In Oakland they no longer pretend the parents, voters or School Board control the schools, hiring, firing or curriculum.
“““[Oakland Education Association] leadership has consistently targeted site administrators,” Cary Kaufman, the administrators’ union’s president, said during public comment at an April school board meeting.
He told KQED that threats to principals have been an ongoing issue but escalated in March, after more than 100 preliminary layoff notices were issued to staff members, according to OEA.
According to Kaufman, one principal was told that the union “got [Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell] fired. We can get you fired.” Last month, the board passed a voluntary separation agreement to have Johnson-Trammell abruptly leave the district at the end of June.
The Monday after pink slips went out, OEA representatives, including President Kampala Taiz-Rancifer, visited Fremont High School, where special education teacher and union Vice President Chris Jackson had been issued one.
Fremont High Principal Nydia Baez told KQED that Taiz-Rancifer identified herself as a parent coming to speak with a teacher when she arrived on campus and refused to follow the school’s visitor sign-in policy. Baez did not speak with Taiz-Rancifer, but was told that she made threatening comments and was upset about Jackson’s termination.”
Need more proof government schools are scams, based on unions, radicals and haters of children. This is why you should never vote another diem for government schools—you are really financing authoritarian unions.
In Oakland Schools, Hostility Spirals Between Teachers Union and Principals
Katie DeBenedetti, KQED, 5/14/25 https://www.kqed.org/news/12039972/oakland-schools-hostility-spirals-between-teachers-union-principals
In Oakland’s school district, it’s not only the school board that can’t get along.
This spring, a fight has been escalating between the unions that represent the district’s principals and its teachers.
Leaders of the administrators’ union have accused the teachers’ union of hostility, retaliation and threatening behavior. On Wednesday night, they plan to tell the school board — the majority of which is backed by the teachers’ union — that principals have been made to feel unsafe and prevented from doing their jobs.
“[Oakland Education Association] leadership has consistently targeted site administrators,” Cary Kaufman, the administrators’ union’s president, said during public comment at an April school board meeting.
He told KQED that threats to principals have been an ongoing issue but escalated in March, after more than 100 preliminary layoff notices were issued to staff members, according to OEA.
According to Kaufman, one principal was told that the union “got [Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell] fired. We can get you fired.” Last month, the board passed a voluntary separation agreement to have Johnson-Trammell abruptly leave the district at the end of June.
The Monday after pink slips went out, OEA representatives, including President Kampala Taiz-Rancifer, visited Fremont High School, where special education teacher and union Vice President Chris Jackson had been issued one.
Fremont High Principal Nydia Baez told KQED that Taiz-Rancifer identified herself as a parent coming to speak with a teacher when she arrived on campus and refused to follow the school’s visitor sign-in policy. Baez did not speak with Taiz-Rancifer, but was told that she made threatening comments and was upset about Jackson’s termination.
Taiz-Rancifer denied making threats.
District and school leaders “de-escalated” the situation, according to Baez, and the next day, Taiz-Rancifer was ordered not to come to the campus for a month.
“I expected a grievance. I expected strongly worded emails, like a protocol, a process disagreeing with my decision, and unfortunately, it turned out that way,” Baez said about Taiz-Rancifer’s visit to campus. “It’s just been incredibly hard to be at work.”
The teachers’ union has a different perspective on the altercation. Taiz-Rancifer said she believes it is indicative of disproportionate scrutiny Black educators and students face within the district.
Jackson, who is Black, had been placed on administrative leave the week before the incident.
“Black educators make up 21% of the population of educators [in Oakland], but 50% of the folks that get put on leave,” said Taiz-Rancifer, who told KQED she was at the school that day to speak with a teacher about a “personnel matter.”
In April, the teachers’ union launched a campaign calling for Jackson to be reinstated, saying he had been retaliated against after becoming OEA’s vice president.
“Now, because he chose to lead and speak out, OUSD is trying to silence him,” the union said in a public letter.
“There’s some difficult issues going on on the Fremont High School campus. Those things are anti-Blackness,” Taiz-Rancifer told KQED. “They’re around members being able to act on behalf of the union to represent our members. What I’ll say is that as the advocacy begins, retaliatory behavior from the administrators starts occurring to our members.”
Jackson, according to the union’s message, “has … been a powerful voice in defense of Black educators and students, confronting racial epithets and longstanding anti-Blackness at Fremont High.”
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights found that Black students in OUSD disproportionately faced disciplinary actions, according to an investigation launched in 2012.
In 2021, the district passed a resolution seeking reparations for Black students, who it said represented 22% of all OUSD students but 57% of those suspended, and had been disproportionately affected by school closures over the previous 20 years.
Taiz-Rancifer said Black students, who are a small percentage of Fremont High’s student body, still face higher rates of discipline than their peers.
According to OEA, Black teachers throughout the school district have lower tenure rates than the average and make up 42% of probationary teachers who are not retained year to year. About 22% of OUSD’s teachers are Black.
Baez acknowledged that “we have a lot of work to do as [a] community to combat anti-Blackness, especially in the context of this current president and changes in policy.”
But after Jackson’s termination, she said that part of her job as an administrator is to make hard employment decisions based on budget constraints and student needs.
As OUSD faces a deep budget shortfall, the school board voted to eliminate more than 800 positions and reallocate spending across new roles — netting a loss of about 100 full-time roles, including educators, social workers and substitutes.
“Our principals are required and entrusted to make decisions that are best for students,” said Kaufman, the administrators’ union president. “Sometimes a decision needs to be made that this person is not helping students.”
While Kaufman and principals plan to speak out against the teachers’ union at Wednesday night’s school board meeting, Taiz-Rancifer said that administrators have the power in the district’s hierarchy.
“We don’t have the power to terminate any of these folks,” Taiz-Rancifer said. “We don’t have the power to put them on administrative leave. We don’t have the power to impact somebody’s ability to pay their rent.”
