J.D. Moyer

sci-fi author, beatmaker

Category: Education Page 1 of 2

Remote Learning Parenting Strategies (while also getting your own work done)

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On May 25

In Education

“Remote learning” as it is called, has been a mixed bag for us so far. Our daughter is twelve and much more interested in her friends and gaming than her schoolwork. However she seemed to be on top of it. Every time I asked if she had completed all her assigned work for the day, she answered in the affirmative.

In her mind, that meant she’d done all the work that she’d been able to do. She failed to mention that she was having trouble accessing many of the assignments from many of her classes.

Teachers and school districts are doing their best, but most are relying on a hodgepodge of tools provided (often for free) by private corporations: Google Classroom, Google Drive, instructional videos on YouTube, Zoom for meetings and lectures, etc. It’s great that these tools are available, but using them to assign and complete schoolwork produces a steep learning curve for teachers, students, and parents.

In our case, we ended up near the end of the school year with our daughter on a trajectory to receive no credit for most of her classes. Enter crunch week (which we’re still in): a massive push to wrangle and complete her missing school work.

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Congratulations to Oakland Teachers and OUSD! What’s next? Reform Prop 13.

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On June 8

In Education, Oakland, Politics

Emerson Elementary school auction -- a fun night, but I'd rather have $240,000 from Prop 13 reform.

Emerson Elementary school auction — a fun night, but I’d rather have $240,000 from Prop 13 reform.

Four months ago I wrote about the ongoing contract negotiations between Oakland public schools teachers (represented by OEA) and the Oakland Unified School District. I was very happy to learn that last week the teachers ratified a three-year contract with a 67.5% vote. It’s done! Congratulations to all the teachers, the union, the district, the superintendent, and the school board. The teachers received a significant pay raise. The contract also includes the following (copied from the press release):

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Emerson Elementary Fund Raisers — Help Some Great Kids!

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On April 24

In Education, Oakland

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This is a short appeal to help Emerson Elementary, the local public school my daughter attends (and where my grandmother also attended). Here are two opportunities to support schools in Oakland that could use your help:

1) Emerson School Auction

Last year I had a great time at this event, and this year we have even bigger donations from local businesses. Kia is helping to organize this one, so I’ve had a sneak peek at some of the loot that is going on sale. Mind blown. This is going to be a fun event with good wine flowing at very reasonable prices, and lots of great stuff to bid on.  Also the venue Omni Commons is amazing and has a fascinating history (it was built in 1934 as an Italian-American community center, but was also a nightclub for many years). Bay Area folks I hope to see you there! Readers I haven’t met please introduce yourself if you attend. You can purchase tickets HERE.

2) Ride For A Reason

This bike ride from Oakland to Sacramento started off as a protest but has become a huge fundraisers for six OUSD schools (Claremont Middle, Edna Brewer Middle, Emerson Elementary, Oakland International High School, Oakland Technical High, and Westlake Middle School).

Here is Kia’s donation page — you are a HERO if you donate.

The funds raised from both events will support music and art programs at Emerson, and many other activities and programs the PTO supports. Ideally California would fully fund its public schools so parents like me wouldn’t have to scramble like this, but we’re not there yet. Public schools (like public fire-fighting and public emergency services) are a foundation of civil society. Schools like Emerson Elementary accept some of the least privileged kids in the city of Oakland, and these kids deserve to experience quality instruction not only in the “fundamentals” but also in art, music, poetry, and other great programs these events help fund.

Thank you in advance for your support!!

OUSD Teacher Contract Negotiations (and Cronyism at the Top?)

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On February 13

In Education, Oakland

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As a parent of a child enrolled in an Oakland public school, I’ve been paying close attention to the ongoing teacher contract negotiations. Next week will be the 2nd week of teachers at my daughter’s school (Emerson Elementary) using “work-to-rule” as a means to protest the low salaries Oakland teachers receive as compared to neighboring districts.

OUSD (Oakland Unified School District) teachers have been working without a negotiated contract since 2008. From OUSD’s Collective Bargaining Agreements and Salary Schedules page, you can view the last full contract as well as the imposed contract implemented by the school board in April 2010 after several rounds of failed negotiations.

