As the final bell rings, students exit their classrooms, heading home, while teachers and staff grab posters, gathering at the intersection in front of Encinal Jr. Sr. High School. The honking and cheering from onlooking cars and pedestrians, empower them to continue their efforts for a renewed contract with the Alameda Unified School District (AUSD).
But for some people, this battle goes much further than holding posters in front of the school, Ron Parodi is one of those people. Parodi is a teacher at Encinal, teaching english and history for the Junior Jets (JJs).
“I’ve been teaching for 25 years, I did a lot of work with kids when I was younger, like in high school and college, and so it kinda became a natural next step for me after college,” Parodi said. “I have been a teacher at Encinal for 12-13 years.”
Parodi is a representative for the Alameda Education Association (AEA). His job is to work with other representatives and directly negotiate with AUSD for the terms of their contracts.
“This year, I am on the bargaining team. So every three years we have to renegotiate our contract. That’s the document that spells out how much teachers get paid, what hours we work, what our duties are when we’re at school.” Parodi said. “So we renegotiate the contract every three years to update things, and we’ve been at it for about a year trying to come up with a new contract.”
Although the negotiations have been going on for over a year now, starting in January of 2025, Parodi firmly believes in seeing this through, not only for himself but also for the betterment of all teachers.
“I wish they were over, we’d all like to be done, we don’t like this to drag on for as long as it’s dragging on,” Parodi said. “But I know it’s important for the teachers to get a fair contract, and it’s important for the district to be in a place where we know that we can recruit, hire, and retain teachers for the future. We don’t want our teachers to leave, we want to be able to hire good new teachers, we want our young teachers to be able to afford to live in Alameda and stay here and make a career here.”
Parodi has always been a part of AEA as well as the other unions across the different schools and school districts he has worked at.
“I’ve always been in the union. I’ve worked in other districts before that and was a part of their unions.” Parodi said. “And I’ve been involved with the union pretty deeply for about 10 or 11 years.”
Parodi remains to possess a positive outlook on the negotiations, believing a teacher’s strike isn’t likely to take place.
“I don’t think anything is inevitable.” Parodi said, “I think there’s always room for teachers in the district to be creative.”
