Teachers in Oakland, California, headed into another day of strikes Friday after parents and students applauded their demands by keeping city classrooms empty.
Oakland's 3,000 teachers went on strike Thursday over pay, class sizes and other issues, holding a boisterous rally at City Hall, marching through downtown streets and picketing outside the city's 86 schools.
Union officials from the Oakland Education Association were returning Friday morning to the negotiating table with district officials.
Malika Rubin-Davis, a teacher at Westlake Middle School, yells at a rally with other teachers, students and supporters at Frank Ogawa Plaza in front of City Hall in in Oakland, Calif., Thursday, Feb. 21, 2019. Teachers in Oakland, California, went on strike Thursday in the country's latest walkout by educators over classroom conditions and pay. (AP PhotoJeff Chiu)
"Parents, teachers and students spoke with their feet today," union president Keith Brown said Thursday evening, calling for a strong turnout on Day Two. "Strikes are won on the streets, not at the bargaining table."
The teachers are asking for a 12 percent retroactive raise covering 2017 to 2020 to compensate for what they say are among the lowest salaries for public school teachers in the expensive San Francisco Bay Area.
"I'm bleeding out every month, falling further into debt," said Sarah Trauben, 30, who teaches english and government at Oakland Technical High School. She's taken on a second job as an SAT tutor to make ends meet.
Teachers, students and supporters march in Oakland, Calif., Thursday, Feb. 21, 2019. Teachers in Oakland, California, went on strike Thursday in the country's latest walkout by educators over classroom conditions and pay. (AP PhotoJeff Chiu)
Teachers also want smaller class sizes and say the district needs to hire more full-time nurses and school counselors.
In Sierra Donaldson's 9th grade biology class at Oakland Tech, she worries about safety in lab classes.
"Class size is huge. I need to keep an eye on 32 14-year-olds, and I feel like it's just not safe if we're working with bacteria or other materials," said Donaldson.
Teachers, students and supporters rally at Frank Ogawa Plaza in front of City Hall in Oakland, Calif., Thursday, Feb. 21, 2019. Teachers in Oakland, California, went on strike Thursday in the country's latest walkout by educators over classroom conditions and pay. (AP PhotoJeff Chiu)
A starting salary in the district is $46,500 a year and the average salary is $63,000, according to the union. In neighboring Berkeley, a starting teacher makes $51,000 a year and the average salary is $75,000, the union said.
"We cannot afford to live here," said kindergarten teacher Elena Njemanze, who has been teaching in Oakland for eight years and has a master's degree from Mills College. "I can only afford to pay rent because I have my parents helping me."
The district initially offered a 5 percent raise covering 2017 to 2020, saying it is squeezed by rising costs and a budget crisis.
Teachers, students and supporters hold signs at Frank Ogawa Plaza in front of City Hall in Oakland, Calif., Thursday, Feb. 21, 2019. Teachers in Oakland, California, went on strike Thursday in the country's latest walkout by educators over classroom conditions and pay. (AP PhotoJeff Chiu)
In negotiations Wednesday aimed at averting a strike, the district increased its proposal to a 7 percent raise over four years and a one-time 1.5 percent bonus.
But union officials rejected the offer.
Oakland Unified School District spokesman John Sasaki said school administrators hope to get a counter proposal from the union when negotiations resume Friday.
"We haven't heard any proposal since last May so we're hoping they have something for us when we meet tomorrow," Sasaki said.
Local radio host Sana G. posted on Instagram a short video with a dozen Bay Area celebrities, including comedians, musicians, sports stars and others each saying, "I stand with Oakland teachers." Local celebrities like MC Hammer, Stephen Curry and Oscar winner Mahershala Ali showed support in a video to say they "stand with Oakland teachers."
Parents showed their support by honoring the picket line, said Will Lynch, a father with a second-grader at Glenview Elementary School, where 9 children out of 460 turned up for school.
"What are we doing not paying teachers enough money? It reflects our society's values in a very negative way," he said.
The walkout affects 36,000 students at 86 schools.
"We did not have a single student come to school today," said Katherine Carter, principal at Oakland SOL middle school. "A couple kids were on the picket lines, but aside from that no kids."
No students turned up at West Oakland Middle School either, said Brown, the union president.
"It's unfortunate that it's come to this, but it shines a spotlight on larger issues," she said. "Public education is a crisis in our country. The teachers are now lifting that up across different states."
The union has also called for the district to scrap plans to close as many as 24 schools that serve primarily African-American and Latino students. The union fears further students will be lost to charter schools that drain more than $57 million a year from the district.
Recent strikes across the nation have built on a wave of teacher activism that began last spring. Unions for West Virginia teachers, who staged a nine-day walkout last year, ended another two-day strike Wednesday. Last week, teachers in Denver ended a three-day walkout after reaching a tentative deal raising their wages.
Teachers in Los Angeles, the nation's second-largest school district, staged a six-day strike last month that ended when they settled on a 6-percent raise with promises of smaller class sizes and the addition of nurses and counselors.
Associated Press writers Janie Har and Olga R. Rodriguez in San Francisco contributed to this report.
