I’m probably in the super-minority of folks who don’t care for watermelon 🍉 . Never took to it as a kid, will take a pass if it’s offered. Probably has to do with having to deal with the seeds. Don’t care for grapes with seeds either but will eat them if offered because at least you chew through those seeds.
Now, I am in the camp that likes watermelon flavored treats, like watermelon (and green apple) jolly ranchers.
Exactly. Dust and pollens are probably the most common allergen for people. And yet there are millions of people walking around who think they have no allergies.
Is the quality of the tap water in your West Oakland location less than desirable? Is that why you have 5 gallon water jugs at your West Oakland office? If it is, it's probably your building's pipes. The water delivered to the meter by the EBMWU distribution system should be clean, healthy, and taste good.
Even so, it could be a taste or odor problem associated with the system. If you have a taste and/or odor problem with your tap water call 1-866-403-2683. EBMWU staff will check it out.
When I used to work in the office, I used to drink at least 6-8 of the small 16.9 oz disposable water bottles the company had in the fridge each day. At home, I don't drink nearly that much. Probably don't even finish up my 28 oz water bottle.
There are few things more beautiful about baseball than the precious gem that is an MLB debut, of which there were two during Tuesday night’s game between the San Francisco Giants and Washington Nationals, one for each team.
You don’t get this type of magic in most other sports debuts. When a basketball or football player is drafted, you expect to see them in the next game your team plays.
Casey Schmitt has rocketed up the minors, entering A ball in 2021 out of SDSU, then quickly moving up A+, AA, and AAA ball in 2022 and then having a good eye for contact at AAA.
Well, it would be nice if they gave him longer than the week they gave Heliot Ramos. It’s no secret why this front office can not develop a young player for schitt.
The Oakland Athletics hoped to get back in the win column against the New York Yankees tonight in the Bronx. While it may seem odd to call a 19-17 team “struggling”, it is equally as odd to note that the Yankees started the night in last place in the A. L. East, ten games behind the division leading Rays.
Righty Drew Rucinski (0-2, 7.71 ERA) got his third start of the season for the A’s against Yankees righty Clarke Schmidt (0-3, 5.83 ERA).
Mookie Betts gave the Dodgers the quickest possible lead in a major league game, with a leadoff home run in the first inning. Los Angeles never looked back in a 6-2 win over the Brewers on Tuesday night in Milwaukee.
On the glass-half-empty side of this game, Noah Syndergaard left after a single inning due to a cut on his right index finger, turning this into a bullpen game for the Dodgers.
May is Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, and it's the perfect time to celebrate the contributions of AAPIs in all areas, but most exciting for me, particularly college athletics. As a Filipino American athlete, IFormer UCSC swimmer Marc Pugeda, now with CAF have experienced the joys and challenges of joining many diverse teams. When I started my college swimming career at UC Santa Cruz, I was excited to be a Banana Slug and to compete at the collegiate level. However, I quickly realized that I was one of only a few AAPI-identifying athletes on the team, and that feeling of being the "only one" was sometimes isolating. Though rather than continue to go at it by myself, the idea of it excited me. How would I tell my teammates, friends and family how I felt, and what would I change?
BERKELEY – The California women's tennis team placed four Golden Bears – Jessica Alsola, Haley Giavara, Hannah Viller Moeller and Katja Wiersholm – on the College Sports Communicators Academic All-District Team, the CSC (formerly CoSIDA) announced Tuesday.
A student-athlete must be a starter or an important reserve with at least a 3.50 cumulative grade-point average to be nominated for the Academic All-District Team. All four Bears are now on the ballot for Academic All-America, as voted on by CSC members, with the College Sports Communicators announcing the Academic All-America first, second and third teams on June 1.
PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. – Graduate student Annika Borrelli shot a 1-under 71 in round two of the NCAA Palm Beach Gardens Regional on Tuesday to help the California women's golf team move up one spot in the team standings.
The Golden Bears (302-299 – 601) improved three strokes from their day one score and head into Wednesday's final round in ninth place.
BERKELEY – The sixth-seeded California softball team is set to face No. 3 seed Utah in the quarterfinals of the inaugural Pac-12 Conference Tournament on Thursday at Hillenbrand Memorial Stadium in Tucson, Arizona.
