It looks like tomorrow teachers in the nation’s second largest school district will be going on strike. Over 600,000 students could be affected. On Friday the Los Angeles Unified School District and United Teachers of LA failed to reach a last minute agreement. Thirty-some thousand teachers are expected to forgo their paychecks after the superintendent refused to meet their union’s demands of smaller class sizes, more school counselors, nurses, and librarians, and accountability for charter schools. The district claims it’s broke, but records show reserves in excess of $1.8 billion. Schools will remain open, and LAUSD has contracted over 400 subs to cross the picket line. Last spring’s teacher rebellions were attributed to red state politics, where Republican-controlled state legislatures have slashed taxes for the wealthy, resulting in deep cuts to education funding. But the corporate takeover of public education has its origins in urban school districts, where poor and minority parents are less equipped to fight back against hedge fund managers and the politicians they buy. “Networks of wealthy billionaires and the foundations they create have advocated and imposed reforms nationally, even globally, we see today in LA schools: using standardized tests to control what and how children learn; creating charter schools to weaken neighborhood schools and undermine parent loyalty to public education; creating new revenue sources for corporations to profit from education; and weakening teachers unions.” https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/01/ut... Outside special interests spent $15 million during the 2017 school board election. The resulting pro-charter majority then went on to select an investment banker with no experience in education as the current superintendent. The new reforms LAUSD has since announced include giving away half of all the district’s schools to education profiteers. Critics of the strike say that teachers are greedy and lazy. And how we get the summers off. But none of these walkouts — including the ones in the most poorly funded states, where teachers spend our own money to buy students books, supplies, and even food — have been about teacher pay. They’ve been about kids and the communities we serve. To show your support for public schools and the work teachers do, take a selfie wearing red and post it on your social media feed with the hashtag RedforEd.
UTLA teachers striking for smaller class size - YouTube
