Parents demanding schools reopen fully in fall
Parents seeking a firm commitment from the Los Angeles Unified School District that schools will fully reopen in the fall — meaning full-time, five days a week for all grade levels — rallied on Sunday to demand a seat at the table as officials decide what the following school year will look like.
More than 100 parents and students rallied outside LAUSD’s headquarters before marching to the teachers union’s office about 2.5 miles away to make their demands known. Dubbed the “Total Recall Rally,” the event was a warning shot to all seven school board members that they could face a recall effort if schools do not fully reopen, one parent organizer said.
“It’s putting them on
notice that we’re done,” said organizer Danna Rosenthal. “What they’ve done for the entire yearand-a-half now of giving into the demands of the teachers union is not acceptable. These kids have suffered tremendously.”
Organizers issued three key demands and said they will be asking each board member to sign a pledge to do the following:
• No longer accept campaign support from district bargaining groups or special interest groups such as UTLA or the California Teachers Association;
• Announce a full reopening of schools for the fall and commit to following only the latest COVID-19 guidance issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevent and the county health department rather than what UTLA asks for;
• Give parents a seat at the bargaining table.
Besides district officials, parents at the rally blamed United Teachers Los Angeles, accusing union leaders of refusing to provide in-person instruction sooner and of insisting on other conditions that they say have prevented a more normal return to campus.
Rebecca Houriani, whose three children attend schools on the Westside, estimates that her children have only learned about a fifth of what they should have learned this past year. Her two elementary-aged children received two hours of synchronous instruction a day during distance learning, and her fifth-grader was assigned no homework, she said.
“Who’s going to make up for this loss of education?” she asked. “Our kids at LAUSD are at a disadvantage compared to other districts.”
While critics have accused the teachers union of using their children as pawns by holding out on returning to school sooner while seeking to get the district to give in to items on their wish list, UTLA officials have repeatedly said they’re looking out for the most vulnerable students and their families with their demands for rigorous health and safety standards.
More than 80% of LAUSD students live in poverty. Many are from communities of color who have lost loved ones during the pandemic and are fearful that a student would contract the virus if they return to in-person learning.
UTLA President Cecily Myart-Cruz did not immediately respond to a request for a comment about Sunday’s rally, but during her weekly update on Friday, she defended the times the union held out for what it believed to be necessary conditions to ensure the safe reopening of schools.
“It wasn’t always easy to stand up for these needed protocols,” she said. “Educators faced a lot of pressure to return to schools without agreed upon health and safety procedures. But we held the line because we are a fighting union that centers our students and communities in the work we do.”
In recent weeks, as more people have gotten vaccinated and other businesses start to reopen, outgoing Superintendent Austin Beutner has spoken of offering full-time, in-person instruction to all students who want it when the 2021-22 school year begins.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has also proposed a state budget that assumes schools will return to full-time in-person instruction this fall and that ties funding to school districts to inperson instruction. The California Teachers Association also said it expects in-person instruction to be the norm in the upcoming school year.
Myart-Cruz, meanwhile, said earlier this month that while the union hopes schools can reopen five days a week in the fall, it will depend on conditions such as local COVID-19 infection rates and related factors.
And during an interview with KPCC last week, she spoke of the need for additional investments and an assurance that things are safe.
“All of our educators are wanting to get back to a full, five-days-a-week (in-person schedule),” she said. “But they also want to have safety precautions for their students as well as the communities in which we serve. … It’s going to take more than Newsom and anyone else saying, ‘Yes, we should be back like it was.’”