The Golden Bears and Utes are set for a 10 a.m. PT first pitch on the Pac-12 Networks with Ann Schatz and Kenzie Fowler on the call. Cal would move on with a victory to face the winner of No. 2 Washington vs. No. 7 Oregon State in the semifinals at 4:30 p.m. on Friday. Saturday's championship game is set for 7 p.m. from Hillenbrand Stadium.
BERKELEY – Jarred Jackson, who spent three seasons helping Mark Madsen elevate the Utah Valley program to new heights, has joined the recently appointed California men's basketball head coach's staff as an assistant coach.
Jackson rounds out a standout coaching staff assembled by Madsen that includes associate head coach Adam Mazarei and fellow assistants Amorrow Morgan, Matt Scherbenske and Ken Moses. Jackson arrives in Berkeley following one season spent on the Coastal Carolina women's basketball staff in 2022-23. Prior to his time with the Chanticleers, Jackson helped Madsen take Utah Valley from an 11-19 mark in their first season in 2019-20 to a 20-12 record in 2021-22.
BERKELEY – Cal legend and Hall-of-Famer Joe Kapp passed away from complications of dementia Monday at the age of 85. Kapp was best known at Cal for leading the Golden Bears to the 1959 Rose Bowl, serving as the school's head football coach in 1982 when Cal used The Play to defeat Stanford in the Big Game, and several other signature wins over the Cardinal.
Kapp's success at Cal and beyond led to his election in multiple Halls of Fame, including those of the Bay Area, British Columbia Sports, Cal Athletics, Canadian Football League, College Football, Laredo Latin American Sports and National Hispanic Sports.
[WaPo] George Santos - the husband of Morgan Fairchild - has been charged by Federal prosecutors. The filing is under seal, so no details are available
Everyone knows about the exodus at Colorado, but UW, Florida, MSU, and Auburn also have had more than 50% of their 2021 recruits leave. Furthermore, only 47% of Pac12 2021 recruits are still at their schools.
I crunched the numbers. Cal has 13 of its 22 2021 recruits (59%), so above average.
Of the other 9 - 2 were poached via NIL (Femi, J Mike), 1 left football (Ryan Lange), 1 graduated (Glover), 4 were surprise portals (Terry, Latu, Hisatake, Milner), and 1 was rumored to have been cut.
This reminds me of pictures of left field at Crosley Field in Cincinnati, which was the Reds' ballpark until 1970. Crosley Field had "The Terrace" which was an inclined portion where the warning track in left field should have been. It was not as steep as the incline shown in that video, but it was quite noticeable.
Also reminds me of the hill in centerfield at Minute Maid Park (which was called Tal's Hill) that existed until it was removed in 2016. Also, while Tal's Hill existed there was a flagpole in play. In 2016, the fences in centerfield were moved in so that the flagpole was behind the fences.
I remember the hill and the flagpole at Enron, or whatever it was called back then. Gagne had a save during his record save streak where someone on the Astros hit a long drive into CF and the CFer had to run up the hill to make a game saving catch.
Some of you may know there is an ongoing teacher's strike in Oakland right now. Even though this is an opinion that probably angers a lot of my very left-leaning friends (and I am a left-leaning guy!), I am generally of the opinion that the union has become ridiculous and is now actively damaging the cause of public education in this city. I'm in agreement with this Op-Ed:
A teacher's union that strikes 3 times in 5 years can no longer credibly claim that they consider strikes to be a last-resort option. I also haven't forgotten how they dragged their feet on returning to in-person school even after COVID vaccines were out.
I agree with this as well. Separately I would say in general across America, teacher pay should dramatically increase while at the same time it should be way way easier to fire bad teachers. It is amazing to me how the very very good teachers I had growing up made roughly the same low pay as the very very bad ones. I am seeing the same gross disparities in teacher quality at my kids’ school that I had. I would be willing to pay more taxes if it meant firing the shitty teachers and promoting the good ones.
i think there are so many issues w/ pay and education that it has become something of an unfixable problem.
i applied for a HS physics job recently w/ no credentials and no experience and got the job after a short 30 min sample teaching lesson. clearly one problem is that there are not enough people willing to do the job, regardless of being good/bad.
i was basically told "just keep the kids in the classroom". we dont care what you do inside. granted this was in Mt Vernon, not a very upwardly mobile place in terms of money and diversity or school achievement.
