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NPR Ed
Why Los Angeles Teachers Are Striking
January 8, 2019
Kyle Stokes
Teachers in Los Angeles, the nation's second largest school district,
began a strike on Monday. It's the first time the city has seen a
teacher strike in nearly 30 years, and roughly 480,000 public school
students will be affected.
The union, United Teachers Los Angeles, has been holding out,
primarily, for the district to reduce class sizes and hire more nurses,
librarians and counselors, all of whom the union also represents.
District leaders say they don't have the money to pay for the level of
changes the union wants.
In August, 98 percent of union's more than 30,000 members voted to
authorize a strike. But California law requires certain steps be taken
before teachers can stop working, among them state mediation and
fact-finding.
What a strike would mean for parents
LA Unified School District officials say schools will remain open for
the same hours, offering the same before- and after-school programs.
About 81 percent of LA public school students rely on the district's
free- or reduced-price meals, and schools will continue to serve those
as well.
The district also says students who attend school during a strike will
continue to receive instruction from "qualified L.A. Unified staff,"
including administrators — though it remains to be seen how the
district will fulfill this promise.
United Teachers Los Angeles recently criticized the district's decision
to hire about 400 substitute teachers, calling the move "illegal."
Still, district officials concede attendance is likely to plummet.
Since the state funds schools based on how many students actually show
up each day, even a short strike would be costly to the district.
Many LA parents plan to keep their children home in the event of a
strike, some in a show of solidarity with the union, some because of
uncertainty around how their kids will be supervised in the teachers'
absence. For many of those parents, child care could pose a challenge.
The issues at stake
Negotiations between the district and United Teachers Los Angeles
started in early 2017. Since then, contract talks have dragged on with
little progress. Union members have been working without a contract for
more than a year. There have been several hurdles to establishing a new
agreement:
District finances. The two sides don't agree on how much money the
district has available to spend on teacher demands. District leaders
have said the union's proposals could "bankrupt" the school system, and
they say they're not being hyperbolic. But union leaders don't buy
these grim forecasts, saying none of the recent projections of the
school district's financial collapse have come true.
The district has nearly $2 billion in the bank, and the union wants
those funds spent on its contract demands. The district says it needs
to put that money toward regular operations in order to avoid
insolvency. And in fact, on Wednesday, the Los Angeles County Office of
Education announced it had assigned a "team of fiscal experts" to work
with LAUSD, a sign that the county is concerned about the district's
finances.
Another development came Thursday, when California Gov. Gavin Newsom
unveiled a proposed budget that included more funding for public
education. The district increased its offer to the union following the
Democratic governor's announcement. The but the union rejected that
offer on Friday.
Class sizes. The union wants to remove contract language that allows
district officials to increase class sizes in order to save money.
(After all, more students per classroom means less need to hire
teachers.) In recent years, the district has unilaterally raised some
class sizes to as high as 46 students, surpassing the 39-student limit
spelled out in the last teacher contract.
School district leaders have offered to get rid of this language, but
union leaders doubt the sincerity of the offer, in part, because the
district has proposed a replacement provision that they feel would be
worse.
On Friday, district officials offered to spend $130 million on class
size reduction.
But union officials want more ambitious (and costly) reductions to
class sizes and special education teachers' caseloads. The district
says it can't afford to do more.
Staffing levels. Some LA public schools operate without full-time
librarians or nurses. The union wants to change that; it's calling for
a full-time nurse for every school and a full-time librarian for every
middle and high school. The union has also called for hiring a raft of
new counselors, deans and social workers, all of whom the union also
represents.
The district's $130 million class-size-reduction package includes
funding for more nurses and counselors. LAUSD also offered to guarantee
library services at every middle school and add an additional counselor
at every high school. On Friday, county government leaders said they
could pitch in $10 million of mental health funding, which would help
pay for full-time nursing services at every elementary school,
according to the district. But that money would only last a year, which
union officials consider a major flaw.
The union believes the district can do far more. In July, LAUSD
estimated that accepting all of the union's staffing demands could cost
several hundreds of millions of dollars.
Teacher pay. The two sides aren't far apart on salary, but the union is
still hoping for a 6.5 percent raise — including back pay to July 2016.
The district is offering a package of raises totaling 6 percent, but
with back pay going back only as far as July 2017, when the teachers'
last contract expired.
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