Teachers ramp up talk of a strike Angry words fly at city school board meeting; district, union w

OAKLAND — The Oakland teachers union is again threatening a strike as talks about a new contract come down to the wire.

Union leaders, teachers and activists expressed their feelings about the matter at this week's raucous school board meeting by chanting, heckling speakers, comparing Oakland schools State Administrator Randolph Ward to Hitler and forcing a brief recess.

Union leaders at the Wednesday night meeting also railed against public charter schools and said Ward's approval of new charters will bring about the end of the Oakland school system.

"It's going to lead to labor strikes in this district, and it's going to lead to the collapse of this district," teachers union President Ben Visnick said.

In the spring, teachers overwhelmingly rejected a new contract after months of negotiations.

The district and the teachers union will have a chance to agree on a contract after the winter break. But each side has accused the other of negotiating in bad faith, and union leaders have recently stepped up rhetoric about a strike.

School board member Noel Gallo said threats of a strike and disruptive behavior will just encourage more parents to leave the district.

"If there is something that will definitely kill the school district, it's a strike," Gallo said. "It will definitely push some people

over, including my wife." On Wednesday, union activists heckled an educator who proposed two new charter schools in West Oakland.

The Space Exploration Academy and the Junior Space Exploration Academy, run in partnership with NASA and the University of California, Berkeley, would allow children in West Oakland to attend public schools focusing on science and technology in their own neighborhood, the speaker said.

"Boo," the audience yelled.

"UC Berkeley funds nuclear war testing," one man bellowed.

"Stabilize it for the yuppies," another man yelled out of the blue.

The teachers union has opposed the rise of independent public charter schools, which are mostly nonunion in California.

Emerson Elementary teacher Ed Allen compared Ward to both Hitler and President Bush during his address to the school board Wednesday.

"I'm really


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tired of these bourgeois blacks who get a Ph.D. and forget where they're from," said Allen, who is African-American.

White union leaders, including Edna Brewer Middle School teacher Mark Airgood, laughed uproariously and applauded the comment.

Union activist Jonah Zern, who is white, said that Ward, "as a bilingual black man," is on a mission to undermine public education.

Ward, sitting at the board table, did not respond to the comments.

School board member Dan Siegel asked union leaders whether teachers who try to cross picket lines would be physically prevented from doing do.

No, strike breakers would not be physically blocked, although they would get an earful from strikers on their way in, audience members replied.

By most accounts, the main sticking point in negotiations has been health care and how to pay for it as it becomes more expensive every year.

The district says teachers should help pay for some of those increases. Union leaders say they will never agree to a "cap" on health benefits because teachers could end up paying more every year as insurance companies raise their rates.

Eventually, a teacher with a family could end up taking a $3,000 hit on health care under the district's proposal, Visnick said.

Other Bay Area districts, including Berkeley, Albany and Piedmont, have caps on teachers' health benefits, officials say.

Visnick contends the district could afford to give teachers a better offer by using money from its annual cost-of-living raise from the state and by using the Measure E parcel tax, which now funds class-size reduction, arts programs, textbooks and other initiatives.

Visnick also led the union in 1996 during the city's last major teacher strike. That strike, the longest in Oakland history, lasted about a month.