OUSD is offering teachers a 10% raise over three years (letter from current superintendent Antwan Wilson). The current average OUSD teacher salary is around $55K (starting teachers make around $40K). This may seem high to people outside of the Bay Area, but average rent for a 2-bedroom apartment in Oakland is around $4,000 a month. In other words average apartment rent in Oakland is approximately equal to 100% of average OUSD teacher after-tax income. Clearly Oakland teachers are underpaid. The statewide average is approximately $68K, while the neighboring city of Alameda pays an average of $65K.

[Correction: upon closer examination the link to Oakland rents includes neighborhoods with 10 miles of Oakland, which includes San Francisco. Oakland average rent is probably closer to $2500 — still very high for OUSD average teacher income]

To both attract and retain qualified, experienced, and talented teachers, Oakland needs to offer teachers higher salaries.

Negotiation Status

As of today OUSD and OEA (Oakland Eduation Association — the teacher’s union) have failed to reach an agreement. Here is the statement from the OEA. At issue are not only teacher raises but also Special Education class size caps and caseloads, student to counselor ratios, and benefits. The same page includes links to latest proposals from both OUSD and OEA.

Especially contentious is Article 12, which governs the rules for filling vacancies and assigning teachers. The district is pushing for changes that would reduce teacher job security and remove the role of seniority in placement and transfer rights.

Accusations of Cronyism

Jack Gerson of classroomstruggle.org has accused OUSD superintendent Antwan Wilson of hiring his pals from Denver with bloated salaries (including a husband-wife team), creating unnecessary new administrative positions, and giving all administrators pay raises that far exceed what OUSD is proposing for teacher raises. Reading Gerson’s post severely undermined my confidence in Wilson, and also the board that hired him.

Wilson states that he plans to “trim Central Office” but that does not seem to include the salaries of top administrators. What does this style of “pad the top, chop from the bottom” budgeting style really mean? According to Gerson:

So if Wilson is cutting the central administration budget, much of the cuts are likely coming from the lower paid administrative support. This would be a repetition of what Randy Ward did in 2003 – 6 when the state came in. He brought in all kinds of Broad Foundation graduates and residents at the high end (Troy Christmas; Jonathan Klein; and many others) and promoted some ambitious locals, while laying waste to central services — eliminating central copy services, almost annihilating maintenance (electricians, painters, window repair, etc.) and thus forcing schools to buy services from the likes of Kinko’s. Randy Ward made other cuts “away from the classroom” — of clerical, cafeteria, custodial, and other essential school classified staff positions.

Even if there is some central office fat to trim, and even if Wilson and his Denver team are a completely qualified and necessary team of brilliant administrators and deserve every penny of their sky-high salaries, Wilson should have deferred his own raise and the new top brass hires until a fair contract with the teachers was secured. It just looks bad.

I’d like to invite Oakland School Board members James Harris (President), Jody London (Vice President), Roseann Torres, Aimee Eng, Nina Senn, Shanthi Gonzales, Jumoke Hinton Hodge, and Antwan Wilson himself to respond to Gerson’s accusations, and either justify the administrative pay raises and new positions, or roll them back.

My Own Position

Originally I was sympathetic to points on both sides of the negotiations. Obviously teachers deserve a contract and a significant raise, but I can also understand the desire of the district to push for more flexibility in hiring and transfers, even if this comes at the cost of some job security for some teachers.

However in light of revelations regarding salary padding and fat new (and potentially unnecessary) administrative positions at the top, I believe the school board and the superintendent have lost all moral authority.

I don’t pretend to understand all the intricacies of the complex OUSD budget, but from what I can tell the teachers have put forward a reasonable proposal, which as a parent I fully support (I’ll be at Emerson later today to join an after-school protest supporting the teachers) .

The fault doesn’t lie entirely with the district; the district budget is closely tied with the state budget, and California lawmakers leave money on the table every year with absurdly low oil extraction taxes. Still, the district should move quickly to reach an agreement with OEA, and forget about changes to Article 12 for now.

Get the teachers the raise they deserve, and do it soon.

