Greetings fellow members of OEA!
My name is Maura McMichael and I am the Visual and Media Arts teacher at United for Success Academy (UFSA). With the help of fellow Rank and File Caucus members, I will be sending out monthly bulletins to share with fellow members of OEA what is happening on OEA’s Executive Board.
Please note that all Rep Council (RC) and Executive Board (EB) meetings are open to all members to attend. I highly encourage you to come! Also note that all EB decisions, as always, are subject to approval by the RC. Below you will find some highlights from my first ever Executive Board meeting in August 2025. My main frustration is that we did not get the agenda until the meeting started so I was truly going into this blind, just thinking on my toes about how to represent the membership best.
Highlights from the August 2025 EB meetings:
- Committee Chair and Appointments were approved
- See the full list here, even though it has been amended even further since we voted.
- I abstained, more thoughts below
- $5,000 loan to member, Sonja Travic was approved
- Sonja’s case is in arbitration and is not a ULP
- Sonja had to front the money for her case herself, and will pay back the loan to OEA
- This passed with everyone in support
- Approval of 3 more officers on 1day release a week
- Cory Jong to support student organizing
- Susan Keen to support internal organizing
- David McKay to support bargaining preparation
- I abstained, more thoughts below
- The President underlined the importance of solidarity in the moment, as we gear up for a contract year.
- There were 90% of schools who participated in the button day on August 27th.
- Next test is September 24th where we will do a PD takeover
- October or November there will be a community meeting
- Vice President also talked about the structure test.
- 2nd VP Report
- Please take this member survey https://bit.ly/OEA2ndvpsurvey
- Treasures Report
- $2,500 for improvements for the OEA security system and our doorbell.
Regarding committee appointments I abstained on the appointments to the committees because I have concerns about how appointments are being made. We were not given the appointments until the beginning of the meeting, so there was a motion to postpone, but that failed. Some of the appointments listed on the Review Board would have a conflict of interest because they also hold OEA leadership positions. Also a motion was made to remove Mayra as the Chair of the Political Involvement Committee because of the roles she holds in CTA, she cannot serve as this. There was a successful amendment to remove her and the position remains TBD. Some of the other appointments I know are people who do not want to serve, so there were many instances indicating that this list of folks were not reached out to before we voted. The sentiment was that we will vote on this many times, and this is just preliminary. Despite my abstention this still passed. Issues over the President appointing committees has been a long standing issue for us in the Rank and File Caucus. For instance when the VAPA Committee was formed in 2023 per the contract, us VAPA teachers fought to get a more representative committee than what the President had assigned. The teachers they picked didn’t have a lot of experience and were not a diverse selection of the many VAPA subjects. At the time we were unsuccessful in seating Sonja Travik who had taught dance in the district for nearly 3 decades. Our RNF Caucus member, Divya Farias reported in her September 2023 report: I also think it’s important that all of the committees and councils listed should be representative…. Educators in each work area should be able to elect the person who is representing them in conversations with the district and educators should know who is representing them so they can offer that person feedback and ideas. This is not a matter of trust; I think everyone who has been appointed is well-equipped to do a good job. Rather this is about process. I think that democratic elections would help put much more member power and heft behind anyone who is representing OEA members at the table with OUSD.
OEA and Strike Readiness We are in a contract year and that means that we may be taking work action soon, and it is my job as an Executive Board Member to make sure that we are truly strike ready. However in May of last school year we saw that there is hesitancy to go on the line when the demands are not clear and the structure test has been mid at best. I inquired in the EBoard meeting about how we are going to improve our member engagement this time around, and the answer is that we are not going to do much differently. In May last year when we were possibly going on a 1 day ULP, we had 4 rep councils around the possible strike that subsequently ,with more member feedback, became less clear of what we were going on the line for. In my opinion the militancy from the top leadership was out of line with the temperature of the membership. Also as a picket captain in the 2023 strike I saw this lack of structure for input from the line to be taken back to the bargaining table. This is where I think we need more structures for the full membership to be giving input into the actions of our union. I think our union power comes from the bottom up, not top down. The only thing we are relying on is for reps to get feedback at site meetings, and for Site Organizing Squads to do 1-1s.
This contract year is also in conjunction with the We Can’t Wait Campaign, and many locals will go on strike this year. Richmond will probably be the first among us. This is to align our contracts this year and for 2028, to start making demands on the state. Aligning contracts is a dreamy situation for labor organizers and a coordinated statewide campaigning can increase leverage in local bargaining. But radical and necessary improvements in teaching and learning conditions will require a massive, statewide increase in funding. The three demands of We Can’t Wait right now are: Fully funded schools, Stability for our students, Living wage for our educators. However we know we need more! With all of these demands it is going to take a campaign to redistribute corporate wealth and fund quality public schools and services. So from the bottom up, we will try to insert more political demands in this campaign to bring about concrete change for education in California.
Many Officers on Release OEA now has 7 officers on release. We have 3 officers on full time release, and now we have 4 officers out 1 day a week for special projects. Plus we have our 2 CTA officers with us full time. And we approved to have 3 interns. This is A LOT of people to be assisting our union. With that I would expect to see a much more robust union functioning smoother and willing to do more membership engagement than just leaving the core duties on the reps. I would also expect to simply get agendas ahead of meetings, and have our appointments to our committees being reached out to beforehand. It was brought up in our discussion about what the work plan is for our interns and I would add the question of what is our work plan for our officers on release. To my knowledge nothing of that sort exists. Also brought up was how much will this cost and where does that $ come from?. We were just told that they increased the budget in organizing categories, and we have $150,000 in our general fund. So we were told that we can afford it but not given a numerical value, and that the district often pays for half the cost during bargaining. I ended up abstaining from the vote to add more people on release for 1 day a week to work on special projects. Without the clarity of a work plan, or about how they will engage with our membership I don’t know if it is worth our money as a union. The categories in which they are released, family organizing, internal organizing and bargaining prep, I agree with and personally I think these members will do a good job. Just structurally and financially I am not convinced that this is a good use of union resources.
There was also an issue with the appointment of Susan Keen, brought up by a member who has an Article 12 grievance out that involves her participation on a hiring committee. I supported the member in bringing a motion to have a Restorative Justice session before her appointment but that motion failed. Attempts will still be made to facilitate this healing between Susan and the member, as she is the High School Lead, and now she is supporting internal organizing.
During the August 2025 meeting we also went into close session about two grievances and 1 outstanding ULP case.
Once again, please reach out – let’s discuss and build the union we want! My email is maura.mcmichael@gmail.com. The next EB meeting is on Wednesday, September 17th at 4:30pm in person at the OEA office. Who can join me?
In solidarity,
Maura
Oakland Rank and File Caucus 