LA teachers on strike for second day

LOS ANGELES — Teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District walked picket lines again Tuesday as administrators urged them to return to classrooms and for their union to return to the bargaining table.

“It is by no means a normal day in LA Unified,” Superintendent Austin Beutner acknowledged as the strike by thousands of members of United Teachers Los Angeles entered its second day. “The painful truth is we just don’t have enough money to do everything UTLA is asking Los Angeles Unified to do,” he said.

Monday’s walkout was marked by a plunge in attendance, which cost the district about $25 million because funding is based on how many students go to school, he said.

Some charter school teachers joined their public school counterparts on picket lines. Educators with the Accelerated Schools charter network, who are also union members but negotiate their contracts separately — walked off the job Tuesday to demand better working conditions. The action was the first by charter teachers in California, according to the teachers’ union.

Teachers are pressing for higher pay and smaller class sizes in the nation’s second-largest system, with 640,000 students.

The district says the demands run up against an expected half-billion-dollar deficit this budget year, as well as money obligated for pension payments and health coverage for retired teachers.

AP/JAE C. HONG Edna Hernandez, 10, sits Tuesday outside La Fayette Park Primary Center in Los Angeles. Edna skipped school to support her mother, a teacher who joined her union on the picket lines.