The Los Angeles Unified School District and Service Employees International Union Local 99 reached a tentative agreement around 2 a.m. Tuesday Pacific Time. 

United Teachers Los Angeles and Associated Administrators of Los Angeles agreed to tentative contracts Sunday night. If SEIU had not reached an agreement, all three unions would have for the first time in the nation’s second-largest district.

“We are pleased to announce that we have reached an agreement in principle with SEIU Local 99 that will allow schools to be open,” the district said in a . “Los Angeles Unified and SEIU Local 99 teams will continue to work together to finalize the details of a tentative agreement.”

The union, which represents more than 30,000 bus drivers, teachers’ assistants, custodians and cafeteria workers, had of bad-faith bargaining and retaliation. The teachers union and its 37,000 members had planned to walk out with the SEIU local in solidarity, as it did when the union an unfair labor charge strike in 2023. This time, the administrators union, which represents more than 3,000 principals and assistant principals, had planned to strike in support as well.

“Because of our members’ unity and readiness to take action, we secured major wins — including significant improvements to wages and hours; stronger protections against subcontracting; increased staffing; and we successfully stopped layoffs for (information technology) workers,” Local 99 said in a Tuesday . “This is what collective power looks like.”

The union and the district have been bargaining for two years, said Blanca Gallegos, the union’s communications director.

“Currently, the average wage in (our union) is about $35,000, which is below poverty for a family of four,” she said before the agreement was reached. “We’re also looking to increase hours — because the district relies on a lot of part-time work — so about 80% of Local 99 members are working less than eight hours a day.”

The district previously a 13% raise, but the union it wasn’t enough to provide a livable salary for its members. The union also wanted staff to be able to work more hours. Gallegos said many employees were restricted to a number of hours that’s just under the threshold needed to qualify for health benefits — a reason why picketing would have been classified as an . The district didn’t respond to a request for comment about the unfair labor charge.

“During these two years of negotiations, the district has taken a lot of actions that are retaliatory. One of them is they reduce the hours of thousands of members so that they’re not eligible for health care benefits — I mean, like 15 minutes short of being eligible,” Gallegos said. “We see that as undermining the contract.”

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The district had told all three unions it can’t afford huge raises, but bargaining leaders pointed to a $5 billion reserve fund. Los Angeles Unified has the account is dwindling amid a projected . 

United Teachers Los Angeles Sunday that it agreed to a tentative two-year contract that increases the average salary by 13.86%, with a minimum raise of 8%. The union had rejected an April 1 that included a 10% raise over three years with a one-time 3% bonus for this school year.

The new contract, which will expire in 2027, also includes four weeks of paid parental leave; more psychologists, psychiatric social workers and counselors; lower class sizes; and stipends for teachers if class sizes exceed the limit.

“The flexing of our collective power forced LAUSD to direct significant funding into critical priorities identified by UTLA members in the Win Our Future contract demands,” the union said in a .

United Teachers Los Angeles has been a key player in a statewide effort to improve pay and working conditions during contract negotiations this year. The , coordinated by the California Teachers Association, asked union locals in 32 districts to focus demands around wages, staffing, fewer layoffs and school closures. It also aims to pressure the state to increase school funding.

Associated Administrators of Los Angeles was 12% raises over two years, with a chance to renegotiate in the third year of its next contract. The district to an 11.65% salary increase. Union members stipends if they work in a high-needs school or are a school’s single administrator, and 40 hours a year of professional training.

“This moment did not happen by accident. It happened because 90% of you voted yes to authorize a strike,” union President Maria Nichols said to her members in a . “It happened because you trusted our union. It happened because you stood firm, you stood together and you refused to be overlooked. Your courage at that vote changed the tone at the bargaining table. Your unity shifted the balance of power. Your perseverance made this moment possible.”

The unions haven’t announced a timetable for ratifying the contracts. 

In case of a strike, the district had planned to at community food sites and offer classroom lesson packets. But some parents said loss of learning and other resources would have lasting negative impacts on their children.

Maria Palma, founder of the parent advocacy group , said the pandemic combined with other local school interruptions, such as immigration enforcement raids, have caused students to miss multiple days of school.

“Many parents are very concerned about the learning loss that has happened,” she said. “Most recently, we had a protest where teachers were telling students that they should walk out of schools and protest against ICE. The loss of so many school days for some kids that are now, for example, in high school, over all these years, has been considerable.”

A strike would have been especially devastating for Indigenous and immigrant families, said Evelyn Aleman, founder of , a local parent advocacy nonprofit. The district serves roughly 30,000 immigrant students, and 25% of them are undocumented, according to the .

Aleman said language barriers had made it difficult for immigrant parents to keep up with district updates about the strike. 

Undocumented parents don’t feel safe enough to pick up materials or food distributed by the district because of fears of deportation, she said. Many parents involved with Our Voice also work as street vendors and are the single guardians of multiple children, making it impossible to find child care.

“When LAUSD says there’s going to be food centers, some parents don’t have vehicles. It’s very frustrating,” Aleman said. “Some children will remain unwatched, because some of the parents will leave the children in the home and sometimes leave cameras. That’s how they monitor the children — that’s what is happening when these situations arise.”

Of course, things didn’t work out as planned. United Teachers Los Angeles voted to boycott the extra days. Then, after negotiations, the district rescheduled them for winter and spring breaks, irking SEIU Local 99, the union representing school support workers. And whatever benefit the extra days might have brought was undone by the three-day walkout organized by both unions March 21 to 23.

One would think that, going forward, the district might try a different approach to adding instructional days, and that the teachers union might consider a different response.

But who are we kidding?

Last week, the L.A. school board . “The new instructional calendars address the need to mitigate learning loss by shortening the winter recess and extending options for summer programming,” Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said. The plan is to shorten the three-week winter break to two weeks.

The seven-member school board unanimously approved the changes, and the press release includes positive comments from five of them. It also states that the district “undertook an extensive process of gathering input through surveys, focus groups and presentations from families, staff and labor partners.”

