Special Education Gets 'Modest Gains' in Latest Talks With District, Says Oakland Teachers Union

On Monday, the Oakland Education Association reached a 90% vote in favor of its tentative agreement with the Oakland Unified School District. In the coming weeks, the two groups will vote separately on the proposal, negotiated during a seven-day strike.

“There are major gains in some areas, and there’s other areas where we made modest gains, and some areas where we have the status quo,” said Ismael Armendariz, a special education teacher and the union’s president. “But as a package, it is amazing what they accomplished.”

The agreement includes plans for substantial changes to teachers’ salaries, improvements on classroom conditions, and “common good” proposals such as student housing assistance and programs that benefit students of color.

It also features amendments to special education, but parents and teachers say there is more work to do.

“We made modest gains,” Armendariz repeated. “But we’re going to center special education going forward.”

Currently, the school district serves more than 6,000 students in special education programs, accounting for roughly 17% of students.

As Oakland’s population of students in special education programming continues to grow, the school district has struggled to find enough staff and funding to meet the needs of these students. It has consolidated programming, closing programs in some schools and moving them to others.

“We’re piloting a workload model that allows us to think about how we manage our caseloads, so that we can provide all the services to our students and that we’re able to manage that in a way that doesn’t burn teachers out,” Armendariz said.

Last year, the school district decided to close seven schools due to costs, but some families with children in special education programs called the plan discriminatory.

At the end of this school year, the district expects to cut at least one classroom for special education students with individualized learning plans from Joaquin Miller Elementary, Manzanita Community School, Bella Vista Elementary, United for Success Academy and Montera Middle School.

At the end of next school year, the school board intends to close some special education programs at Joaquin Miller, Manzanita SEED and Montera Middle School. The district will add new early childhood special education classes at Montclair Elementary and Melrose Leadership Academy.

Members of the school district’s Community Advisory Committee are fighting these upcoming closures with a petition. The group also plans to protest with an art-in at the school board meeting on May 24.

Monday’s tentative agreement takes a step toward meeting these needs by creating a new joint committee to oversee special education programs and by piloting a one-year program to maintain more equitable workloads for special education professionals, according to Armendariz.

“I think one of the most revolutionary things out of [the agreement] is that now, for the first time, a high-ranking general education administrator has to attend,” he said. “For far too long, special education has been siloed and we have been put aside and thought of as second to all the other programming.”

Coriander Melious is a special education teacher and parent of an eighth grader who has Down syndrome. She said she’s excited that the new committee will include general education teachers and administrators.

“Real inclusion comes with shifting the culture,” she said. “[It’s] how we as a community view our disabled students and the disabled community as actual members of our community and not this separate section over there.”

Other parents and educators think the major win is the new pilot program aiming to balance the workloads of special education professionals. It allows employees to request more support once they reach certain limits, which could include additional compensation or staffing.

Rather than base caseloads purely on the number of students, the program will take into account the specific needs and learning levels of each student.

“It’s really been a big issue,” said Holly Adler, a member of the union’s bargaining team and a resource specialist. “Teachers haven’t been getting support with high-needs students that are now being mainstreamed.”

Not all parents are happy about the “mainstreaming,” which will place more students with special needs in general education classrooms.

Alan Pursell is the parent of a sixth grader with autism. He said his son performs well in a general education classroom, but still needs time in a smaller, separate classroom to fully thrive.

“I’m worried that if he’s placed in a generalist setting, that he’ll lose all that progress and fall through the cracks,” he said.

The program to help teachers manage their caseloads conflicts with difficulties in hiring support staff. But these support staff, called paraeducators, are not included in the union and do not benefit from the salary raises.

Melious said that the low pay means these positions are often left empty, and students lose much-needed support.

Her daughter was not able to participate in a musical performance because she was unable to learn guitar without a teacher’s aide. Melious said the position had been unfilled for over a year.

“It made me so sad when I realized what was going on,” she said. “She’d just been sitting in there not doing anything, and she’s the only one.”

She wants the district to raise the pay for these positions and hire more staff to support students with additional needs.

“These students are going to be sitting in classrooms not learning,” she said. “They’re just waiting for the class to end. And that’s, like, criminal to me.”

Adler said the lack of support staff also affects teachers. In violation of the law, early childhood special education teachers were not getting a lunch break because of the demanding workload. Like Melious, she said higher salaries for support staff would help resolve the issue.

Armendariz said the bargaining team will hold the district accountable for lunch breaks moving forward. While he is proud of what the team accomplished overall, he wants to focus on special education more.

“For far too long, our students and our faculty have been ignored by this district and put as an afterthought. And that’s not going to happen anymore,” he said.