A couple hours later, that scene was repeated. This time, it was chants of “Cas-tle, Cas-tle,” as the Castlemont High boys team celebrated its 67-65 win over Oakland High.

The Tech girls played their best game of the season when it mattered most – playing hard and unselfishly in beating a Skyline team that won the regular-season OAL title and had beaten Tech twice before. Now the Bulldogs may get a home game for their Northern California playoff opener on Tuesday.

“This is great for these kids,” said Valerie Hartsfield, in her first year as head coach of the Bulldogs. “Now their focus is in it. At the beginning of the season, I didn’t know where they were at.”

Tech forward Marquetta Stokes, who led all scorers with 16 points, said she and her teammates were upset that she was the only Tech player selected to the All-City first team, the league all-star team that is picked by the league coaches and was announced at halftime Saturday.

“We wanted to show everyone who the really good players are,” she said, “and that’s what we did.”

The Oakland High-Castlemont boys final, before an estimated crowd of 1,500, was a showcase for some of the top players in Northern California. On Saturday, two stood above the rest – Castle’s John Green and Oakland High’s Jabari Brown.

Brown, a supremely talented guard who is considered to be among the top juniors in the country, helped bring Oakland back from a nine-point halftime deficit to tie the game late. But the Warriors couldn’t stop Green, the Knights’ gifted, athletic and emotional forward.

Green hit four clutch free throws down the stretch, capping a 25-point performance, as the Knights held on. After the final buzzer, Green pranced around the gym, mugging and yelling, before running into the stands to hug some supporters.

Green was also motivated by an All-City slight – he thought he should have been league MVP, when the award went to Oakland High’s dynamic point guard TJ Taylor. He doesn’t forget easily, either – Green said he’s been a good free-throw shooter since his dad beat him in a game when he was in the 6^th grade.

“I didn’t get it, and that’s OK,” Green said. “I know in my heart, and everybody else knows that I deserved to be MVP.”

Now he and his teammates can enjoy the win before they find out where they play next. All four teams that played Saturday advance to the Northern California playoffs and next play Tuesday, with the winners receiving higher seeds and games that are either at home or nearby.

Green said the Knights are looking forward to seeing how they match up with the other top teams in the state.

“There’s a lot of excitement,” he said. “This is our dream.”

Brie Pleasants and Naima Wye collaborate on a sketch.

On a rainy Tuesday afternoon, a handful of teenage girls trickled through the door of Rock Paper Scissors Art Collective in downtown Oakland. It looked like a typical after-school powwow: The girls chatted, dropping book bags and grabbing homemade sandwiches, waving hello to a teenage boy quietly sewing in the corner. They all exchanged conversations with a slender, brunette woman sitting at a desk in the center of all the activity.

The brunette, Kristi Holohan, is the director of The Street Style/Dream Seam School of Fashion, an after-school program that fosters creativity and entrepreneurship in high school students interested in the fashion business.  The course, which runs from October to May, meets at three different locations each week so students can sketch, design, hone sewing skills and be around other artists. Students come to sessions at Rock Paper Scissors, MetWest High School near Lake Merritt or at Tassafraonga Recreation Center in East Oakland where fabric, sewing machines and, of course, sandwiches are provided for them.

Holohan, 31, has been sewing since she was 7 years old and is a design artist working in Oakland. Her co-teacher Kenny Mau, 25, is a stylist at BCBG in San Francisco. Their goal, Holohan says, is to let their students enter “a world of art and fashion and creativity.”

As the two-hour class gets underway, someone puts on their iPod, which seamlessly shifts between Motown classics and indie rock, and the students start in on their projects without any direction. Francisco Ziminay, 15, works on hand-sewing a pair of pants. Brie Pleasants, 18, sketches a dress she plans to enter into a contest sponsored by Jo-Ann Fabrics. Liliana Herrera, 16, leans over Pleasants and suggests an easier way to draw in pleats.

Milan Williams, 17, and Holohan are both hunched over a sewing machine working on the beginnings of a bright blue gingham scarf. Williams, who attends Berkeley High, is a newcomer to the class. She loves fashion, she says, but never had any of the technical skills.  “It takes hours to learn how to sew, it takes a lot of focus,” said Williams. “ But, I like that I get to create and be creative and express myself,” she said of the program.

“Kristi is always supportive, with her anything goes,” Williams added.