Unfortunately for Carvalho and the board, those surveys, focus groups and input from labor partners all indicated .

The district justified the change on the grounds that three weeks off “creates challenges for our neediest families that must be considered in decision-making.” Also, most large districts in other states have a two-week break, as do most districts in southern California.

Not one to overlook an opportunity for activism, the teachers union immediately filed an unfair labor practice charge, and ramped up an organizing drive against the change.

“School calendar changes are mandatory subjects of bargaining and UTLA leadership immediately sent a demand to bargain to the district,” . “This calendar move exemplifies Carvalho’s refusal to bargain in good faith and his willful disdain of worker rights. By openly disregarding labor law and ignoring the voices of parents and staff, Carvalho continues to prove that he is not a leader. The school board’s approval demonstrates a failure to hold Carvalho accountable.”

that calendar dates are “at the sole discretion of the superintendent and the Board of Education,” and that the district held two meetings to discuss the calendar with its unions — but UTLA sent a representative to only one.

Carvalho and the board seem to have learned nothing from their previous encounter on this issue and are blithely waving the red cape in front of the charging bull. The union will gore them again, but one wonders how often it can continue to place itself on the side of less school versus more.

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.

So it went last week with Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho.

Carvalho was forced to shutter schools while the district’s 30,000 support employees, led by SEIU Local 99, went on a three-day strike. Members of United Teachers Los Angeles walked out in solidarity.

The day after the strike ended, Carvalho and the union announced a tentative agreement. The three-year deal raised salaries by a reported 30%. Carvalho called it a “.”

It’s historic, in the sense that most of it takes place in the past.

The agreement contains a 6% pay hike retroactive to July 2021, another 7% retroactive to July 2022 and yet another 7% to take effect this July. In January 2024, the district will raise all support employee wages by $2 an hour. The district and the union both say this constitutes another 10% increase for the average employee.

Nevertheless, it’s not the amount that’s going to cause headaches for Carvalho, the school board, parents and students in the near future. The district and the union weren’t oceans apart on the money before the strike occurred. Where Carvalho went wrong was in the timeline of the settlement.

Lost in all the happiness and relief about the contract is that the strike supposedly wasn’t about wages and benefits. Such a walkout would have been illegal, since the union hadn’t completed all the procedural steps before calling a strike. SEIU did so to . 

SEIU accused the district of interrogating workers about union meetings and threatening to fire them if they walked out. The union even claimed that food service workers were locked in a cafeteria to prevent them from voting on a strike. Taking these accusations at face value, the district could not have prevented the strike, short of admitting it had committed these violations.

. An unfair labor practices strike is legal if unfair labor practices have occurred. These haven’t been adjudicated, and if they’re found to be baseless, the union will be penalized.

But it won’t matter. The reality is that the walkouts prompted Carvalho and the board to settle on the union’s terms. So what happens to the district’s future?

There isn’t going to be much of a lull. “Carvalho has been put on notice that he better move on our demands,” . “If that movement is not enough to settle the contract that UTLA members deserve, we will move to the next round of this fight.”

The union wants a 20% raise over a two-year contract. But the contract expired in June 2022, so the two years are this school year and next. It’s clear the teachers aren’t reluctant to strike, and SEIU Local 99 will be sure to back them up. So we might see a repeat of last week’s actions, only this time it will be the teachers union organizing an unfair labor practices strike, with SEIU striking in solidarity.

Carvalho might be able to head it off by caving early, but the reprieve would be only temporary. The new contracts would both expire in June 2024, right about the time all federal COVID subsidies will have run out. How much labor peace will Carvalho be able to buy then?

He seems unaware of his impending fate. “This agreement’s going to make a lot of superintendents very nervous,” . “And that’s a good thing.”

We’ll see who is the most nervous superintendent a year from now.

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.

Judging from the rain and official rhetoric, it was a dark Tuesday morning in Los Angeles.

Officials at the Los Angeles Unified School District were predicting a rough three days for 420,000 students and their families as the district buckled in for a strike led by SEIU Local 99, which represents custodians, bus drivers, special ed assistants and other support staff. With members of United Teachers Los Angeles joining in solidarity, all schools were shut down.

Nearly work for a living, and about live below the poverty level. To support these families in particular, the district partnered with the city and county of Los Angeles to run food distribution sites and staff recreation centers for child care. 

But despite the gloom, a range of positive attitudes were on display: joy, good humor, conviction, hope. Local 99 and teachers union members huddled under tents against the rain at nearly 500 schools and sites across the district, according to Local 99. 

The 74 visited a handful of them and has these sketches to share. 

Susan Miller Dorsey Senior High School, 6:46 a.m.

Strikers arrive slowly at Susan Miller Dorsey High School, still shaking off their sleep.

A squad of teachers union members wrestles a cover onto the extendable frame of a lawn tent. 

Special education teacher Stacia Trimmer, whose 15 years with the district have done little to blunt her Brooklyn accent, works hand in hand with special ed assistants, one of the units represented by Local 99. 

“They work hard, and they love the children,” she says.

The theme of the strike is respect, and Trimmer wonders whether everyone in the district, including teachers like herself, could better appreciate the contributions of Local 99’s members. 

“Maybe we’re all guilty of it,” she says. “Maybe we don’t speak to them enough.” 

Another teacher puts on Rihanna’s “Bitch Better Have My Money,” and Trimmer starts dancing.

The choice of music down the block, at the Local 99 tent, is a bit more subtle: Bob Marley’s “Duppy Conqueror.” Don’t try to show off… For I will cut you off …

Fourteen strikers from both unions are gathered under two tents. 

Local 99 member and special ed assistant Stephanie Smiley has been with the district for 29 years. As a school system veteran, she’s in a relatively comfortable position, though she would be making more if she were paid for 40 hours a week. As it stands, her contract calls for only 30.

“I’m here fighting for the ones who need help,” she says.

She also feels the pressure of short-staffing, saying she sometimes works on the de facto security detail at Dorsey, monitoring the cafeteria and recess areas for “potential altercations.”

