Students are on day four of the Oakland teachers strike — when can they go back to school?

Day four of the Oakland teachers’ strike began like the past three — by 7:30 a.m. teachers had packed the picket lines at schools across the city. But Skyline High seniors Nailah Karigaca and Kereina Chung have settled into a different strike routine: at 11 a.m. Tuesday, the two were just waking up from a sleepover, and getting ready to have breakfast before studying for their upcoming AP exams.

“It feels kind of like the COVID years,” said Karigaca, age 17.

Like seniors across the country, Karigaca and Chung have had a rocky high school experience. Their freshman and sophomore years were almost entirely virtual — and now, weeks before graduation, their school was shuttered again. Yesterday, Karigaca attended an AP biology study session on the shores of Lake Merritt, and aside from her teacher, she was the only one who showed up. Today, Chung was planning to work on her senior project on homelessness, which she would record herself presenting by the end of the week.

Karigaca and Chung want to support their teachers and feel the strike is worth it. But there’s no doubt that the prolonged work stoppage — heading into its fifth day Wednesday — has left 34,000 students in limbo. Despite indications from both sides that they were inching closer to a resolution, by Tuesday afternoon, there was no word on when the impasse might end and students would go back to class.

“Right now, me and my friends are just trying to take it one step at a time, and doing what we can to still be together during our last year as seniors,” said 18-year-old Miles Parè, another senior at Skyline High.

Tuesday’s strike followed days of negotiations between the teachers’ union and the Oakland Unified School District. Though they are mostly aligned on boosts to teachers’ salaries, they remain in a gridlock over a series of “common good” proposals, which are designed to improve the working and learning conditions of staff and students.

They include, among other demands, shared decision-making at community school sites, a response to safety concerns ranging from gun violence to rat infestations, the repurposing of unused school buildings to house homeless students, and action toward the “Black thriving community schools” program — which the union claims the school board voted on in 2021, but never actually implemented.

Michael Rodriguez, a middle school teacher and member of the union’s bargaining committee, said the two sides were getting closer to a shared agreement on those issues. By Tuesday morning, the district had sent memorandums of understanding that addressed some of the union’s demands, though much of the language within them, Rodriguez said, was unenforceable. Still, it was progress.

“They are acknowledging what we’re bringing up,” said Rodriguez. “And we’re making movement. Hopefully, we’ll see some more language today that we can all agree on.”

Many students, like Karigaca and Chung, are spending their time studying for their AP tests and finishing up their final projects. Parè is filling out applications for college scholarships, and working on his end-of-year homework. And others have stepped in to fill teachers’ gaps — 16-year-old Oakland student Ra’Mauri Cash, for example, is tutoring freshmen students in algebra over video chat.

“It’s been a little rough, but we’re managing,” said Cash. “And I support the strike because our teachers have always supported us.”

Some high schoolers have also been looking after kids at Dimond Park, where an expanding group of parents have been dropping their children off during the school day. Anna Beliel, a mother of a 6-year-old at Oakland Unified, started gathering children at the park on Thursday, halting her job as a full-time Instacart driver to do so. That day, four students showed up at Dimond — but by Tuesday, that number grew to 45.

Beliel created the group to show solidarity for the teachers, who — in her opinion — are fighting for many of the same things that parents have wanted for years. For Beliel, the lack of support from the district meant that her daughter, who is autistic, had to wait four months to get her IEP, an individualized educational program that helps students with special needs. From September to December, Beliel’s daughter was put in general education classes without the support she needed, Beliel said, including extra time on tests. For Jill Karjan, another parent helping with the Dimond group, that lack of support meant her daughter was repeatedly stuck in a classroom without air conditioning when the temperature topped 90 degrees, a problem that Karjan says has persisted since her now-fourth grade daughter was in first grade.

“As long as the strike is going on, we’ll be here,” Beliel said. “If it’s not, our kids will go back to the classroom where they deserve to be. But until the strike is over and they’ve come to some kind of conclusion or agreement, we’ll be here for the kids.”

Megan Bacigalupi, the founder of the local advocacy group CA Parent Power, said those feelings of support are not widespread. After years of pandemic disruption, on top of three strikes over the last five years, her kids are multiple grade levels behind, and she said they cannot afford the extra days out of the classroom.

Bacigalupi also feels many of the common good proposals are out of scope for what should be included in a collective bargaining agreement, and that they require input far beyond just a school district — including involvement from government agencies at the state and local levels.

“They’ve just gone too far,” said Bacigalupi, whose first-grade son attends an Oakland Unified school. “We feel like our kids are being held hostage, and that our kids are pawns in a bargaining process.”

The Oakland NAACP yesterday urged the teachers’ union to “reconsider its decision to continue to strike at such a critical time in the school year.” Lakisha Young, the founder and CEO of nonprofit Oakland Reach, said May is a month of AP tests, final exams, and testing, and students are being yanked from their schools — or put into classrooms just to be watched by administrators — during a critical time of the year, she said.

“Everybody loses in this,” said Young. “There are no winners in a strike. And it didn’t have to happen.”

In the meantime, many high schoolers across the city are continuing to push forward, just like they did during the pandemic.

“It’s a little sad, but I do think we’ll be back soon,” said Karigaca. “Once that happens, we’ll still have those last weeks of high school together.”