“I allow them to do whatever they want,” says Holohan about the students’ freedom to pursue creative projects: Some sew, others design hats, and some screen-print and design t-shirts or knit.

Despite the diversity of creative pursuits, Holohan is tuned into what her students like to do and where they excel.  “Francisco sews everything by hand,” she said, gesturing towards the corner Ziminay occupied. “Brie here is our P.R. goddess and Naima is an amazing sketch artist.”  Naima Wye, a 16-year-old Berkeley High student was engrossed in the stuffed animal she was sewing, looked up and said,  “I love fashion and street style,” she said. “I have to draw. I get consumed like a zombie.”

Pleasants, a student at Oakland Senior High School, is grateful for Holohan’s individual attention. “I’ve learned about myself. Kristi always tells me how well-spoken and patient I am,” she said.

The Street Style School has been running for three years but Holohan, with the help of co-teacher Mau, has been working to take it in a different direction, one that is more focused on being a professional artist and understanding the industry, she said.  In addition to holding resume writing workshops and mock interviews and providing students with their own business cards, Holohan teaches her students about the negative aspects of the fashion world.  She tries to combat the stereotypes of beauty by showing ads that feature real women, like Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty,” or providing offbeat magazines in addition to more mainstream catalogs and periodicals. Industry specialists such as milliners and t-shirt designers have paid visits to the class. She also invites her students to other art events she hosts to help establish the young artists in the community.

The students have come together to show their work at Oakland Public Library and the Oakland Museum of Children’s Art where they made dresses out of newspaper for an exhibition.  The students have executed photo shoots at the Oakland Public Library as well, organizing everything from the models’ hair and makeup to designing the clothes. They’ve also been setting up a table at the monthly First Friday Art Murmur events in Oakland, selling their homemade jewelry, knit items and hats. They pulled in $100 from their first booth back in February, and used the proceeds to fund more design projects.

For several of the students, like Williams who knits both by hand and on an industrial knitting machine, the designs they produce with the Street Style program will be used in portfolios for art schools and for internships. Herrera, a photographer and painter, works for an Oakland based muralist, has had work exhibited at SFMOMA, the Oakland Museum, Hood Games and Graffiti Jam, an impressive list about which Herrera responds with a shrug — “I’m an artist,” she says.

As part of the day’s lesson, Holohan is teaching the students how to write a press release about the Street Style Program.  Herrera and Wye are in charge of writing it out, and struggle for a moment with the wording.

“Well, what are you trying to say?”  Holohan asked Herrera.

“Just that we’re youth from Oakland,” the student replied, “trying to make a difference and prove that Oakland has hella talent.”

“Por que nos importa lo que hace el Estado de Calif. con sus escuelas?”

Why do we care what the state of California does about its schools?

Outside, nearly  two thousand people were taking to the Oakland streets to protest cuts to public education.    The K-12 community was for the first time joining the higher education community in these calls for change in the way California funds public education; at Tech there was leafleting before school, a district-planned protest called a “disaster drill” at 9:15 a.m., and large groups of students who left school at lunchtime to join the college students marching down Telegraph Avenue for the March 4 Day of Action in Defense of Public Education.

But most Tech students stayed in their classes — and some learned about the funding crisis right there.

Ms. Bojorquez, checked her roster while the students worked to answer the “do now” question with their developing Spanish skills.  She noted that about half of the class was absent.  They were on their way to Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, she guessed, to join the rally against state education funding cuts.  “We’re teachers, we don’t like it [when students leave class],” she’d said before class.  “But, it’s great too.  It’s a chance for them to do their civic duty.”

Bojorquez returned to the front of the room and pointed at the question written on the board in the perfect script of an older generation.  A student in the back read out the question as Bojorquez perched on an empty desk holding the class seating chart, ready to record class participation.   She turned to her students, “who has an answer” she asked in Spanish.

A sign, created by students, tacked to the bulletin board in the back of Ms. Bojorquez's classroom.

“Es importante para nosotros porque necesitamos dinero para una buena educacion para los estudiantes,” Sampson Mao, 16, read off of his worksheet.   Or, in English: “it’s important for us because we need money for a good education for the students.”

Nicole Brown, 16, raised her hand next.  “I’m not sure this is right,” she said. “But como se dice ‘future’?”