There’s a collective gasp from the strikers when a commuter in a gray Prius rams the curb, and sigh of relief when the motorist drives off, apparently unharmed. It’s about 7:20, almost an hour into the scheduled picket. 

The wind and rain are picking up.

Baldwin Hills Recreation Center, 8 a.m.

Volunteers in yellow vests and rain gear stand under tents in the Baldwin Hills Rec Center parking loop. Stacked around them are boxes of food meant to tide families over for the next three days.

Jake Varner, a 23-year-old substitute teacher, says there was a steady stream of cars right when they opened at 7:30. By now, traffic has slowed.

He’s working with Luis Clarke, a community member, and Lauren Brooks, a senior at King Drew Magnet High School. 

“My mom signed me up,” Brooks says. “‘ ‘Cause they’re on strike, I didn’t have anything else to do.” 

A man pulls up in a white Jeep. “Two kids,” he says. The volunteers hand a sack of fruit through the window and place boxes in his trunk — 12 meals total for the three-day strike.

Among some staples (cereal, applesauce, pizza), his kids might be pleased to find a strawberry creamsicle and mango sorbet. 

Clarke, who says he’s a mentor for kids in the community, suspects it was God who brought the three volunteers together, pointing out that both Varner and Brooks love science and want to be doctors.

“Who did that?” he asks. “Who orchestrated this? We didn’t even know we was going to be on the same team.”

Grand View Blvd. Elementary School, 8:43 a.m.

Car horns are honking. Music is blaring. There’s talk among the picketers of moving down to Venice High School, a mile away. But Grand View Elementary, where a large crowd has gathered, isn’t lacking for action.

Local 99 member Carlton Van Vactor, a health care assistant at Grand View, cradles a to-go cup of coffee at his chest.

He says if there’s one thing he’s fighting for, it’s better staffing. 

As a health care assistant, he works with some of Grand View’s highest-needs students. They have breathing devices, feeding tubes.

While feeding one student through a tube attached to his belly, which can take up to an hour, he has to keep an eye on another student who “bites, scratches, throws tantrums, everything” — someone whom, in other schools, a special ed assistant would attend to.

“I do a job probably for about three people right now,” he says. With the district since 1989, he makes $26 an hour, working seven hours a day.

Los Angeles Public Library, Mar Vista Branch, 3:09 p.m.

Many on the picket line are district parents or grandparents. Some say they were lucky to have found child care for the three days of no school.

Other parents might depend on local resources. In addition to local recreation centers and parks, L.A.’s libraries made space for kids in the event of a strike. 

It’s starting to rain again, and outside the Mar Vista Branch of the L.A. Public Library, Marianne Justus hurries in with her mother and two young sons. Her oldest is a first-grader at Short Ave. Elementary School.

“I lucked out,” she says. Her mom, who lives in Newport Beach, drove up to help Justus and her husband with the kids Tuesday, and is taking her oldest back down to Newport for Wednesday and Thursday.

While her family can bear three days with no school, she fears a longer work stoppage. Remote schooling — especially for her oldest son, who needs speech therapy — was “horrendous.” 

“Most kids are still trying to catch up, and kids with special needs are really trying to catch up,” she says. 

“I totally understand why they’re striking,” she says. “They need higher pay. I just hope it doesn’t go longer than three days.”

The terminology is important, because a strike for economic reasons during contract negotiations has certain procedural requirements and time-consuming steps, including mediation and fact-finding. The two unions’ contracts also have no-strike provisions, which is why both notified the district they were terminating their expired contracts.

Superintendent Alberto Carvalho pledged to negotiate around the clock to avert the strike, then requested an injunction from the state labor relations board — all to no avail. The two unions had no inclination to call it off.

I believe the timing and length of the walkout is a calculated effort on the part of the unions not only to apply bargaining pressure to the district, but to undo Carvalho’s signature effort to address the effects of lengthy pandemic school closures: .

In April 2022, Carvalho and the school board proposed adding four instructional days to the school calendar that would be optional for both students and teachers. Teachers who participated would receive additional pay, and students would receive additional instruction.

The teachers union filed an unfair labor practice complaint and called for a boycott of the first acceleration day, asserting that changes to the school calendar were a mandatory subject of collective bargaining.

After negotiations, the union agreed to the four days, to be held for two days each during winter and spring breaks. , which preferred the original plan of four Wednesdays spread throughout the school year.

The final two acceleration days are scheduled to be held April 3 and 4, but they are hardly acceleration days anymore, due to the unions’ decision to hold deceleration days this week.

Holding a strike on a Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday almost certainly guarantees that a large number of students (and school employees) won’t show up Friday, either. There go your four days of additional instruction.

The district could add make-up days to the calendar, but as UTLA reminded its members, “.”

The unions seem unperturbed by school closures of any sort. The teacher strike in 2019 closed schools for a week. Unions were largely responsible for in-person instruction being delayed until late August 2021. Both SEIU Local 99 and UTLA are ready for traditional, open-ended strikes unless significant raises and other demands are met.

As showing up at school has taken a backseat to other concerns among district employees, many students have followed suit. , and continues to be a problem.

Teachers union President Cecily Myart-Cruz notoriously claimed, “.” She’s wrong. The only thing kids learn from closed schools is that neither they, nor the schools, are important.

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.

They sympathize with the workers. Some plan to join them on the picket line at LA Unified schools. 

But when it comes to union and district leaders, LAUSD parents are skeptical and angry.

SEIU Local 99, LAUSD’s 30,000-member union representing employees like custodians, bus drivers, and special education assistants, plans to strike next Tuesday through Thursday. In solidarity, United Teachers Los Angeles has asked its 35,000 members not to cross picket lines.

All district schools would shut down, affecting 420,000 students and their families.

Leaders from both unions say they are fighting for students. Better pay and working conditions, they reason, translate to a healthier learning environment. District leaders say the same. Closing schools during the work stoppage will keep students safe, they say, while refusing the unions’ full demands will safeguard the district’s financial health.

