace Allen (left) outside Futures Elementary School.
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Teachers from East Oakland schools walk together to a BART station on the first day of a district-wide teachers’ strike before traveling to a rally downtown.
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Kindergarten teacher Grace Allen joins supporters on a picket line outside Futures Elementary School.
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Teachers, students, and supporters rally on a picket line outside Futures Elementary.
Rosa Furneaux/Mother Jones
Teachers from East Oakland schools hold signs as they exit the BART station downtown.
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Members of community music group BoomShake join the rally downtown.
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Holding homemade signs, young students from Glenview Elementary School chant as the march passes by: “Get up! Get down! Oakland is a union town!”
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Supporters march to the school district offices downtown on Broadway.
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Teachers from Roots travel with other educators and supporters to the rally.
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Young supporters join their teachers at the march.
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Children play under parachutes as the march makes its way along Broadway.
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Hundreds of teachers, students, and supporters rally downtown on the first day of a district-wide teacher strike.
Rosa Furneaux/Mother Jones