It would certainly help but being a teacher today must really suck. Dealing with some of these crazy QANON parents, tiger parents, dead beat parents, hostile co parents, and lack of institutional support or parent support from PTAs must be difficult.
We need to reframe the way we think about it. We need to look at it as an investment in our most important asset - our people. And simultaneously point out that other countries like China do understand that better than us.
I don’t have any insight into this particular strike but I will note that unions can get themselves into trouble if there’s not an element of predictability about what they do and also some clarity about when / why they’re striking. The extreme but instructive case is UK unions who offered no sectoral stability in exchange for agreements, because almost any shop steward could tell the lads to down tools and it would spread like wildfire. That’s how you end up with a Thatcher ;)
As someone with a vested interest (two kids in the district) who has followed this saga for a while, I will say that lack of clarity around union demands has been a major feature of this. The initial justification for this strike was that the district would not meet with them and bargain "in good faith," but now it's clear the district is bargaining and yet the strike continues (without any of the usual mediation steps that would preclude a normal "impasse" kind of strike). They also first made a lot of noise about having low salaries for teachers in the region (which is true), but now that the district has made a pretty generous offer that would bring them up to the median, the complaints have turned to a laundry list of other stuff.
And I noticed similar moving targets from the union when people were asking them when in-person school could resume after the COVID shutdown. At some point they lost the original "progressive" idea that public schools need to remain open at all costs, which is why I think this strike is damaging to their cause in the long run. If people can't trust that public schools will stay open they will pull their kids out.
The union is moving the goal posts by introducing "common good" demands. Even worse, the "common good" demands are a simple impossibility for OUSD to meet. OUSD does not have the authority to meet those demands.
Go back to the core demand of a living wage and benefits: this is the crux of what ails OUSD and, by consequence, the students and their families. Stick to the things that OUSD can do something about. Let's not wander off into demands that only peripherally touch on OUSD's mission, which is providing a setting in which its students can gain a meaningful K-12 education, and prepare them for life in the real world.
The teachers' union is run by amateurs who are hurting EVERYONE by seeking power that is not within their grasp.
One of the union demands is for the district to repurpose unused school buildings as housing for homeless families. Not a bad idea! But I don't think the school district can just do that on its own. That sounds like something that needs to (at minimum) go through the City Council and the Mayor, since once they're no longer schools they are probably under different jurisdiction and management.
That is why, and I get the concern. I don't get it as a thing to strike over. It just seems way more complicated than "the district won't bargain on this."
Speaking of repurposed buildings, I see that the Union Bank Building in San Francisco (350 California St.) sold for about $225/square foot. That's easily 1/4 the cost of residential living spaces in much of residential SF. I wonder if that building could be repurposed for residential uses and if the new owners are exploring that.
There was a good article about this in the Chronicle yesterday. The construction costs to renovate and repurpose it would be around $600/foot, plus carrying and other soft costs (including inclusionary housing requirements) that would bring it to well over $1000/foot, which is an untenable price in that location. It will remain office.
Excellent point. I doubt that OUSD would want to be a landlord to residential living spaces. But moreover and to your point, residential living spaces fall under the jurisdiction of the City of Oakland.
And I should also say that I did not feel the same way about the 2019 strike, because the demands in that one were crystal clear: we need higher salaries. Fair enough!
The current nebulous labor action is something I can't support.
Watermelon 🍉
we made 3 different kinds of sorbet from a watermelon recently. Is delciious
I’m probably in the super-minority of folks who don’t care for watermelon 🍉 . Never took to it as a kid, will take a pass if it’s offered. Probably has to do with having to deal with the seeds. Don’t care for grapes with seeds either but will eat them if offered because at least you chew through those seeds.
Now, I am in the camp that likes watermelon flavored treats, like watermelon (and green apple) jolly ranchers.
I enjoy it to a point.
That is a cool car!
Candy form, the watermelon jolly ranchers were THE thing in elementary school.
I love both the watermelon and green apple jolly ranchers. Though honestly I wouldn't turn any of them down other than the Fire (cinnamon) one.
Favorite summer watermelon is in Agua Fresca form, or cubed with feta and fresh snipped basil- mmmmmm. Might need to make that this weekend.
...sugar.
Deja Vu!
I really like watermelon, but my wife never buys it - too messy I guess.