And then there are the families caught in the middle.  

“Anytime someone says, we are for the students, or students are first priority, and it’s all about the kids, I just have to take it with a grain of salt,” said Paul Robak, chair of LAUSD’s . “Because clearly, the ones who would lose most in any work slowdown of any union in the school district are the students.” 

The three-day strike would be the latest in four years of major disruptions across LAUSD, beginning with the six-day teachers strike in January 2019 and rolling through more than a year of fully remote schooling, during which and chronic absenteeism spiked. 

Parents sympathize with Local 99’s members. With an average salary of $25,000 a year, they struggle to make it in LA, and many are parents themselves. But they are also exhausted and fear the consequences a strike could have for their children and the district as a whole, especially after the pandemic kept district schools closed for a long time, and students’ academics and mental health suffered.   

They blame union and district leaders for the shutdown.

“It’s both the district’s fault and their labor partners’. They put parents in the middle of it,” said Christie Pesicka, a leader in the groups California Students United and United Parents LA.

Diana Guillen, chair of LAUSD’s , said a strike “violates kids’ rights” on the heels of the pandemic. “I think it’s an ethical failing from the unions,” she said, speaking in Spanish. 

Parents’ immediate concerns, however, are more basic. Where will working parents send their young children? How will students who depend on school-provided meals eat? After years of academic setbacks, how will students avoid further losses?

At a Wednesday press conference, LAUSD superintendent Alberto Carvalho said the district is partnering with community organizations to make food available at 60 locations across the city and to provide childcare. As for academics, students will receive homework packets to keep them occupied. 

The LA Times community groups and agencies, from the Boys and Girls Club of the Los Angeles Harbor to the LA County Department of Parks and Recreation, are preparing for an influx of students during the day.

Some students, whose parents fully support the striking workers, will spend at least part of the week on the picket line.

“When the teachers originally went on strike a couple years ago, I was all for it. My kids were out there marching,” said Yazmin Arevalo, whose 4th grader attends Gates Elementary in Lincoln Heights. “I would do it again…because they deserve it. If they haven’t been able to come to an agreement, then why not?” 

But she added other parents at Gates Elementary, who also supported teachers in 2019, felt betrayed when many of their children languished through remote schooling. This time, they’re wary of supporting striking workers. 

Based on recent messaging alone, Carvalho’s chief concern is the safety and wellbeing of students.

“We should not be depriving our students of an opportunity to learn, an opportunity to feel safe, or an opportunity to receive social and emotional support — and food,” he said at Wednesday’s press conference.

But that evening, at a massive joint rally held by Local 99 and UTLA that filled up Grand Park in front of Los Angeles City Hall, union members demonstrated their commitment to students in a way Carvalho, on his own, could never match. 

Among the thousands of rally participants, there were children everywhere. 

They clambered over playground structures, and held their parents’ hands as they threaded clusters of attendees. Some wore UTLA red, others SEIU purple. When UTLA president Cecily Myart-Cruz shouted over the loudspeaker, asking parents in the crowd to identify themselves, a wave of hands shot up. Local 99 often points out 43% of its members have school-age children.

Attending the rally was Jesus Flores, a special education assistant at 75th Street Elementary who’s worked in the district for 18 years. He spends six hours a day on the district’s clock and picks up extra work as an Uber driver. 

Flores has three kids, ages five, six, and eight, all at LAUSD schools. He considers striking a short-term sacrifice that’s in their long-term interest.

“At the end of the day, I’ll be thinking about my kids’ future,” he said. 

Next week, he and his wife, also a special ed assistant with the district, will be switching off on childcare duty. But he said he hopes the union and district will come together before Tuesday to work out a deal. 

“Let’s hope it doesn’t happen,” he said of the strike. Missing that pay “really does take a toll.”

The district meeting Local 99’s demands would mean a 30% wage increase for Flores and other union members, among other benefits.

So far, the district’s core offer includes three 5% wage increases, the first two retroactive, respectively, to July 1, 2021 and July 1, 2022, and the third to take effect July 1, 2023.

UTLA, which is further behind in negotiations, is asking for a 20% raise over two years, part of its sweeping platform.

Local 99’s scheduled three-day strike is what’s known as an unfair practice charge strike, meant to protest by district officials. 

The union’s other weapon is an economic strike, which would last indefinitely, but is only legal once the state-facilitated negotiation process has been exhausted.

At the district’s Wednesday press event, Carvalho and board president Jackie Goldberg urged union leaders to meet them at the negotiating table before Tuesday, where they would be ready “24/7” to hash out an agreement that goes beyond what has already been offered. 

“I’m ready, willing, available to meet nonstop, day and night, with our labor leaders to avoid a strike by finding a solution where everyone is a winner, beginning with our kids,” Carvalho said. 

“We have more resources to put on the table. There is time.”

Information for families — including where they can pick up meals for their children during the work stoppage — can be found at this LAUSD website: . 

The leadership of the United Federation of Teachers in New York City engineered a major shift in retiree health insurance by voting to move its members from traditional Medicare into Medicare Advantage, a parallel system in which private insurers provide coverage.

The Municipal Labor Committee, the umbrella group representing the city’s 102 public-sector unions, approved the change for all retirees in a weighted vote, with UFT’s concurrence crucial to the result. . Opponents have vowed to go to court to block the move.

The city’s unions were bound by a 2018 agreement to find health insurance savings, and so drastic action was required. Some retirees oppose the change because they believe Medicare Advantage is a form of privatization. Others simply feel traditional Medicare provides superior coverage. However, it seems unlikely that the teachers union will effectively go to war with its own retired members without hope of some substantive gain from the city.

This gain will probably not come in the form of large salary increases. The teachers’ contract expired in September, but wage expectations are limited by New York City’s system of pattern bargaining, meaning that one union’s contract establishes a pattern the rest must follow. This year, District Council 37 approved a five-year contract with a total of 15.25% in raises. This means UFT will be hard-pressed to achieve much more than 3% per year.