Instead of just telling Nicole how to say “future” in Spanish, Bojorquez pointed to a huge sign on a strip of butcher paper tacked to the bulletin board in the back of her classroom.  “Nuestros Estudiantes = El Futuro de California,” the sign read,  Our Students = The Future of California.

“Okay,” said Nicole said, and gave it another shot.  “Es importante porque educacion es muy importante para nuestro futuro,” she said.

Bojorquez kept the lesson rolling.  She explained in Spanish to Fred Thompson, 18, a senior who has just signed on to play Division 1 football for the Oregon State Beavers, that if the cuts continue there might be no money for football equipment at Tech.  Fred replied, also in Spanish, that that was okay, because he would be going to Oregon State.

“Tienes un hermanito?” Bojorquez asked. Do you have a little brother?

“Si,” replied Thompson.

“Won’t it affect you if your little brother can’t play football?” she asked in Spanish.

Thompson did not reply at first, either because his vocabulary wasn’t good enough—this is Spanish 2, after all—or because he wasn’t sure how to answer that one.

Bojorquez went on to tell her students, first in Spanish and then again in English when they seemed not to understand, that University of California fees had increased 32 percent the previous semester.

“How would you feel if your rent went up by 32 percent?” she asked in Spanish.

The students were a little wide-eyed at that.

She told them about how Proposition 13, approved by the state’s voters in 1978, limits property tax increases for corporations as well as individuals in California.  She pointed to the industries in Richmond as an example of companies that benefit from paying low property taxes.  She told her students that California was number 48 in education spending, out of all 50 US states.

A girl in the second row nodded.   Another teacher of hers, she said, “is always telling us that.”

At a press conference in downtown Oakland, a few hours later, the superintendent of their school district, Tony Smith echoed Nicole Brown’s declaration that education is very important for our future.

“We have to raise our voices louder than ever,” Smith told a crowd of teachers, students and parents gathered in front of the state building as part of a citywide rally to protest cuts to public education.  “Here in Oakland we have to be together,” Smith said.  “We have to be unified to say we can’t cut education anymore.”

A number of suggestions were made at the press conference as to legislative changes that might help ensure that Fred Thompson’s brother gets football equipment next year, and Judith Bojorquez’s 32-student Spanish II class doesn’t grow beyond the boundaries of her classroom.

A statement from State Senator Loni Hancock and read by her district representative, Pedro Rosado, for example, said “California is one of the only states with a 2/3 budget rule.  This has created chaos,” Rosado read, noting that Hancock has introduced legislation to change the 2/3 requirement.  “It has forced legislators to make concession after concession.”

Students in Ms. Bojorquez's Spanish II class on March 4.

Smith, after the press conference, said he agreed. “I don’t think we should be a majority controlled state,” he said.

Smith also said he thought Oakland must look for other sources of revenue.  “I think we have to do at least the parcel tax,” Smith said, referring to a new property tax that has been proposed to help raise funds for Oakland teacher salaries.

The parcel tax initiative does not have the support of the Oakland teachers’ union, the Oakland Education Association, because it would provide support for charter school teachers as well as traditional public school teachers.  Charter school teachers are not union members.

Bojorquez is a union member, as are all teachers in the 109 non-charter district schools, but she did not get into the history of unions or the stalled negotiations for a new contract that prompted the OEA this week to call for a one day strike on March 24^th.  She didn’t have time.

It was 1:58 and the “do now” activity was over.  Time to get on to the next topic: direct object pronouns.

“We’re not racing to the top,” said Dean Murakami, a professor at American River College. “We’ve hit bottom and we can’t get up.”

“How are we going to save the future if we can’t even get into our classes,” President of the Student Senate at the California Community Colleges Reid Milburn, asked the cheering crowd.

Dubbed “Educate the State,” the rally was one of many events planned across California for the March 4 “day of action” to protest cuts to public education. A weak economy, falling tax revenues and home prices, and a budget deficit that could reach up to $21 billion next year pushed lawmakers to make deep cuts across the budget, and education took a big hit. Organizers called the joint action between public schools of all levels “historic” and “unprecedented.”

“What’s going on today is something that has never happened before,” said Cecil E. Canton, associate vice president and chair of the Council for Affirmative Action at the California Faculty Association. “We’ve got to stand up together. Public education is worth saving, and if we don’t, we’re denying millions the American dream.”

“Investment in public education is investment in our future,” said Kevin Wehr, a sociology professor at California State University Sacramento (CSUS), and a member of the school’s chapter of the CFA. “This is an investment that has many dividends.”

