Why thousands of Los Angeles teachers are going on strike
The second-largest school district in the country joins a growing national movement for better school funding and higher teacher pay.
Monday morning, tens of thousands of Los Angeles educators will leave their classrooms and go on strike, throwing the weight of the country’s second-largest school district behind a growing national movement for better school funding and higher teacher pay.
The strike comes after months of fruitless contract negotiations between the teacher’s union and the Los Angeles Unified School District. The union’s asking for a 6.5 percent raise and for the district to spend more to improve the quality of students’ education. Officials from both the state and district agree they need to invest more — just not to the level that the unions demand.
The school system extended a last-minute deal on Friday, but organizers rejected it, saying they’re fighting for the future of the education system — with implications that extend beyond the district’s borders.
“Get ready, because on Monday, we will go on strike,” Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, said at a news conference late Friday.
Nationwide, stagnant teacher wages, crumbling infrastructure and deep budget cuts to education have helped fuel a wave of educator activism. From Arizona to West Virginia, Kentucky to Oklahoma, teachers garnered widespread support and won major victories boosting salaries and benefits last year. And now the movement has a powerful ally joining its ranks.
Union leaders in Los Angeles expect some 31,000 teachers, counselors, nurses, and librarians to walk the picket line this week. Like the string of striking teachers who preceded them, they’re fighting for a raise. But they have larger grievances: They say that class sizes are so large, there aren’t enough desks to go around. That the proliferation of charter schools is leading to an over-tested student body and a system that treats education like a business rather than a right for all students. And that staffing levels are so low, some schools lack a single nurse or librarian.
Addressing all those issues to the teachers’ satisfaction requires money that district officials say they don’t have.
So Monday, LA schools will see their first strike in 30 years. During the last one, 20,000 teachers walked out of their classrooms for nine days. This time, union leaders want to make a major contribution in the fight for education, setting the tone for 2019 with the first walkout of CONTINUE READING: LAUSD strike: Why LA teachers are walking off the job - Vox