So in what way will the teachers union improve its lot? UFT President Michael Mulgrew is playing things close to the vest but that increased funding for teacher recruiting and retention will be a major focus of negotiations. This would make sense under the circumstances. If you can’t get much higher pay for your members, you might as well try to get more members.

Whether this will mollify angry retirees is an open question, but despite organized internal opposition, Mulgrew’s slate has a stranglehold on power within the union, and that’s unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.

On the other coast, United Teachers Los Angeles emerged from a period of relative inactivity to help organize . Both UTLA and SEIU Local 99, the union representing school support employees, are in the midst of contract negotiations.

SEIU is demanding a 30% raise across the board, while UTLA is calling for 20% over two years. the two unions are planning a joint three-day strike later this month.

The teachers union has , which includes class size reduction across all grades and school types, more staff of all types and a freeze on school closures (despite collapsing student enrollment), elimination or dramatic reduction of standardized tests not required by the state or federal governments, systematic inclusion of social-emotional learning in all curricula and stronger limits on and regulations of charter schools.

The union’s demands come in the context of the district holding more than $3 billion in unrestricted surplus funds. However, that money is short-lived, as federal support will end in 2024. The union has a solution for that: It wants the district to “publicly call for and take action to support federal COVID relief monies becoming permanent as of 2024.”

Superintendent Alberto Carvalho dealt with a union in his previous position in Miami, but he has never faced anything like this. Will he take a hard line or assuage the union with imaginary money from the federal government?

Meanwhile, in Chicago, a proxy war over the mayor’s office is underway between the city teachers union and progressives on the one hand, and business interests and mainstream Democrats on the other.

Former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas and teachers union organizer Brandon Johnson took to the debate stage last week in their mayoral runoff. , Johnson accused Vallas of “wanting to raise property taxes, enacting policies in the 1990s that caused lasting harm to the city and school district’s financial position, and working with Republicans to damage the pension system. Johnson also said Vallas doesn’t want to teach Black history and claimed he does not support women’s abortion rights.”

Vallas, who is ahead in the polls, opted not to respond in kind, saying he left a surplus during his time leading the district and supported reproductive choice, though he was personally opposed to abortion.

Johnson also downplayed his ties to the teachers union. “I have a fiduciary responsibility to the people of the city of Chicago, and once I’m mayor of the city of Chicago, I will no longer be a member of the Chicago Teachers Union,” he said.

Johnson relies highly on union support, having secured the endorsements of SEIU Healthcare and AFSCME Council 31. But Vallas has labor allies as well, with the backing of the Fraternal Order of Police and the plumbers union.

Putting one of its own in the mayor’s chair would be a coup for the Chicago Teachers Union, and perhaps a turning point for its fortunes. A Vallas victory would extend the reign of teachers union adversaries that began with Mayor Richard Daley in 1989.

These three teachers unions are using three different methods to achieve their aims: inside influence in New York City; strikes and rallies in Los Angeles; and electoral politics in Chicago. Which, if any, will succeed remains to be seen, but the results will determine the direction of public education in those cities for the immediate future.

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.

SEIU Local 99 over the weekend that it plans to hold a 3-day unfair labor practice strike to protest what it characterizes as harassment from LAUSD. The union will announce dates for the strike this Wednesday at a joint rally with the teachers union, UTLA. An on UTLA’s website says its members “are preparing for full solidarity once the [strike] dates are announced.” The rally will take place from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. at Grand Park in front of L.A. City Hall. In addition, the LAUSD school board will meet Tuesday to discuss the labor negotiations in a special . 

The union representing LAUSD’s 30,000 school bus drivers, custodians, and other service workers took another step closer to a strike yesterday in a move that could lead to a shutdown of the nation’s second largest school district.

“We are canceling the extension of our current union contract,” said SEIU Local 99 executive director Max Arias at yesterday’s school board meeting. “This includes the no-strike provision.” 

The announcement follows a string of threats issued by Local 99 leaders in recent months, each one bringing the union closer, at least rhetorically, to a work stoppage. 

A representative for a coalition of 47 organizations also addressed the negotiations, presenting the board with a letter urging its members “to address the historic underinvestment in a group of workers — namely women of color — who have consistently demonstrated their commitment to the students and families of Los Angeles.”

In December, service workers rallied in front of LAUSD headquarters. In January and February, the union held a , which passed with 96% support. Now, by canceling the contract extension and its no-strike provision, the union opens the possibility a strike could occur even sooner than anticipated.

“We do not take this decision lightly,” said Arias. 

Ana Teresa Dahan, managing director of GPSN, spoke on behalf of the 47 organizations.

“We want to encourage an equitable resolution and believe in the Superintendent’s leadership to make that happen” said Dahan, quoting from the letter. 

The letter praises Local 99’s in-person work early in the pandemic and its advocacy to end and increase K-12 arts funding. Other signatories include Educators for Excellence Los Angeles, The Los Angeles Trust for Children’s Health, and the Los Angeles Urban League. 

The union’s presence at the board meeting was part of a district-wide action on Tuesday — informational picketing at nearly 300 schools — calling attention to alleged unfair labor practices. In documents filed with the state labor board, the union alleges a variety of obstruction and intimidation tactics from district administrators during last month’s voting period to authorize a strike.

One charge describes a principal who, by continually popping into the staff lounge, would not allow union members to confer in private. Another describes an official who placed boxes in front of a bulletin board holding voting information.

In a Wednesday, LAUSD said it was “disappointed” in SEIU’s decision to cancel its contract extension, acknowledging a strike would “cause a significant disruption to instruction, and would adversely impact our entire system.”

A strike protesting these tactics — an unfair labor practice strike — could be called at any time. 

The union’s other weapon, an economic strike, can only be called once the state’s negotiating procedure has been exhausted. The union has moved closer in that direction as well. 

Arias said state-facilitated mediation has failed, leading to the step of fact-finding, during which a three-member panel reviews each side’s arguments and produces a non-binding recommendation. 