DBDWatermelonHH!
Sadly I am allergic. And it only happened within the last 10 years.
Wow, I didn't even know people could be allergic to watermelon!
OOooOO that's too bad - I don't think I'm allergic to anything.
Everybody is allergic to something. You just haven't found your allergy yet.
Including dust/pollen? Then yeah, probably everyone is.
Exactly. Dust and pollens are probably the most common allergen for people. And yet there are millions of people walking around who think they have no allergies.
You sure? I've eaten everything that has been offered to me.
An allergy isn't necessarily something you eat, dude. The most common allergies are dust, pollens (trees, grasses, flowers), cats, and dogs.
Cugel is allergic to bullshit
i tell people i am allergic to bananas because i dislike them so much!
turns out you can be allergic to bananas and latex gloves together somehow. they asked me that at the doctor/hospital once.
My niece is allergic to bananas. Says that it makes her palms itch.
bananas and real rubber latex are from related trees. Not surprising that one would have an allergy to both.
Water
Good stuff. That's the "company" product, as it were.
Job No. 1 in my division is "keeping water in the pipe".
You get your CCR out yet? Does anyone call about it?
I drink a lot, get those 5 gallon water things in the West Oakland office.
Is the quality of the tap water in your West Oakland location less than desirable? Is that why you have 5 gallon water jugs at your West Oakland office? If it is, it's probably your building's pipes. The water delivered to the meter by the EBMWU distribution system should be clean, healthy, and taste good.
Even so, it could be a taste or odor problem associated with the system. If you have a taste and/or odor problem with your tap water call 1-866-403-2683. EBMWU staff will check it out.
That's true, but it's a big building And I'm on the third floor, so I don't want to waste water running it a while until it's cool.
Is your water warm coming out of the cold water tap?
No, not exactly, just takes a while to be the cool temp you like to drink.
I get it. Nobody who's serious about conservation wants to waste water.
When I used to work in the office, I used to drink at least 6-8 of the small 16.9 oz disposable water bottles the company had in the fridge each day. At home, I don't drink nearly that much. Probably don't even finish up my 28 oz water bottle.
PRO
Mookie Betts gets an AirBnB in Milwaukee just in case the rumors that the haunting at the team's hotel is true
https://ftw.usatoday.com/lists/mookie-betts-haunted-hotel-milwaukee-airbnb-ghosts-fans-reaction
A new era arrives as Casey Schmitt dazzles in debut
https://www.mccoveychronicles.com/2023/5/9/23717816/giants-nationals-recap-casey-schmitt-logan-webb
There are few things more beautiful about baseball than the precious gem that is an MLB debut, of which there were two during Tuesday night’s game between the San Francisco Giants and Washington Nationals, one for each team.
You don’t get this type of magic in most other sports debuts. When a basketball or football player is drafted, you expect to see them in the next game your team plays.
This is the good stuff in baseball
https://twitter.com/JustBB_Media/status/1656150543767834626
Casey Schmitt has rocketed up the minors, entering A ball in 2021 out of SDSU, then quickly moving up A+, AA, and AAA ball in 2022 and then having a good eye for contact at AAA.
Hopefully Kapler doesn’t ruin him by shuttling the kid in and out of the lineup with his platoon nonsense.
It will all just depend on performance. If he proves he can hit both left and right-handed pitching well, then he won't be platooned.
Well, it would be nice if they gave him longer than the week they gave Heliot Ramos. It’s no secret why this front office can not develop a young player for schitt.
Athletics drop second straight to Yankees in the Bronx, 10-5
https://www.athleticsnation.com/2023/5/9/23717829/athletics-yankees-diaz-3-homer-game-rucinski
The Oakland Athletics hoped to get back in the win column against the New York Yankees tonight in the Bronx. While it may seem odd to call a 19-17 team “struggling”, it is equally as odd to note that the Yankees started the night in last place in the A. L. East, ten games behind the division leading Rays.
Righty Drew Rucinski (0-2, 7.71 ERA) got his third start of the season for the A’s against Yankees righty Clarke Schmidt (0-3, 5.83 ERA).
Dodgers offense pounces early on Eric Lauer to beat Brewers
https://www.truebluela.com/2023/5/9/23717804/dodgers-home-runs-bullpen-brewers
Mookie Betts gave the Dodgers the quickest possible lead in a major league game, with a leadoff home run in the first inning. Los Angeles never looked back in a 6-2 win over the Brewers on Tuesday night in Milwaukee.
