“Get up! Get down! Berkeley is a union town,” Berkeley High School faculty chanted on the corner of Milvia Street and Allston Way on Thursday, May 1, 2025. May 1, also known as International Workers’ Day or May Day, is a day where union workers across the country celebrate progress in the labor movement. To celebrate, teachers and faculty within the Berkeley Federation of Teachers (BFT) and the Berkeley Council of Classified Employees (BCCE) around Berkeley Unified School District organized demonstrations before school on Thursday.
BHS AP U.S. History and AP U.S. Government and Politics teacher Angela Coppola felt the strength of the demonstration on Thursday. “That’s something to be said for your students seeing you on the line because we’re chanting for fully funded schools. Our working conditions are (students’) learning conditions,” Coppola said.
BFT is the union for teachers in BUSD, and has one of the highest union membership rates in the state at 98 percent.
“We have presented the district with 15 proposals to help stabilize our schools. Having safe and stable schools for our educators, students and families is crucial,” Yasmin Navarro, a college counselor at BHS, said. BFT, alongside the BCCE — which represents BUSD faculty without teaching credentials, such as custodians, instructional assistants, and office staff — have been in negotiations with the district to renew and revise contracts for the next few school years.
In recent months, BUSD has been grappling with a 7.6 million dollar budget deficit. As a result, many staff members around the district received notices that their jobs could be reduced or eliminated next year. These notices are reversible, and formal notices will be sent out Thursday, May 15, 2025. Already, most notices have been rescinded. “Until recently, many of our educators were facing job insecurity. ... There are still classified, certificated, and administrative positions that do not have clear answers on what will happen with their positions next year,” Matt Meyer, president of BFT, said in a statement to the school board on Wednesday, April 30, 2025, the night before the demonstrations. Certificated positions, such as teachers, are jobs which require a teaching credential, whereas classified positions do not.
Navarro explained that one of the union’s biggest goals is creating stability. “It’s difficult to have that stability when we have turnover. And so we’re asking for just less turnover, less insecurity of positions, and more transparency of how those decisions are made,” Navarro said. BUSD and BHS administrators were not able to respond to requests for comment.
This was not the first time that Berkeley teachers have gone beyond the negotiating room to be heard. Many participated in a Feb. 4, 2025, demonstration in San Fransisco aiming to put pressure on the state to meet teachers’ demands beyond the district level.
“This is about larger funding issues, larger structural problems in the way that our state funds education and the way that our federal government funds education,” John Becker, an AHA English teacher, said.
Becker explained that BFT and BUSD are aligned on their core goals. “Everybody wants students to have support, everybody wants students to be successful, everybody wants teachers and staff to have living wages.” Becker said. “Sometimes we have differences of opinion about what the best way to do that is, or what the best way to allocate money is, or but by and large, we’re trying to solve problems together.”