The district has “made some movements I want to commend them on,” Arias said in an interview, adding that during recent negotiations, LAUSD agreed to expand health benefits for teaching assistants and after school workers. 

But, he added, they haven’t come close to meeting the union’s core demand of a 30% wage increase as well as an hourly bump of $2, the latter proposed with the union’s lowest-paid members in mind. 

The average annual salary for union members is $25,000, and many are living paycheck to paycheck.

Three board members on Tuesday — Nick Melvoin,Tanya Ortiz Franklin, and board president Jackie Goldberg — wore purple, the color of SEIU. LAUSD superintendent Alberto Carvalho showed up late, missing Local 99 president Conrado Guerrero’s two minutes of comment, which highlighted members’ work to prepare sack lunches and maintain facilities during the early pandemic. 

“How soon LAUSD forgets,” Guerrero said. 

When Arias made his announcement, some board members looked surprised, but Carvalho appeared unfazed, moving only to lift a small glass coffee mug to his lips.

Local 99 has the backing of United Teachers Los Angeles, whose board to support the service workers if they struck by not crossing the picket line.

On March 15, Local 99 and UTLA will hold a joint rally at LA City Hall. 

Last month, by unanimous vote, the 78-year-old representative of Board District 5 was elected president of the Los Angeles Unified Board of Education. She last held the position in , before moving on to stints in city and state politics and academia. 

In an interview with The 74, Goldberg discussed both long-term and immediate difficulties facing the district, saying that negotiations with the unions representing LAUSD’s teachers and service workers would be resolved “in the next four to six weeks.” Her statements echo superintendent Alberto Carvalho’s recent promises of “a multi-year contract” that will “offset the pressure of inflation for all our workforce.”  

Goldberg must also lead the board in deciding how to spend the district’s $14.3 billion in a way that addresses the emotional and academic impacts of the pandemic and prepares for a future of declining enrollment and swelling costs. 

Goldberg spoke with The 74 about these challenges, her goals for her one-year term as president, and her thoughts about superintendent Carvalho as he approaches one year on the job. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Are you confident that the budget you’re going to craft can accommodate demands from the labor unions? Let’s start with the service workers. 

…I am absolutely confident that we will conclude successful negotiations with all our bargaining units [including UTLA and SEIU Local 99], in probably the next four to six weeks — without any strikes or work stoppages… 

This board is very supportive of very good compensation packages because we know that the folks that have worked in our schools and in our offices have been through a lot of distress, and we want them to know that they are valuable to us and that they are the critical features of the district…There aren’t going to be any cuts to their benefits. That’s not where we’re looking. We need those people. The people at the schools are the only people who interact with children… 

All of those folks make schools a place of learning and safety for children and young people, and we’re not going to do anything, if we can possibly avoid it, that would lead to anybody thinking of, first, not working for us any longer, second, not helping us recruit for our vacancies, and third, for feeling the need for a work stoppage.

One thing the teachers are asking for is smaller class sizes. In order to achieve that, you would need to hire more teachers.

We’ve held class sizes down this whole year, with schools [that] lost enrollment not losing teachers unless they lost significant enrollment. So class sizes are actually smaller than they’ve been in recent years…I don’t think we will need to hire people to continue that because, unfortunately, in the entire state of California and in Los Angeles Unified, enrollment is declining. 

People are leaving because they can’t afford to live in the state. People are leaving because of immigration policies that have slowed immigration, which was a big part of our increase in population through the eighties and nineties and the beginning of 2000.

And also the birth rate in Los Angeles County is down considerably from what it has traditionally been. So all of those factors mean that we will have fewer students next year than we have this year…

Are you saying that natural demographic shifts will resolve that one point of tension between the district and the teacher’s union?

I doubt that it will ever resolve that point of contention. But I do think it will mean that the actual teaching experience for teachers in our system will be with significantly smaller class sizes than they have had when we were growing enrollment. 

I want to ask about enrollment decline. What is the board doing to make attending LA schools more attractive? 

It’s really done school by school, but we do a lot of things to make school more attractive. We have a very large sports program. We have a very large music program, and a growing music program. We have a very large arts program that is now beginning to grow again…We have festivals of cultural types all over the district. We have dual-language programs. We have programs with robotics. We have programs with STEM, we have programs with STEAM…

Are those making a dent in the enrollment decline?

I think so. We have a fairly significant number of schools in my board district with an increased enrollment this year. A lot of them in Southeast and South Gate. Huntington Park and Bell. Those schools are full and filling up. MACES Academy has a waitlist. Southeast Middle has a waitlist. 

There are different efforts being done regionally. There are different efforts being done at individual schools. And there are different efforts that the board is paying for, like extended transportation after school so that more students can participate in after school fun activities.

We’re coming up on a year since superintendent Carvalho came to the district. How would you say he’s doing?

Well, I think he’s doing pretty well. He will get a formal evaluation sometime in early February. We have a process we’ve developed and board members have been asked to review some materials and to rate him on certain issues, and all of that will be gathered at a closed session sometime in February…But I would say he has done some very important things very quickly. Certainly getting us a strategic plan, which the district has not had for many years…And very quickly when he came in, he set up ways to get feedback and information from the public…as well as staff…

He certainly has taken up the issues that are most important to this board, which are the social-emotional crisis in many of our schools, with many of our students, and some of our teachers. 

He also is pointing to real goals — specific, measurable goals in student achievement, and also how to support our personnel so they feel like this is the best place they ever wanted to work and to be able to help us recruit for still vacant positions… 

What are some areas for improvement for the superintendent?

I’m really not able to say that I have any at this moment…what he is doing is taking a look at not just the present, but the history and the future of this district…I have never seen a superintendent take a backward look at everything that has been going on as a way to understand how to move forward. 

It came out that [the cyberattack in September] started more than a month earlier than was disclosed by Carvalho…Is Carvalho trustworthy?

He’s trustworthy. He did what was necessary to protect this district. Making things public at a time earlier than he did would have endangered all of the efforts of the federal government, the state government, FBI, local police in trying to stop this. 