The California State University Sacramento chapter of the CFA planned the event and invited groups from the Berkeley, Davis and Santa Cruz UC campuses, several CSUs and community colleges, and the Sacramento City Unified School District.

Ten buses ferried students and teachers from UC Berkeley and Santa Cruz, a group of about 500 people, according to Greg Levine, a Berkeley art history professor and member of a group called Save the University. According to student Christina Price, the students at Santa Cruz had gotten up at 5 a.m. to rally and get on the buses.

During speeches, protestors raised their fists in solidarity and carried signs that said “save the CSUs,” “32 percent more for ten percent less” and “viva la public.” Students rewrote the words to the Beastie Boys song “Fight for Your Right to Party,” singing “fight for your right to college,” while professors from UC Santa Cruz played their guitars and led the crowd in a rendition of “This Little Light of Mine.” A Sac State professor did a dramatic reading of Dr. Seuss’s “The Sneaches,” explaining that Seuss had been rejected 27 times before being published—a lesson for students to keep fighting.

Robert Graham, a fifth year CSUS student majoring in political science, said he decided to join the protest movement when friends and classmates started leaving school because they couldn’t pay their tuition. Graham is one of the CFA’s three paid student organizers. “This is for our brothers and sisters, the kids still in high school,” he said. “If we don’t do something now to stop the hikes, the budget cuts and the capped enrollment, they won’t have a public education system to go to.”

“This is the first time I’ve protested anything in my life,” said Will Coleman, a grad student in Berkeley’s art history program. A graduate of Haverford College and Oxford University, he turned down Ivy League schools to attend public school for the first time.  “It’s easy to think that grad students are isolated, so one would think that I don’t have a stake,” he said. “But this university is not only a national, but an international resource,” he said.

Two issues came up repeatedly in the protesters’ speeches—the amount of money that funds the corrections department and the two-thirds majority required to pass the budget.  “We can’t afford to throw our budget away on prisons,” said Wehr, the event’s main organizer. “We might as well just bury the money.”

At one point during the rally, protesters started chanting “education, not incarceration.”

In the 2010-2011 proposed state budget, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has allocated $12.6 billion, or 10.6 percent of the state budget to higher education, while $8 billion, or 6.8 percent of the budget is allocated to corrections and rehabilitation.

In his speech, Berkeley linguistics professor George Lakoff the stipulation that requires California budgets to be passed with a two-thirds majority, saying that a 37 percent minority controls the state. Protesters responded by chanting “End two-thirds!”

A few lawmakers, including Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, Senator Leland Yee and Assembly Majority Leader Alberto Torrico came out to the rally to express solidarity with the students. “Let this be the year that we restore the dream around public education,” Steinberg said, eliciting cheers and applause from the crowd.

Torrico used the moment to promote his assembly bill, AB656, which would tax oil companies for extracting oil from the state and funnel the money into education. “I will no longer be part of the band here in Sacramento that’s heading us down a path of mediocrity,” he said. Torrico also solicited volunteers to help gather signatures in support of the bill on college campuses.

But, though the protesters did get some attention from lawmakers, many of the speakers told the crowd that they needed to continue with their rallies. Community colleges are already planning another rally on March 22. “Advocacy is not a one-day event,” Milburn said. “On the 22^nd, we will be back here marching again.”

“They’re in the process of dealing with this budget now and we need to do this now,” said the CFA’s Canton. “There’s a saying—if you’re not at the table, you’re on it.”

“Education is a right one fights for,” yelled the group of student protesters, which also included UC Berkeley labor union members, Cal alumni and even high school students who are worried about their future education.

“We have more people than we had at this time of the day compared to the previous protest on September 25th.  We have to show our solidarity,” said Ricardo Gomez, a junior at UC Berkeley and an organizer with the Solidarity Alliance and Berkeley Students Against Cuts.  Gomez said he is lucky enough to have a scholarship available for him, but he says he is participating in the protest for the good of future generations.  “I am doing this especially so students of color will have access to affordable education,” said Gomez.

Other student protesters said the budget cuts are deeply affecting their lives. “I cannot even sleep at night because I am worried about how I can pay tuition. My family is not wealthy enough to support me,” said Cristina Doan, an 18-year-old freshman at Berkeley.  Doan says she cannot even find work.  “The economy is really bad and it is hard to find job to pay tuition,” said the ethnic studies major, who says she wants to be a teacher at community college.

