For those that don’t know, Oakland Ca. is as close to ground zero for the fight against privatization of public education as we’ll get. Charter schools have been able to take a strong hold over my city and threaten my children’s education. While I believe there is a place for them, they’ve been able to grow unchecked and threaten the very existence of public education just by the sheer amount of them that are allowed to open, draw resources away from the broader public system, and fail. The Oakland elementary school I attended no longer exists and hasn’t for years. Another 24 schools are slated for closure in the coming year. My wife and I are already stressed about where we will send our 4th grader to middle school and we still have over a year to decide! OUSD has lost my trust in the past years, our OUSD rep.actually came to a student site council meeting and admitted to bad book keeping under a horrible superintendent who took off for a better job that he was quickly fired from. Some people will look at this strike simply from the standpoint of greed and money. And yes, that is a part of it, but these teachers aren’t in it for the money, even though they knowingly deserve more. Frankly, they don’t just teach my kids, they help me raise them into better people. If you think I’m exaggerating, maybe you need to think more about what your community school does for you and your family. I was fortunate enough to be home from work and got to talk with some of the teachers at my kids’ school about why they are striking. Together with some other art friends we were able to share some of these stories/quotes with portraits and comics. https://www.kqed.org/arts/13851435/drawing-the-oakland-teachers-strike #oaklandteachers #oaklandteacherstrike #arthack #ousd https://www.instagram.com/p/BuM8y6PF4p8/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=i7z5apbm26io