We are one of the very few districts that has been hit hard by this stuff that paid no ransom and managed very carefully to also protect all our payroll, for example. We lost nobody. They got no payroll information with all the Social Security numbers, for example. They got none of it. In fact, the only Social Security numbers they got were from the original place they broke in, which was Facilities. And that was with a few contractors.

There was some student information. Not Social Security numbers, but things like birth dates that were accessed. Right?

Yes. There were other smaller things — none of which, however, could prevent us from opening the schools, running the schools, paying people on time and appropriately. So I would say, considering what a terrible mess — and we’re not done with it, by the way. We still, every day, every week, every month have a series of checks that are being done…

I know a lot of one-time funding is going towards academic recovery efforts and there were these two acceleration days over winter break. Only about 9% of students in the district showed up. Do you see that as a success?

But about 65% of the ones that showed up were exactly the kids we were looking for. And we learned a lot. We learned that elementary kids are less likely to go to get help at a school they don’t regularly attend.

We learned that we should count on about half the students showing up — we figured that it would be 75% [of students who signed up]. We predicted wrong. In other words, we learn. So how we do the next two [acceleration days] in spring will be better.

How else should the district be tackling academic recovery in order to attract the students who didn’t show up for acceleration days?

We’re going to probably accelerate the amount of after school on your own campus with your own teacher support. That’s something we’re looking into for the following year. Saying…let’s see if we can do it two or three days a week all year long.

So, extended after school programs.

Extended after school, Saturday programs, additional teacher assistants we hope to hire to put into the classroom, so there’s a lower adult-to-student ratio. That makes for a lot of extra help for kids who are struggling. I spent 17 years teaching in Compton. I’m well aware of what it takes to make movement with kids who are struggling in school.

What about recovery for students with disabilities?…I’ve heard from a lot of parents and advocates that during [individualized education plan] meetings, the team is not bringing up compensatory education…Is that acceptable?

I have no idea if what you’re saying is accurate or not. So, without knowing that I can’t answer that question.

What specifically can the district be doing for students with disabilities, who are going to need way more than just some extra after school time?

Well, the [individualized education plan] will determine their individual needs and the district will meet them. That’s our goal. We don’t have any subordinate goal to that. We don’t say we’re going to try or anything else. We’re going to meet them. 

We had trouble meeting them [early in the pandemic] because, for example, all the kids that needed speech — most of the speech teachers went online. The parents didn’t want to do speech online. They wanted it in person, and we weren’t willing to require speech therapists to meet in students’ homes. So yes, they didn’t get it. You’re right. That was terrible. But it was a decision the parent made not to do that…

What we’re trying to do now is to overdose. So if [the students] were going to get [the services] once a week, we’re going to try to see if we can get it for them twice a week and things like that…

We’re going to try to figure out ways to deal with that loss, which has been extreme. No doubt.

How would you describe the district’s financial health?

Well, on the macro level, not good. On the micro level, fine. 

On the macro level, we, every year, spend more than we receive. And the two areas which bust our budget, is special education — which is about a billion dollars from the general fund that should not have to come from the general fund — and are benefits paid to retirees. Both the healthcare benefits that we pay to retirees and pension benefits that we pay part of and that the employee pays part of. Both of those put us in a long-term situation of having to ultimately…not be able to do what we have done for many, many decades, which is to pay the existing bills and to keep putting off some of the things that we haven’t yet figured out how to rectify.

On July 16, Tony Digrazia, director of labor relations for the district, told union leaders, “We see a need for live video, need a defined school day, and would like to see the workday mirror or parallel a regular workday.” He added that the district “can’t shortchange the students.”

Under the existing collective bargaining agreement, teachers typically worked an eight-hour day, with two of those “off-site” — for example, grading papers at home. The union, however, wanted the entire workday last fall to last no more than six hours and rejected a stipulation that teachers make themselves available to parents during out-of-class time.

“I don’t think it’s reasonable for us to write language, that you need to make yourself available,” Gloria Martinez, vice president of United Teachers Los Angeles, said during a July 31 Zoom session, according to a transcript of the meeting. “Our teachers have been making themselves available 18-20 hours a day. … It’s a little bit insulting to assume we will not do what is best.”

Ultimately, the district agreed to a six-hour workday, on average, with one hour and 15 minutes of that time to be used “at the discretion of the teacher.”

Transcripts of the negotiations provide a rare glimpse into district-union dealmaking during the most tumultuous school year in recent history. The discussions and email exchanges that took place between July and December were turned over as part of brought by a group of parents against the district and the union. Affiliated with Parent Revolution, an advocacy group, and Innovate Public Schools, a nonprofit, the plaintiffs argue that a series of “side letter” agreements made since the beginning of the pandemic violate the state’s guarantee of a basic public education. Side letters are agreements between the district and the union that occur outside of their existing contract.

In Los Angeles, Superintendent Austin Beutner touts the district’s efforts to create a large-scale COVID-19 testing program, upgrade air filtration systems and provide over 100 million meals to students. But Seth Litt, Parent Revolution’s executive director, said Beutner gave the union the upper hand on teacher time.

The district “wanted something very different, and when they lost, he just went out and sold the loss to the public,” Litt said. “Families in the public are saying, ‘Who is making these decisions?’”

With 30,000 teachers in the district, the two hours less per day adds up to 10,800,000 “teacher hours that could have been used in some way — teaching, training, planning, calling students,” he said.

Some observers are linking lost instruction time to a drop-off in academic performance during the pandemic. Analyses of national assessment data show that students in the elementary grades, especially English learners and those from low-income families, have made far less progress in reading and math than they would have in a normal school year. A recent report showed 20 percent fewer kindergartners are on track to learn to read, compared to this time last year.