On the glass-half-empty side of this game, Noah Syndergaard left after a single inning due to a cut on his right index finger, turning this into a bullpen game for the Dodgers.
CAL
Go Bears!!!
Cal punter drafted in the first round, 8th overall! ***
https://calbears.com/news/2023/5/2/football-sheahan-selected-by-winnipeg-in-cfl-global-draft.aspx
[DEIBJ] Diving Into Diversity
https://calbears.com/news/2023/5/9/deibj-diving-into-diversity.aspx
May is Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, and it's the perfect time to celebrate the contributions of AAPIs in all areas, but most exciting for me, particularly college athletics. As a Filipino American athlete, IFormer UCSC swimmer Marc Pugeda, now with CAF have experienced the joys and challenges of joining many diverse teams. When I started my college swimming career at UC Santa Cruz, I was excited to be a Banana Slug and to compete at the collegiate level. However, I quickly realized that I was one of only a few AAPI-identifying athletes on the team, and that feeling of being the "only one" was sometimes isolating. Though rather than continue to go at it by myself, the idea of it excited me. How would I tell my teammates, friends and family how I felt, and what would I change?
[WTEN] Bears Named Academic All-District
https://calbears.com/news/2023/5/9/womens-tennis-bears-named-academic-all-district.aspx
BERKELEY – The California women's tennis team placed four Golden Bears – Jessica Alsola, Haley Giavara, Hannah Viller Moeller and Katja Wiersholm – on the College Sports Communicators Academic All-District Team, the CSC (formerly CoSIDA) announced Tuesday.
A student-athlete must be a starter or an important reserve with at least a 3.50 cumulative grade-point average to be nominated for the Academic All-District Team. All four Bears are now on the ballot for Academic All-America, as voted on by CSC members, with the College Sports Communicators announcing the Academic All-America first, second and third teams on June 1.
[WGOLF] Borrelli, Bears Move Up In NCAA Regional Standings
https://calbears.com/news/2023/5/9/womens-golf-borrelli-bears-move-up-in-ncaa-regional-standings.aspx
PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. – Graduate student Annika Borrelli shot a 1-under 71 in round two of the NCAA Palm Beach Gardens Regional on Tuesday to help the California women's golf team move up one spot in the team standings.
The Golden Bears (302-299 – 601) improved three strokes from their day one score and head into Wednesday's final round in ninth place.
[SB] Bears Open Pac-12 Tournament Against Utah
https://calbears.com/news/2023/5/9/softball-bears-open-pac-12-tournament-against-utah.aspx
BERKELEY – The sixth-seeded California softball team is set to face No. 3 seed Utah in the quarterfinals of the inaugural Pac-12 Conference Tournament on Thursday at Hillenbrand Memorial Stadium in Tucson, Arizona.
The Golden Bears and Utes are set for a 10 a.m. PT first pitch on the Pac-12 Networks with Ann Schatz and Kenzie Fowler on the call. Cal would move on with a victory to face the winner of No. 2 Washington vs. No. 7 Oregon State in the semifinals at 4:30 p.m. on Friday. Saturday's championship game is set for 7 p.m. from Hillenbrand Stadium.
[MBB] Jarred Jackson Added To Men’s Basketball Staff
https://calbears.com/news/2023/5/9/mens-basketball-jarred-jackson-added-to-mens-basketball-staff.aspx
BERKELEY – Jarred Jackson, who spent three seasons helping Mark Madsen elevate the Utah Valley program to new heights, has joined the recently appointed California men's basketball head coach's staff as an assistant coach.
Jackson rounds out a standout coaching staff assembled by Madsen that includes associate head coach Adam Mazarei and fellow assistants Amorrow Morgan, Matt Scherbenske and Ken Moses. Jackson arrives in Berkeley following one season spent on the Coastal Carolina women's basketball staff in 2022-23. Prior to his time with the Chanticleers, Jackson helped Madsen take Utah Valley from an 11-19 mark in their first season in 2019-20 to a 20-12 record in 2021-22.
