Education Week - January 16, 2019 - 6

L.A. Teachers Prepare to Strike in Nation's Second-Largest District
Other Calif. districts
watching closely
Tens of thousands of Los Angeles
teachers are planning to take to the
picket lines on Jan. 14 in a major
clash with the nation's second-largest school district.
The lead up to the strike has been
messy, with last-minute postponements, a series of legal battles, and
tensions between the teachers' union
and the district at an all-time high.
The district and union were still in
negotiations as of press time, but few
expected them to reach an agreement that would preclude a walkout.
The strike would be the first major
teacher labor action of 2019, following a remarkable year of statewide
protests and walkouts. While this
strike is directed at the city's school
board and superintendent, rather
than a state legislature, the impact
is no less significant-there are
more than a half-million students
and 30,000 teachers in the district.
In comparison, in all of West Virginia, the state that launched the
wave of teacher actions last spring,
there are about 250,000 students
and 20,000 teachers.
There hasn't been a teachers'
strike in Los Angeles since 1989.
That walkout lasted nine days.
United Teachers Los Angeles is
asking for a 6.5 percent salary increase, class-size reductions, and
more nurses, librarians, and counselors in schools, among other demands. The Los Angeles Unified
school district countered early last
week with a 6 percent salary increase and funding to add nearly
1,000 teachers, counselors, nurses,
and librarians to the district's more
than 900 schools.
Then, after Democratic Gov. Gavin
Newsom's inaugural budget proposal
was announced to include a boost
to school funding, the district said it
would offer additional funding to further reduce class sizes, although details were not known as of press time.
The union and the district have
been in contract negotiations for
almost two years. Both sides have
remained at odds at the bargaining
table: The union has said the district's offer is not enough to make
a difference for students, while the
cash-strapped school system has
accused the union of not facing the
financial reality.
The district and the union have
also sparred in court several times.
The district tried to block special
education teachers from going on
strike, saying their absence would
make it impossible to meet a 1996
consent decree to adequately educate students with disabilities. But
a federal judge prevented the district from moving forward with the
complaint.
And the union and the district
argued whether the union provided
the legally required notice of its intent to strike. Ultimately, the union
pre-emptively postponed the strike
date by four days.

Jae C. Hong/AP

By Madeline Will

Parents and teachers hold signs while talking to reporters outside Los Angeles Unified School District headquarters. Teachers in the nation's second-largest
district were preparing to strike on Jan. 14 over a contract dispute, following labor actions across several states last year.

"I think the inevitability of the
strike has come about ... because
the two parties see the facts of the
fiscal reality differently, and there's
a lack of trust that leads them to
not believe in each other's interpretations of the facts," said John Rogers, a professor in the University of
California, Los Angeles, Graduate
School of Education and Information Studies. "And I think the two
parties have very different visions
for what should happen."
While California has the fifthlargest economy in the world, the
state spends relatively little on
public education. California spends
$9,417 per student annually, according to an Education Week Research
Center analysis that's adjusted
for regional cost differences-well
below the national average and
among the bottom tier of states.
Both union and district officials
agree that's not enough. "What they
want and what we want is actually
not that different," said Superintendent Austin Beutner. "But we don't
have the resources to pay for it. ...
We've done everything we can with
the dollars we have."
Just last week, the county regulators who oversee the school system
appointed a team of financial experts to develop a "fiscal stabilization plan" for the district.
Even so, UTLA leaders have pointed
to the district's nearly $2 billion reserve fund: "There's more than
enough money to begin a strategic set of investments," said UTLA
President Alex Caputo-Pearl.
Beutner said the money is already
set aside, including for employee
raises and to cover an operating
deficit. The union has disputed the
district's budget projections.

6 | EDUCATION WEEK | January 16, 2019 | www.edweek.org

Meanwhile, Beutner, a former investment banker who took the helm
of the school district last year, said
he's willing to "hop on our yellow
buses" with UTLA leaders to go to
Sacramento, the state capital, because "that's where the answers lie."
But Caputo-Pearl said he doubts
Beutner's sincerity to "throw down
and fight" for more state funding.
"He talks about Sacramento as a
decoy, and we talk about it as a real
target for pressure," he said.
All of this has led to a volatile
situation: "Neither party is going
to have its vision fully realized in
whatever sort of resolution comes to
play," UCLA's Rogers said.

'A Line in the Sand'
But many educators in Los Angeles have had enough.
"I've seen a steady erosion in morale and teacher retention," said Daniel Jocz, a high school history teacher
and the 2016 California teacher of
the year, who has been teaching in
Los Angeles Unified for about 15
years. "[A strike] is definitely something I don't think anybody wants,
in terms of going out and missing instruction time with the students and
missing a paycheck. ... [But] a line in
the sand is being drawn."
Several teachers said that if the
contract dispute were just about
salary, an agreement would likely
be reached without going on strike.
But they spoke of having class sizes
that neared 40 students and a lack
of funding to hire the number of
school nurses and counselors that
their students need.
"Every teacher I know, we feel like
we have to put our foot down because we just can't keep starving our

schools," said Michele Levin, a middle
school science and health teacher.
Schools would remain open during the strike, with substitutes and
administrators taking over instruction. Otherwise, if students stayed
home, the district would lose millions of dollars from the state.
Teachers are skeptical and a little
anxious about how their students
would learn in their absence. Still,
Kurt Lowry, the principal of Vine
Street Elementary, said school is the
safest place for students to be.
He plans to divide students into
three groups based on grade level,
and rotate them during the day.
A former teacher, Lowry will oversee instruction in English/language
arts, and district staffers will handle
math and physical education, helped
by teaching assistants and aides.
"It will be whole-group instruction, but it's doable," he said.

Will the Momentum Continue?
While Caputo-Pearl acknowledged that UTLA members were
"inspired" by the massive labor actions last spring, he said the strike
would likely have happened even
without those.
Still, Rogers, the UCLA professor,
said the statewide strikes showed
UTLA leadership that the public
is willing to support teachers on
strike-and the outcome in Los Angeles could inspire others.
"I think what happens in L.A. will
be watched closely across California, and probably across other blue
states as well," Rogers said.
Already, teachers in Oakland,
Calif., are weighing a potential
strike, frustrated with low base
salaries compared with other educa-

tors in the region. No date has been
set, but teachers there have been
meeting with parents and community members to inform them of the
reasons for a strike, and they were
planning a rally for Jan. 12.
While the level of enthusiasm for
a strike differs from school to school,
many Oakland teachers feel a sense
of solidarity with their Los Angeles
peers and are inspired by the larger
teacher-protest movement.
"I think this is part of the bigger
... fight for public education in California," said Joey Notaro, a math
teacher at Fremont High School in
the district. "People see an opportunity to change the tide."
Over a dozen local teachers'
unions in the state held walk-ins
last week (where they gathered outside the school before the first bell)
to show support for teachers in Los
Angeles and Oakland.
In Berkeley, teachers walked in to
show support for their peers across
the state, but also to take a stance
about working and learning conditions in their own district, said
Cathy Campbell, the president of
the local teachers' union. Contract
negotiations there start in March.
"There are a lot of parallels between these fights," Campbell said.
"In Berkeley, we have fewer struggles
because of local funding, but we see
the same issues-our students need
more, and our employees need more."
Berkeley teachers were inspired
by the 2018 strikes, she said. Now,
"that struggle is arriving on the big
screen in California."
Associate Editor Stephen Sawchuk
reported from Oakland, Calif., and
Senior Contributing Writer Catherine
Gewertz reported from Los Angeles.

http://www.edweek.org

Education Week - January 16, 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - January 16, 2019