No ‘mandate to be aggressive’

The L.A. dynamic contrasts with that of the nation’s two other largest school districts. In Chicago, for example, the mayor and superintendent took against the Chicago Teachers Association that almost led to a strike. The union agreed to a K-8 reopening plan earlier this month, but some continue over bringing high school students back. And last week, New York City schools Chancellor Meisha Porter and United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew joined Education Secretary Miguel Cardona at a reopening summit to talk about their collaboration. The relationship is less cordial in Los Angeles, where schools remain closed, and Cecily Myart-Cruz, president of the union, has criticized Gov. Gavin Newsom for using funding incentives to accelerate reopening.

The district and the union declined to comment on the transcripts, but Nick Melvoin, a Los Angeles Unified board member, said many of the families demanding that schools reopen were the same ones who walked the picket lines with teachers who went on strike for six days in early 2019. Beutner, he said, didn’t necessarily think he had “a mandate to be aggressive” and that the district’s relationship with the union, now two years later, is “still a strained one.”

Referring to the Chicago not to return to classrooms, Melvoin said Beutner “didn’t think the disruption of opening schools and not having teachers show up was in the best interest of students.”

The Chicago and New York districts, unlike Los Angeles, are under mayoral control. In those cities, “You’ve got a leader that directly represents constituents,” said Bradley Marianno, an assistant education professor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. “There is a lot more public pressure on the elected leader.”.

Marianno the influence of unions on reopening decisions this year. He found that COVID-19 hospitalization rates had no impact on reopening, but that support for former President Donald Trump or  collective bargaining were both more significant predictors of district decision-making.

“It’s all about partisanship and union strength in these reopening conversations,” he said.

The larger political context matters, said Paul Hill, a professor at the University of Washington and founder of the Center on Reinventing Public Education. The Chicago Teachers Union, he said, is likely as confident as the Los Angeles union because of its strong position following its 2012 strike against former Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

And in New York, the UFT “has been able to stay out of the way while [Mayor Bill de Blasio] and [Gov. Andrew Cuomo] sniped at each other on school opening,” Hill said. “I’m betting they get more aggressive as Cuomo and de Blasio both become lamer ducks. My bottom line is that the three unions are not that different, but their day-to-day tactics are affected by larger political events.”

‘Don’t want to lose our parents’

Not surprisingly, the topic of parents came up frequently in negotiations, transcripts show.

On July 23, Digrazia said, “We got beat up pretty good by parents” over “teachers getting full pay and not putting in [a] full day.” He was referring to an April side letter that reduced the teacher workday to four hours last spring once schools closed.

Alison Yoshimoto-Towery, the district’s chief academic officer, noted concerns about not wanting to “grow a generation of nonreaders” and said parents were for improvements in distance learning. “Don’t want to lose our parents,” she said.

But Jeff Good, the union’s executive director, encouraged the district to defend teachers instead.

“When people push back about March, April, the best approach from the district is to say our teachers were heroic, and they were trying to triage,” he said.

At the same time, he admitted his son “had a teacher who I think mailed it in. Basically gave reading assignment and writing assignment and barely interacted.”

On July 24, Good called the district’s multiple references to parents “annoying.” Other leaders suggested that parent opposition was largely coming from wealthier families.

Julie Van Winkle, the union’s secondary vice president, said complaints over lack of instructional time stemmed from “parents with computers.” Grace Regullano, who handles research for the union, said “lower-income [parents] said they are satisfied” and that “people with an agenda” were the ones talking about last spring’s distance learning agreement.

Those comments bothered Vicenta Martinez, who has a second grader in the district and is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

“They mentioned that we are privileged, that we are affluent,” she said. “That really caught my attention. I worked at a recycling center. Even at home, I didn’t have a computer.” Martinez is now unemployed.

‘A big curve ball’

The district wanted teachers to work from their classrooms so they could have access to whiteboards and other displays. Because students wouldn’t be in the room, Digrazia said on July 23 that he didn’t see the move “as a health, safety concern,” according to transcripts

But Good was unconvinced.

At the time, Los Angeles was seeing a midsummer surge in cases, scientists had detected a new variant of the disease in southern California and Newsom was tightening restrictions on indoor activities.

“This is a big curve ball to drop in our lap. We [are] not convinced of the [efficacy] of teachers going into campus. Probably a hair away from going into some stay-in-place order. Without any clear pedagogical value to send out teachers.”

In July, the district also wanted to get a jump on developing a hybrid plan even if COVID-19 transmission rates were still too high for students to return right away. But Arlene Inouye, the union’s treasurer said, “Hard to hear about hybrid without hearing about health and safety; it is going to create a problem.” Ultimately, Good submitted a proposal without any reference to a hybrid schedule.

Now that a hybrid agreement is in place, a small group of elementary schools and early childhood centers is slated to reopen April 12, with the rest of the elementary schools scheduled to open their doors a week later. Middle and high schools are scheduled to reopen at the end of April.

In a March 22 district survey of families, only about came out in favor of in-person learning. Those most likely to stay remote live in Black and Hispanic communities hardest hit by COVID-19, while families in less-impacted areas plan to return to schools at twice the rate — a pattern seen in other across the country. Some parents who aren’t ready to come back with children in the district.

To Litt, the hybrid agreement continues to cheat elementary students out of a full school day. Daily instruction — both in person and remote — will be cut down to three hours, either in the morning or afternoon. Middle and high school students returning to school will only have “Zoom in a room” because the latest side letter prohibits teachers from simultaneously teaching remote and in-person groups. By contrast, teachers in nearby will provide face-to-face instruction to students in those grades.

In a district with the most charter schools in the nation, Yoshimoto-Towery’s concern that more families will leave Los Angeles Unified is not unfounded, Marianno said. Like others across the country, the district has seen sharp , dipping below 600,000 students last year.

He added that the strike in Los Angeles — part of a teacher labor movement that began with a statewide walkout in West Virginia in early 2018 — was about adequate funding for schools. Those who marched with Los Angeles teachers have different concerns now.

“Now we’re talking about actual disruption to school for a long period of time,” Marianno said. “Parents have an ability to separate their beliefs about teachers from their beliefs about teachers unions.”