[FB] Golden Bear Legend Joe Kapp Passes Away
https://calbears.com/news/2023/5/9/football-golden-bear-legend-joe-kapp-passes-away.aspx
BERKELEY – Cal legend and Hall-of-Famer Joe Kapp passed away from complications of dementia Monday at the age of 85. Kapp was best known at Cal for leading the Golden Bears to the 1959 Rose Bowl, serving as the school's head football coach in 1982 when Cal used The Play to defeat Stanford in the Big Game, and several other signature wins over the Cardinal.
Kapp's success at Cal and beyond led to his election in multiple Halls of Fame, including those of the Bay Area, British Columbia Sports, Cal Athletics, Canadian Football League, College Football, Laredo Latin American Sports and National Hispanic Sports.
OUR CRUMBLING DEMOCRACY
Trump to go speak at CNN Townhall tonight at 8pm Eastern/11pm Pacific. I mean, what could go wrong?
i was very surprised to see this is even happening on CNN. and that Trump himself agreed to it
I think CNN’s ratings are in the shitter and Trump just always wants more coverage
Harlan Crow declines Senate Finance Committee request for list of gifts that he's given Clarence Thomas.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/harlan-crow-declines-provide-senate-finance-committee-list-gifts-gave-rcna83596
[WaPo] George Santos - the husband of Morgan Fairchild - has been charged by Federal prosecutors. The filing is under seal, so no details are available
Update: It's 13 counts, including money laundering, fraud, theft and then [gasp] lying about it to Congress
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23809076-george-santos-indictment
DBD AV Club
Robert Deniro (79) just fathered his seventh child. The kid is 51 years younger than one of his sisters and 19 years younger than his nephews.
https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-moms/news/robert-de-niro-79-reveals-he-just-had-baby-no-7/
Dad will be 97 at his/her high school graduation.
Elsewhere in college
Everyone knows about the exodus at Colorado, but UW, Florida, MSU, and Auburn also have had more than 50% of their 2021 recruits leave. Furthermore, only 47% of Pac12 2021 recruits are still at their schools.
https://www.onmontlake.com/p/washington-doesnt-have-many-2021
I crunched the numbers. Cal has 13 of its 22 2021 recruits (59%), so above average.
Of the other 9 - 2 were poached via NIL (Femi, J Mike), 1 left football (Ryan Lange), 1 graduated (Glover), 4 were surprise portals (Terry, Latu, Hisatake, Milner), and 1 was rumored to have been cut.
where did J Mike go again? That one made me sad, I liked that kid.
Femi and J Mike got poached by Yuckla.
Lehman College's right field is shallow and... steep?
https://twitter.com/FoulPoleSports/status/1654610506060029952
This reminds me of pictures of left field at Crosley Field in Cincinnati, which was the Reds' ballpark until 1970. Crosley Field had "The Terrace" which was an inclined portion where the warning track in left field should have been. It was not as steep as the incline shown in that video, but it was quite noticeable.
Also reminds me of the hill in centerfield at Minute Maid Park (which was called Tal's Hill) that existed until it was removed in 2016. Also, while Tal's Hill existed there was a flagpole in play. In 2016, the fences in centerfield were moved in so that the flagpole was behind the fences.
I remember the hill and the flagpole at Enron, or whatever it was called back then. Gagne had a save during his record save streak where someone on the Astros hit a long drive into CF and the CFer had to run up the hill to make a game saving catch.
Looks like Lance Berkman was the hitter and Dave Roberts was playing CF.
https://africa.espn.com/mlb/recap/_/gameId/230828118
I remember that play. Had Berkman on my fantasy team too. F-ck.
Some of you may know there is an ongoing teacher's strike in Oakland right now. Even though this is an opinion that probably angers a lot of my very left-leaning friends (and I am a left-leaning guy!), I am generally of the opinion that the union has become ridiculous and is now actively damaging the cause of public education in this city. I'm in agreement with this Op-Ed:
https://twitter.com/EastBayTimes/status/1656028195433398276
A teacher's union that strikes 3 times in 5 years can no longer credibly claim that they consider strikes to be a last-resort option. I also haven't forgotten how they dragged their feet on returning to in-person school even after COVID vaccines were out.