Berkeley junior and ethnic studies major Alejandro Jimenez agreed with Doan.  “I do not have tuition for the next semester,” said Jimenez.  He supports better educational opportunities for students with color because most of them are not privileged enough to afford tuition.  “I want my share for what I pay for with my taxes,” he said. “We deserve affordable education.”

There ware several skirmishes between protesters and other students who were trying get through the Sather Gate. “Join the strike today, go to the class tomorrow,” the crowds shouted. However, some students said protesting by boycotting classes is not an effective way to send a message.

“I think they are misguided,” says Jeffrey Lucas, a junior at Berkeley, who was overlooking the protest from the Cesar Chavez Student Center.  He said that if students really want to change the situation, they should go to Sacramento.  “The methodology is wrong,” said the 22-year-old philosophy major.

His friend Andrew Brandford agreed. “I think it is a good form of expression.  But I do not think boycotting class makes sense because we are already losing classes,” said the 21-year-old philosophy major.  They were on their way to a class taught by philosophy professor John Searle, who was active in Free Speech Movement in the 1960s.  “Even Professor Searle did not cancel the class today,” said Lucas.

Around 10:30 a.m., the protesters broke into several groups to picket around the campus, leaving a portion of their group in front of the Sather Gate.  They stormed classes taking students and teachers by surprise, although many classes went back to normal after the protesters left. Said a senior molecular and cell biology student who was attending a class at the Wheeler Hall after the protesters left, “I am angry about the budget cuts, but I still have to graduate.”

Photos by Ayako Mie; photo slideshow created by Allison Davis.

“See, you have the people’s support,” local resident Nancy Delaney said.  “Now what about the damn administration?”

Physics teacher Richard Fairly, who has been at Tech for sixteen years, said he had come out on this chilly morning “to decry the cuts to education and also to support a strong contract for Oakland’s teachers.”

“There will be a number of positions that will have to be cut at Tech and some services,” Fairly said.  “I know the principal is trying to keep as much of the current program as possible,” he added, noting that Tech principal Sheliagh Andujar was a strong supporter of the teachers.

Andujar was out in front of the school as well, chatting with teachers and leaning into car windows to give parents flyers about the district’s planned events for today. The “day of action” was originally called for by the California Coordinating Committee, a loose statewide network of students, teachers and concerned citizens, and has taken off across the state with unions and school districts planning events to protest budget cuts in their cities and towns.

According to Vernon Hal, the Oakland Unified School District’s chief financial officer, next school year the district will face a budget shortfall of $85 million due to loss of funding from state cuts, declining enrollment and the exhaustion of last year’s federal stimulus money.  This will mean cuts to both district staff and school staff, Hal said yesterday.

Piedmont elementary schools conduct a "fire drill" protest.

To protest the cuts coming down from the state, schools across Oakland held informational pickets before school this morning and then participated in a 9:15 am “disaster drill” to signify the significant hazards facing public education funding. Students and teachers exited their school buildings carrying signs and voicing chants like “SOS, Save Our Schools!”

That was the chant at Piedmont Elementary this morning.  All 350 Piedmont students filed out of their classrooms and into the schoolyard as the school’s fire alarms rang in short, staccato bursts.  Ranging from kindergartners to fifth graders, students stayed in single-file lines, holding printed signs that read “Support Oakland teachers” and “We care about our future.”

“Thank you for coming out of the building!” Piedmont Elementary principal Zarina Ahmad said through a bullhorn.  “In the tradition of speaking up for our rights, in the tradition of protesting when things are unfair and unjust, we are having a day of education.”

A sign outside of Piedmont Elementary School in Oakland.

Led by their teachers — many clad in neon-green Oakland Education Association t-shirts — the students then marched out of the schoolyard and around the front of the building, past a giant sign reading “No more cuts to public education,” before returning to the school through the main entrance.  In addition to the “Save our schools!” chant, students blew whistles and shook tambourines and maracas.  Most cars that passed by honked in support.

In her office after the drill, Ahmad said she hoped her students took away two lessons from the day’s activities.  “The first is that it’s their right to speak up for what they believe in,” she said.  “And I want them to know they did something about it.  They got involved.  They got their parents involved.  They lifted their voices to say our schools need help.”

