Community Support Needed for Teachers

Parents, Students, Teachers, workers and allies of the workers movement in West Contra Costa Unified School district and beyond.

Our teachers have been working without a contract since July of 2008. During this time the teachers and their representatives in the negotiations with the School Board have negotiated in good faith. That good faith is demonstrated by the fact that our teachers have continued to teach, our students day in and day out, without a contract. During these negotiations the School Board has unilaterally imposed cuts that attacks the quality of education.

Last Thursday August 20th the workers of the UTR voted a strike authorization which the president of the UTR hopes will show the School Board how serious the teachers are. With a 93% approval vote there can be no doubt the teachers are fed up with the disingenuous negotiations of the School Board. All the while the union busting School Board has been preparing to pay up to $325.00 per day for scab labor.

Although many teachers joined parents fighting against the school closures last spring, the UTR did not organize strikes or occupations of schools in order to stop the closures, layoffs, increases in class size or cuts in programs. In hind sight this inaction on the part of the union has only emboldened the School Board which has become more and more inflexible.

As school is set to open our children will face the following destruction of the quality of their education:
1) Increase in class size “to ratio” instead of “to maximum” means some classes may have as many as 45-50 students enrolled. These are not conditions conducive to teaching youth. Rather they are conditions that warehouse youth.
2) Imposed cuts to Kindergarten teachers preparation time and increased duties take away time our teachers have for our most vulnerable young students just entering the school system. This is not how trained professional educators should have to work and this is a prescription for the destruction of educational quality.
3) Imposed cuts to health care benefits are a take away done in bad faith. For years the teachers in the UTR traded cash/wages for their health program. This trade of increased wages for health benefits put our teachers salaries below many in the surrounding districts. This increases the stress on the teachers and their families. By taking away the security provided by their current health plan our teachers will be worrying more about their families while we expect them to give our children their full attention.

We understand that as Fredrick Douglas taught us “Power concedes nothing with out a demand!” only when we make our demand concrete through action can we win. A winning strategy is for the UTR teachers is to strike immediately before the class rooms are organized. The teachers should not prepare their class rooms for the scabs to easily take over. The UTR should call on the parents, students, community groups, labor unions and worker activists to help keep the scabs out of our schools and to set up Strike Schools and Strike Kitchens to educate our children and keep the community mobilized during the strike.

Our strike schools will teach more in the few weeks we will need to win the strike than Arnie Duncan’s or the forced curriculum and teach to the test method of “No Child Left Alive” can teach in a year. Parents we can only win by keeping our children out of school and organized during a strike. On Saturday August 29, and Sunday August 30 at 10:00 am we will meet at the Richmond Civic Center Auditorium 403 Civic Center Plaza in Richmond and divide up the fliers to be distributed to our school communities. We are inviting members and other allies to join us.

West Contra Costa Community for Quality Education,
Progressive Teachers of UTR Contact 510 501 7347