Lacking college to assist the strike is just not thought-about an excused absence by the district. For households that didn’t wish to come to high school, the district provided another impartial research curriculum that college students might do at house and nonetheless obtain college attendance credit score. About 1,300 college students registered for the curriculum out of the 28,000 within the district.
“When individuals work, they ask for raises to allow them to assist their households,” Nystrom Elementary mum or dad Nidia Lopez stated in Spanish, via a trainer interpreter. “In the event that they don’t get a elevate, they’ll discover work some other place.”
Lopez introduced her youngsters to high school, however she determined to take them house as soon as she realized there was a strike, saying that there wasn’t some extent to having her youngsters in class if the academics weren’t there.
Different mother and father introduced their youngsters to high school.
Harrishiana Lee, mum or dad of three youngsters within the district, instructed KQED over a cellphone name as her youngsters have been being dropped off by their father that she supported the union however was pissed off with the strike. All of her youngsters have particular wants, she stated, and he or she didn’t have another for the companies they wanted.
“With the strike, my child can’t go to high school,” Lee stated.
For weeks, the district has been planning to maintain faculties open within the case of a strike. In October, the varsity board voted to pay as much as $550 per day for substitute academics in the course of the strike interval, up from the common day charge of as much as $280. In an electronic mail to oldsters and the varsity neighborhood on Wednesday, Superintendent Cotton stated that faculties would “present secure and supportive lecture rooms and studying actions” and that meals would proceed to be served to college students.
Cotton has expressed empathy for the union’s calls for, however she has maintained that the district’s finances can’t afford them and that the strike is dangerous to college students.
“The strike won’t repair these issues,” Cotton stated in an electronic mail assertion on Wednesday. “A strike takes academics out of lecture rooms, harms relationships, and makes it more durable to recruit and retain robust educators. … We’re heartbroken for our college students. They deserve stability, care, and a studying setting the place adults work collectively.”
Meghan Crebbin-Coates is a scholar on the UC Berkeley Graduate College of Journalism and a contributor to KQED.
