Oakland district officials say they’re meeting most of student demands before planned boycott

Oakland Unified School District officials said they’ve met “most” of the demands for COVID safety made by students, who are set to boycott classes starting Tuesday morning to push for their goals.

As of Tuesday, more than 1,200 students have signed a petition organized by MetWest High School sophomores Ayleen Serrano, Ximena Santana and Benjamin Rendon, who noticed a wave of positive COVID cases at the school since returning from winter break. They’re asking that the district move in-person learning to online instruction and provide PCR and rapid testing twice a week, KN95 and N95 masks for every student in all schools, and more outdoor spaces where students can eat. They’re also planning to stage a protest on Friday outside of the district building downtown and continue until school officials meet all of their demands.

In response, district spokesman John Sasaki said in a news release Monday that the district has been meeting “most” of the student demands by distributing 200,000 KN95 masks for students at all schools this week and installing covered, outdoor eating spaces at some of the schools, with more sites to have them installed once the district receives the supplies that have “been on backorder for months.” The district has previously attempted to avoid empty classrooms by extending COVID leave for thousands of employees and giving a “wellness day” off for teachers last week.

Sasaki also pointed to the district’s “robust testing system” and the testing hubs that he said opened last Friday and Monday.

“We are conducting onsite tests as frequently as possible, with some schools getting onsite testing twice a week and some getting onsite testing once a week,” he said.

Oakland staff and students have attempted to push school officials to address what they say are unsafe conditions at the school during a surge in COVID cases due to the spread of the omicron variant. Earlier this month, staff members staged a “sickout,” prompting at least 12 schools to shut down instruction for the day. Students and staff at half a dozen schools, including 25 teachers and staff at Frick United Academy of Language, also “sicked out” two days last week.

The student organizers previously said the aim of the petition was to hold the district accountable for giving students and teachers what they were promised, including masks for everyone.

“It’s just us telling the district to give us what they are saying they have been giving us because we haven’t received it,” Serrano said.

Rendon said that students are asking for more outdoor eating spaces due to safety and that many kids are going to a nearby Whole Foods to eat their lunch outside.

The organizers also said they didn’t get an at-home rapid test before the winter break (district officials said they gave 41,000 at-home rapid tests to local schools to distribute to students.) Rendon, whose brother attends Skyline High School, said neither of them got tests.

“Over the winter break, we were supposed to get some and we kept getting messages saying, ‘Hey, check (for) your at-home tests,’” Santana said. “And I messaged all my friends like, ‘Hey did you guys get COVID tests?’ And no one got them.”

On Friday, Sasaki said he hadn’t heard that students weren’t receiving tests and said if they still need one, they should contact him or a principal. Sasaki previously cited “supply line issues” as the reason for the delayed installation of more covered eating spaces at the schools. He also said that students can get tested at 10 locations across the district, through bi-weekly testing for secondary schools and weekly pooled testing at elementary school. The district is also offering vaccine pop-ups at multiple locations this month.

Another point of contention involves the type of COVID testing available for students and staff. Sasaki previously said the district “sees no problem” with the at-home rapid tests that students have been sent by the district. Students and teachers, however, have demanded PCR testing, saying they’re more accurate than rapid tests at detecting the omicron variant.

“We’re not planning to stop,” Rendon said. “We don’t have a date where we’ll stop boycotting and go back to school. It’s going to still go on until the district provides us what we need.”