IF LA TEACHERS STRIKE DON’T EXPECT IT TO STAY IN LA
Teachers and students from Oakland High School protest an impasse in contract negotiations on Monday, Dec. 10, 2018. By Aric Crabbfor Bay Area News Group.
The nation’s second largest school district is about to ring in 2019 with a teacher strike that is already reverberating in public schools across California, and could be felt by taxpayers and communities throughout the state.
United Teachers Los Angeles, which represents more than 30,000 teachers and employees in the Los Angeles Unified School District, says it will strike Jan. 10—the first Thursday after students return from the holiday break—unless the district agrees to a wide-ranging list of demands on pay, support resources and working conditions. Negotiations have largely gone nowhere, with both the district and union accusing each other of not negotiating in good faith.
L.A. Unified, a behemoth of a school system, ranges across more than 710 square miles of California’s largest city, employing 60,000 people and educating more than 620,000 students—more than the entire public school enrollment of nearly half the states in the nation. But the strike, if it happens, will not be easily confined to LAUSD.
Many of the issues that have boiled over in California’s largest school district—rising pension costs, declining enrollment, crowded classrooms, polarizing debates over charter schools—are simmering in districts all over the state. Teachers in Oakland Unified School District are also nearing a potential strike, and rank-and-file faculty in other local unions are similarly frustrated with longstanding shortages in funding and resources.
Though the 2019 legislative session has scarcely begun and the new governor won’t be sworn in until January 7, education advocacy groups already are lobbying Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom and the Democrat-controlled Legislature for significantly higher CONTINUE READING: If LA Teachers Strike Don't Expect It To Stay In LA | PopularResistance.Org