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United States vetoed a widely backed U.N. resolution Thursday that would have paved the way for full United Nations membership for Palestine, a goal the Palestinians have long sought and Israel has worked to prevent.
The vote in the 15-member Security Council was 12 in favor, the United States opposed and two abstentions, from the United Kingdom and Switzerland. U.S. allies France, Japan and South Korea supported the resolution.
The strong support the Palestinians received reflects not only the growing number of countries recognizing their statehood but almost certainly the global support for Palestinians facing a humanitarian crisis caused by the war in Gaza, now in its seventh month.
The resolution would have recommended that the 193-member U.N. General Assembly, where there are no vetoes, approve Palestine becoming the 194th member of the United Nations. Some 140 countries have already recognized Palestine, so its admission would have been approved, likely by a much higher number of countries.
U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood told the Security Council that the veto “does not reflect opposition to Palestinian statehood but instead is an acknowledgment that it will only come from direct negotiations between the parties."
The United States has “been very clear consistently that premature actions in New York — even with the best intentions — will not achieve statehood for the Palestinian people,” deputy State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said.
His voice breaking at times, Palestinian U.N. Ambassador Riyad Mansour told the council after the vote: “The fact that this resolution did not pass will not break our will and it will not defeat our determination.”
“We will not stop in our effort,” he said. “The state of Palestine is inevitable. It is real. Perhaps they see it as far away, but we see it as near.”
This is the second Palestinian attempt for full membership and comes as the war in Gaza has put the more than 75-year-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict at center stage.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas first delivered the Palestinian Authority’s application for U.N. membership in 2011. It failed because the Palestinians didn’t get the required minimum support of nine of the Security Council’s 15 members.
They went to the General Assembly and succeeded by more than a two-thirds majority in having their status raised from a U.N. observer to a non-member observer state in 2012. That opened the door for the Palestinian territories to join U.N. and other international organizations, including the International Criminal Court.
Algerian U.N. Ambassador Amar Bendjama, the Arab representative on the council who introduced the resolution, called Palestine’s admission “a critical step toward rectifying a longstanding injustice" and said that “peace will come from Palestine’s inclusion, not from its exclusion.”
In explaining the U.S. veto, Wood said there are “unresolved questions” on whether Palestine meets the criteria to be considered a state. He pointed to Hamas still exerting power and influence in the Gaza Strip, which is a key part of the state envisioned by the Palestinians.
Wood stressed that the U.S. commitment to a two-state solution, where Israel and Palestine live side-by-side in peace, is the only path for security for both sides and for Israel to establish relations with all its Arab neighbors, including Saudi Arabia.
“The United States is committed to intensifying its engagement with the Palestinians and the rest of the region, not only to address the current crisis in Gaza, but to advance a political settlement that will create a path to Palestinian statehood and membership in the United Nations,” he said.
Mansour, the Palestinian U.N. ambassador, reiterated the commitment to a two-state solution but asserted that Israel believes Palestine "is a permanent strategic threat."
"Israel will do its best to block the sovereignty of a Palestinian state and to make sure that the Palestinian people are exiled away from their homeland or remain under its occupation forever,” he said.
He demanded of the council and diplomats crowded in the chamber: “What will the international community do? What will you do?”
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have been stalled for years, and Israel’s right-wing government is dominated by hard-liners who oppose Palestinian statehood.
Israeli U.N. Ambassador Gilad Erdan called the resolution “disconnected to the reality on the ground” and warned that it “will cause only destruction for years to come and harm any chance for future dialogue.”
Six months after the Oct. 7 attack by the Hamas militant group, which controlled Gaza, and the killing of 1,200 people in “the most brutal massacre of Jews since the Holocaust,” he accused the Security Council of seeking “to reward the perpetrators of these atrocities with statehood.”
Israel’s military offensive in response has killed over 32,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry, and destroyed much of the territory, which speaker after speaker denounced Thursday.
After the vote, Erdan thanked the United States and particularly President Joe Biden “for standing up for truth and morality in the face of hypocrisy and politics.”
He called the Palestinian Authority — which controls the West Bank and the U.S. wants to see take over Gaza where Hamas still has sway — “a terror supporting entity.”
The Israeli U.N. ambassador referred to the requirements for U.N. membership – accepting the obligations in the U.N. Charter and being a “peace-loving” state.
“How can you say seriously that the Palestinians are peace loving? How?” Erdan asked. “The Palestinians are paying terrorists, paying them to slaughter us. None of their leaders condemns terrorism, nor the Oct. 7 massacre. They call Hamas their brothers.”
Despite the Palestinian failure to meet the criteria for U.N. membership, Erdan said most council members supported it.
“It’s very sad because your vote will only embolden Palestinian rejectionism every more and make peace almost impossible,” he said.
Algeria's Permanent Ambassador to the United Nations Amar Bendjama speaks during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan speaks during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations Riyad Mansour holds tears while speaking during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Representatives of member countries take votes during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations Riyad Mansour, left, and United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speak before a Security Council meeting at the United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations Riyad Mansour speaks during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Representatives of member countries take votes during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan speaks during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations Riyad Mansour speaks during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
U.S. Deputy Ambassador Robert Wood votes against resolution during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
