Cris Bautista teaches high school in Oakland, California, but to afford to live in the San Francisco Bay Area, he commutes an hour or more to an apartment he shares with another teacher and works weekends at a coffee shop.

Hundreds of Teach for America alumni are slamming the educator placement program for telling members to cross the picket line during a potential teacher strike in Oakland, California, or risk losing thousands of dollars at the end of their service.