The uproar continues in the Oakland Unified School District after the teachers union there approves a controversial resolution on the Israel-Hamas War, that has some teachers ready to quit and Jewish families saying they will pull their kids out of school.

This has really gotten ugly over the last couple of weeks. It all started when the executive leadership of the Oakland Education Association issued a statement that said the union stands with Palestine, expressing unequivocal support for the Palestinians and condemning what it called the “genocidal and apartheid state of Israel.” It made no mention at all of the genocidal terrorist group Hamas or its slaughter of Israeli civilians. Teachers howled in protest, saying the union issued this without asking its  members.

Twice, the union issued new statements, attempting to improve its language but still blaming Israel entirely for the conflict and glossing over the very complicated history of the region.

Finally the union decided not that its mistake was getting involved in complex foreign  policy in the first place, but failing to submit the language to its members. So yesterday it had a closed, Zoom-only meeting to approve a NEW resolution, which the union representatives from each school site did, about a hundred teachers out of more than 3000 who work in the district, despite a petition from more than almost 1500 OUSD parents opposing it, and impassioned opposition from many teachers, many of them Jewish. And the fallout from this move is only just beginning.

For more on this KCBS Radio's Patti Reising spoke to KCBS political reporter Doug Sovern.