While I’m sure it is grounded in real experience, I question your perspective when it is so reactive. You are pulling your kids AND telling future teachers not to work here based on how your department cutbacks are being handled during the worst budget crisis anybody still working in education can remember?

Wow. If we teachers reacted that way to the insane administrative turnover we ROUTINELY experience, we’d never hang in there.

Cue: Nextset telling me I should have quit a long time ago.

I was so hopeful that Tony would be able to turn things around, but our district now feels more hopeless than ever. He speaks all about building relationships and bringing people together to do this work, yet his actions are completely different. He is not interested in what’s going on in Leadership, Curriculum and Instruction, and he’s allowed Maria Santos free reign, with some scary consequences. He does not respond to emails or calls to find out what’s going on or engage in this situation. It’s very, very sad.

So many amazing educators from Oakland have left this year, many more are about to resign. Tony does not seem to care (and has said that more or less). We are losing so much institutional memory, experience, passion and commitment. I am also leaving to go to a district where I feel I can apply my skills and make an impact on kids. I will also pull my children out of OUSD.

And yes – all jobs within LCI were “consolidated,” and everyone had to re-apply for their jobs. Their managers are doing the hiring, and want to re-hire everyone. Although Maria will have final say, it seems. It’s very vague, lots of rumors running that she wants to bring in her people, and she changes her mind every three days about the process and how decisions will be made. All the managers also have to re-apply for their jobs – they have no idea if they’ll be re-hired. It’s been incredibly humiliating, distracting, demoralizing, and insulting.

As I said, although I care deeply about this city and it’s students, and I have given two decades of my life to working here, and I wanted to send my kids through public school, I’m done. I really wish Tony showed more interest in what is going on; with all he knows and with his background and experiences, I expected so much more of him. I also teach credentialing students at a local university; I will no longer encourage them to come and teach in this district.

The sad truth is the taxpayers are being denied the benefit of their own tax money( the education of our children)to benefit the new elite. It’s very simple, everyone knows what teachers do every day and how crucial they are, but would we even know or care if central office people were gone and only the most crucial people kept. There is a lot of money going down a hole somewhere, because it’s not ending up in the classroom where it should.

-Is salary and benefits the only reason they stay here?
-Is this really even true? (Where are the salary comparisons to prove it)?
-Even if it is true, are other districts hiring so much that it would impact us?

-Referring to my first point, is pay your only ethos to b doing hard work in Oakland? No, it isn’t? Then why cut sites and central svcs to sites so much more than Central Office Operations?

What about teachers and parents? You think we love putting up with all the constant hard work and risk of merely living in this City? And you wonder why people vote with their feet.

Yes, Lamorinda does sound pretty nice right now. Even though our school is improving, the District doesn’t seem to notice or care. Especially when a school is in the middle. Doesn’t have the private money that hills schools have, or the extra public money that the flatlands schools have. (Esp. when you dip below 50% FRL they take it all away, as if that suddenly magically beamed the school to Montclair).

I might yet take back the consistency argument I made in support of Tony before…