Oakland, CA February 20th, 2019

Another teacher strike begins this week in California, this time in the fiscally impacted Oakland Unified School District, which is dually under threat of going back into fiscal receivership due to prior budget mismanagement. All of these factors are set against the complexity of lack of sufficient and equitable funding across the state of California. We expect the reverberations of this will be felt throughout this year and beyond as the issues ultimately wend their way to the state capitol.

Teaching Artists Guild stands with our certified teacher colleagues during the strike. Smaller class sizes, better services for students, including an increase in nursing staff and other professionals, and better pay should be the standard, not the exception, in order to best serve students.

OUSD onsite arts programming taught with teaching artist partners should be cancelled during the strike. We understand that this may be a hardship to arts providing organizations and teaching artists, and we look forward to talking to you about possible options during the duration of a strike.

Teaching Artists Guild has been working with arts partners in OUSD to prepare for a strike in ways which support their certified teacher colleagues; see their group statement here.

Let us know about your situation or what effect a strike will have on you. We welcome thoughts and comments from teaching artists, teachers, artists, arts providers, parents, and students everywhere.