Let The Board Know

If you are an OUSD family member and you’d like to support the teachers in their negotiations, you may wish to send a “valentine” to the school board and the superintendent. A sample email and the board member’s addresses are below:

Jody.London@ousd.k12.ca.us
Aimee.Eng@ousd.k12.ca.us
Jumoke.Hodge@ousd.k12.ca.us
Nina.Senn@ousd.k12.ca.us
Roseann.Torres@ousd.k12.ca.us
Shanthi.Gonzales@ousd.k12.ca.us
James.Harris@ousd.k12.ca.us
Antwan.Wilson@ousd.k12.ca.us

“Dear school board member: This Valentine’s Day we are asking you to show our teachers that you love them by giving them the modest raise they are asking for – without contingencies. As an OUSD parent/member of the OUSD community, we want to attract and keep the best teachers, and we think the teacher’s request for a contingency-free raise makes good sense. Happy Valentine’s Day!”

Another Reason to Send Your Child to a Less Affluent School

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On September 30

In Culture Rants/Shares, Education, Health/Body-hacking, Oakland, Parenting

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A while back I wrote about why we chose to send our daughter to an under-performing, high-poverty public school in our neighborhood. Basically, a high rate of parental involvement and good teachers allayed any fears we had regarding low test scores (the concept of relative rank¹ was also a factor). Our daughter is now thriving in first grade, both academically and socially. School standards are high, and PTO fundraising has helped develop programs in art, poetry, and science (ideally tax dollars would pay for these things, but California schools are still struggling financially).

Yet Another Reason to Avoid the Affluent Schools

Recently Kia forwarded me this article which points out that vaccine opt-out rates in California have been on the rise for the past seven years. This had resulted in both measles and whooping cough epidemics. Research clearly showed that higher vaccine refusal rates fueled the epidemics.

Why are parents opting out? Fears linking vaccines to autism is the most likely reason, even though such research has been completely refuted. We still don’t know definitely what is behind rising autism rates in the U.S. (rates vary significantly by state). SSRI use during pregnancy is one possible factor, though a Danish study noted that depression itself is a risk factor, and that there was no difference in autism rates of children born to depressed mothers who had been taking SSRIs and those who had not. It’s also possible that more children are being classified as being on the autistic spectrum — a change in diagnostic trends. Bottom line, we still don’t definitively know. But vaccine avoidance isn’t helping anything, and is having devastating effects on herd immunity.

What’s herd immunity (or community immunity)? If your child is vaccinated, they’re safe against that disease, right? Unfortunately not. While being vaccinated reduces the chance of infection if a child is exposed to a disease agent, an additional benefit come from not being exposed in the first place. In other words, the protective effects of vaccines are cumulative, depending on what percentage of the kids are vaccinated.

Notably, wealthier communities, and wealthier schools within those communities, tend to have higher vaccination opt-out rates via the “PBE” (personal belief exemption). Marin county, the wealthiest county in the Bay Area, had an average 8% PBE opt-out rate (San Geronimo Valley Elementary in Marin had a whopping 79% PBE rate). Private schools also have higher PBE rates than public schools (on average).

Less affluent public schools (like our daughter’s school), tend to have a PBE rate of only 1%. Now there’s some community immunity!

Does Affluenza = Influenza?

Not all wealthy communities have high PBE rates. The San Francisco average is quite low (1.64%). Maybe Marin County, the land of crystal healers and psychics, just has lower scientific literacy.

Vaccines are not entirely risk-free. [CDC.gov] But in terms of cost-benefit analysis, the tiny risk of most vaccines is worth the protective effect against the disease. Just as importantly, you’re not only protecting your own child, but your child’s classmates.

If you’re considering NOT vaccinating your child, I can empathize. I considered it too — there are scary stories out there on the internet, real (but rare) cases of children being injured by vaccines. But please ALSO consider the risks of the diseases themselves, and check the published research in terms of the actual probability of serious injury. It’s far more probable a vaccination will save your child’s life than cause them any harm.

 

¹ On relative rank … sending your child to a school comprised mostly of elites can negatively warp their confidence and self-worth. If most of your child’s classmates are richer, smarter, more socially connected, more sophisticated, and/or more competitively oriented, your normal or above-average-under-normal-circumstances child might end up feeling a bit beaten down. Relative rank matters. On the other hand, if your child’s school is comprised of a more diverse cross-section of society, it’s more likely they’ll get a chance to shine in at least one area.

 

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