I agree with this as well. Separately I would say in general across America, teacher pay should dramatically increase while at the same time it should be way way easier to fire bad teachers. It is amazing to me how the very very good teachers I had growing up made roughly the same low pay as the very very bad ones. I am seeing the same gross disparities in teacher quality at my kids’ school that I had. I would be willing to pay more taxes if it meant firing the shitty teachers and promoting the good ones.
i think there are so many issues w/ pay and education that it has become something of an unfixable problem.
i applied for a HS physics job recently w/ no credentials and no experience and got the job after a short 30 min sample teaching lesson. clearly one problem is that there are not enough people willing to do the job, regardless of being good/bad.
i was basically told "just keep the kids in the classroom". we dont care what you do inside. granted this was in Mt Vernon, not a very upwardly mobile place in terms of money and diversity or school achievement.
Yes, but if you dramatically increase pay, I think you’d get more teachers. I mean this is America; comp is not just money, it is social capital too
It would certainly help but being a teacher today must really suck. Dealing with some of these crazy QANON parents, tiger parents, dead beat parents, hostile co parents, and lack of institutional support or parent support from PTAs must be difficult.
so yes, dramatically increasing pay would/might work, but that likelihood is close to zero.
i dont think there is a collective awareness that education should be better for everyone. currently it is good (enough) if you have $$.
We need to reframe the way we think about it. We need to look at it as an investment in our most important asset - our people. And simultaneously point out that other countries like China do understand that better than us.
I don’t have any insight into this particular strike but I will note that unions can get themselves into trouble if there’s not an element of predictability about what they do and also some clarity about when / why they’re striking. The extreme but instructive case is UK unions who offered no sectoral stability in exchange for agreements, because almost any shop steward could tell the lads to down tools and it would spread like wildfire. That’s how you end up with a Thatcher ;)
As someone with a vested interest (two kids in the district) who has followed this saga for a while, I will say that lack of clarity around union demands has been a major feature of this. The initial justification for this strike was that the district would not meet with them and bargain "in good faith," but now it's clear the district is bargaining and yet the strike continues (without any of the usual mediation steps that would preclude a normal "impasse" kind of strike). They also first made a lot of noise about having low salaries for teachers in the region (which is true), but now that the district has made a pretty generous offer that would bring them up to the median, the complaints have turned to a laundry list of other stuff.
And I noticed similar moving targets from the union when people were asking them when in-person school could resume after the COVID shutdown. At some point they lost the original "progressive" idea that public schools need to remain open at all costs, which is why I think this strike is damaging to their cause in the long run. If people can't trust that public schools will stay open they will pull their kids out.
The union is moving the goal posts by introducing "common good" demands. Even worse, the "common good" demands are a simple impossibility for OUSD to meet. OUSD does not have the authority to meet those demands.
Go back to the core demand of a living wage and benefits: this is the crux of what ails OUSD and, by consequence, the students and their families. Stick to the things that OUSD can do something about. Let's not wander off into demands that only peripherally touch on OUSD's mission, which is providing a setting in which its students can gain a meaningful K-12 education, and prepare them for life in the real world.
The teachers' union is run by amateurs who are hurting EVERYONE by seeking power that is not within their grasp.
One of the union demands is for the district to repurpose unused school buildings as housing for homeless families. Not a bad idea! But I don't think the school district can just do that on its own. That sounds like something that needs to (at minimum) go through the City Council and the Mayor, since once they're no longer schools they are probably under different jurisdiction and management.
That is a good but very strange demand of a school district. I wonder if it is due to a number of its student being homeless and/or housing insecure.
That is why, and I get the concern. I don't get it as a thing to strike over. It just seems way more complicated than "the district won't bargain on this."
Speaking of repurposed buildings, I see that the Union Bank Building in San Francisco (350 California St.) sold for about $225/square foot. That's easily 1/4 the cost of residential living spaces in much of residential SF. I wonder if that building could be repurposed for residential uses and if the new owners are exploring that.
There was a good article about this in the Chronicle yesterday. The construction costs to renovate and repurpose it would be around $600/foot, plus carrying and other soft costs (including inclusionary housing requirements) that would bring it to well over $1000/foot, which is an untenable price in that location. It will remain office.
Excellent point. I doubt that OUSD would want to be a landlord to residential living spaces. But moreover and to your point, residential living spaces fall under the jurisdiction of the City of Oakland.
And I should also say that I did not feel the same way about the 2019 strike, because the demands in that one were crystal clear: we need higher salaries. Fair enough!
The current nebulous labor action is something I can't support.