1. What contracts/Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs)have been signed with industries, local businesses, professional organizations or trade unions in connection with the touted pathways that have been announced for McClymonds, Fremont, and Castlemont?

2. What contracts/MOUs have been signed with the University of California or its campuses in connection with these pathwways in the Acceleration high schools to be established at the Castle, Fremont or Mack in a few months?

3. What are the construction and equipment plans and contracts in place to ensure that the students have the requisite labs, kitchens, workshops, and studios needed to support pathways courses or are we going to have the arts without studios/muscial equipment/ instructors or culinary programs without kitchens or budgets for food/supplies such as exist in the current small schools on these campuses?

3. What planning has taken place with the community, parents, teachers, and students in meetings with the involved industries and universities in order to have concrete high school coursework, internships, practicums, and college level courses in place for the students of the three Acceleration high schools?

These are not rhetorical questions. Perhaps there are plans and resources in place for the transformed schools, so the taxpayng public wants to know what these are.

Katy, has OUSD made anything available with a blueprint of their academic plans for the high school students of east and west Oakland or are we witnessing a change in name that provides an excuse to destabilize the teacher corps?

My posting above your comment should have read “The negotiation of that policy is done [not none] at the bargaining table.”

Whether or not an “Accelerated TSA position” would require a teacher to reapply for the position each year has not been negotiated. Until the question of whether or not the Superintendent has authority to create a new position without negotiating that position under the CBA is settled, the terms of Superintendent Smith’s neo-TSA position is pure speculation.

Jim Mordecai

Acceleration TSA’s do not have to re-apply every year. It is true that an acceleration school could decide not to extend a particular teacher’s contract for the following year and would then need to let the teacher know this by March 15, but there is no re-application needed.

I personally worked for the Mayor’s election. But, there was no endorsement of the Mayor by OEA and in fact there were old timers that blamed the long 92 strike on Jean Quan as School Board Director. No candidate received the OEA endorsement.

Job interview is what a teacher does when the District hires her or him. Same as when Kaiser hires a doctor for one of its hospitals.

Some districts have different job interview policies. I recall hiking a farmer’s field to meet a school board member who passed on hiring me in 1967 for a town elementary school on the Delta. I subsequently was hired by a personnel director in Ceres.

This isn’t about hiring so much as transfer policy. The negotiation of that policy is none at the bargaining table. Something a competent superintendent would know.

Jim Mordecai

But I don’t feel you’ve made the point that it has to color every other policy implemented by Dr. Smith & OUSD.

Much like the Mayor’s failure to pay attention to OUSD’s finances when she was a b
Board Member didn’t prevent the OEA from endorsing her for Mayor.

OEA members here still fail to elaborate: are they willing to negotiate and find a compromise that allows schools to have anything approaching a hiring preference and job interview? If so what is their counter proposal? Or is job placement to continue being based only on seniority?

Have OEA members even heard of of job interviews? Or is that just a parallel universe?

I put down the wrong number for QEIA schools. It was 14 out of 19 and not 14 out of 17 QEIA schools that after three years didn’t meet the lower class size standard and other measures of the 7 year multi-million dollar grant.

Jim Mordecai

The issue is not whether Tony Smith was reasonable, nor is the issue that you can find some district out of all the districts in California that have an agreement that appears to be similar to Tony Smith’s proposed “mutual matching”.

The issue from my point of view is that Tony Smith doesn’t want to negotiate but impose his ideas on the OEA and other District unions.

His idea of changes in union rules belongs at the bargaining table and not op. ed. page of the Oakland Tribune.

I assume that he keeps trying to impose his ideas rather than negotiate with unions because he is an incompetent Superintendent that hasn’t a clue about labor management relationships and the rules of collective bargaining. His latest attempt to pretend a classroom teacher under the CBA can have the job redefined as a TSA position with a change in job from 10 month position to 11 month position reinforces my belief in his administrative incompetency.

And, how can you depict a superintendent that mismanaged 14 out of 17 QEIA schools causing them to be eliminated from future grant money for lack of administrative support as being “proactive in support of social justice”?

Apparently he could take $50,000 from OUSD general fund and pay a consultant to help organize the 100 Black Men charter school; and in your eyes taking from the children of the Oakland Public Schools and giving to a corporate charter school is an act of courage “in support of social justice”.

Sorry, but I just don’t agree that supporting corporate charter schools is an act of courage or an act of social justice.

Jim Mordecai