At Oakland’s Claremont Middle School, Ellie Hill, age 11, was at school early to hand out flyers and was toting a bright green sign that read, “NO CUTS” during her school’s “disaster drill.”

A Claremont Middle School student holds a sign during the "fire drill."

“I think it’s unfair for them to take our education from us,” Ellie said.  “I went to a [private] school in the Berkeley Hills called Cragmont in kindergarten through third grade and we had all our materials set on our desk—we had a pencil set on our desk. We wouldn’t have to ask for one.  Now, when we get here, we have to buy our pencils because they can’t provide us pencils because they are cutting down and taking our money.”

Her school’s principal, Kenya Crockett, said she felt the same way.  “Schools have been cut to the bare minimum. With further cuts, I don’t know how we will prepare students to be citizens in the 21^st century,” she said.

All 410 of Claremont’s students participated in the drill this morning.  Students filed out in lines behind their teachers, some toting bright yellow emergency kits just as they would for a non-symbolic fire drill.  Some kids chatted with their friends or stared into space, but many others held signs over their heads and yelled, “no cuts!”

Claremont Middle School principal Kendra Crockett hugs two students during the "fire drill."

Crockett said that the school had taken the day of protest as a “teachable moment” and had used some of the lesson plans provided by OUSD to give students “examples of protest, the power of protest and how protest results in change.”  The school will also host an assembly addressing these issues this afternoon.

Back at Oakland Tech earlier this morning, students were gearing up for a full day of protesting.  Some even said they planned to leave school at lunchtime to join the protesters from UC Berkeley and other Oakland locations in the march to Frank H. Ogawa Plaza for an afternoon rally.  The Oakland Unified School District has announced that students leaving school today will be listed as having an unexcused absence, but that wasn’t deterring students who planned to attend the rally.

Ninth grader Jamal Johnson, who said he loves math, said he was going downtown “to protest with all the other schools and colleges.”  Jamal said he was aware of the consequences, but, he said, “I come to school every day on time, so, I feel like I can do this one time.”

October 21, 2002: Oakland Superintendent Dennis Chaconas announces that the school district is $35 million in debt.

June 2, 2003: Despite deep cuts and huge layoffs, California Governor Gray Davis signs SB39, a bill written by Don Perata, that grants the district a $100 million loan but also puts it under state control.

July 2009: The Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) comes out of its state takeover, but owes $6 million a year to service the loan first. An audit conducted over the summer also indicates that the district has $7 million less than initially thought because of an unreconciled cash accounting issue.

Summer 2009: Federal stimulus funds are granted to the Oakland Unified School District to help patch over the $70 million in budget shortfalls the district faced for the 2009-2010 year. This funding is not expected to be renewed.

July 2009: Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger threatens to suspend Prop. 98 in an effort to balance the state’s budget.

December 10, 2010: OUSD CFO Vernon Hal announces that the district will face a $14 million shortfall at the end of the 2009-2010 school year. Close to $7 million of this shortfall is the result of an audit that found the district had been over-reporting its available cash.

January 5, 2010: In his State of the State address, Schwarzenegger vows to honor Prop. 98.

January 13, 2010: OUSD Superintendent Tony Smith announces at a school board meeting that the district is facing $36 million in budget cuts for the 2010-2011 school year. That number has since increased to $39 million. The majority of the new cuts announced in January come from a negative cost of living adjustment made by the state that will reduce the state’s per student expenditure. School districts are funded by the state on a per student basis; the per student allocation is multiplied by the average daily attendance at a given school district.

February 10, 2010: The OUSD school board approves a resolution to support the March 4 Day of Action to Defend Public Education. In addition to holding a press conference at 4 pm to decry the cuts, on March 4 the district will organize a district-wide fire drill at 9:15 am to symbolize the “disaster” in public education funding. Students and teachers will exit their buildings holding signs and march in front of or around their schools before returning to classes.

March 1, 2010: The Oakland Education Association, which represents teachers and instructional aides in Oakland’s traditional public schools, (charter school teachers are not union members) announces that they plan to strike on March 24. The union has been in negotiations with the district for over a year and has pushed for a raise for teachers in its new contract. Smith has said that the lack of funds makes a raise unlikely.

March 3, 2010: In an interview with Oakland North, Vernon Hal explains that the district will have to operate on $85 million less in 2010-2011 than they were operating on in 2009-2010.