L.A. teach strike
30,000 walk out for raises, smaller classes
More than 30,000 teachers from Los Angeles public schools went on strike Monday after contract negotiations failed in the nation’s second-largest school district.
Roughly 640,000 kids enrolled in Los Angeles Unified School District schools are affected by the walkout.
Union leadership rejected an offer from the district on Friday, calling it “woefully inadequate” in a statement.
And in a demonstration in Los Angeles on Monday, teachers union President Alex Caputo-Pearl told a crowd of cheering teachers that the strike would benefit kids enrolled in union classrooms.
“Students, we are striking for you,” Caputo-Pearl said.
But L.A. schools will stay open because the district has hired hundreds of substitutes to replace teachers and others who leave classes for the picket lines.
The union’s contract expired in 2017 and the union seeks raises for teachers and smaller class sizes in a new deal.
The district says that it is unable to meet the teachers’ demands due to a half-billion-dollar budget deficit this year, but the union argues that the district has $1.8 billion in reserves that could be used to pay for salary and staffing increases.
The strike comes just a week after California Gov. Gavin Newsom took office.
“This impasse is disrupting the lives of too many kids and their families,” he said in a statement Monday. “I strongly urge all parties to go back to the negotiating table and find an immediate path forward that puts kids back into classrooms and provides parents certainty.”
Despite the walkout, Superintendent Austin Beutner said Monday that the schools are operating normally.
“We’ve got about a thousand buses heading out to pick up children, bring them to school safely,” Beutner told Los Angeles news station KCBS-TV. “They’ll be fed, they’ll be greeted by the same principal who greets them every morning at the door, and there will be learning.”
The city has provided alternatives for parents who do not want to send their children to school during the strike.
Mayor Eric Garcetti’s office has rolled out additional services in light of the strike, including free subway and bus rides for students during the length of the strike and temporarily expanding the programming and staffing at city’s libraries.