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. 

ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ 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.”

With rain falling this morning, teachers marched, volunteers braved the elements to assist with meal pickup sites, and local institutions made accommodations to welcome some of the 400,000 students who may have had nowhere else to go today. 

A brief collage of what this morning looked like with no schools in session: 

A Los Angeles public school playground stands empty as Los Angeles public school support workers, teachers and supporters walk the picket line.

LAUSD tweeted this statement early Tuesday morning:

The Los Angeles Rams defensive lineman Aaron Donald and other community members spent the morning assembling packed meals for LAUSD students.

What happens to the kids while schools are closed? The district posted student activities and resources to Schoology:

Many Los Angeles institutions opened their doors to parents in need of childcare. The Department of Public Social Services shared a free, drop-in recreation program from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. across 16 Los Angeles County parks for students to attend through Thursday:

The Natural History Museum of L.A. and Zoo also stepped in to provide free admissions for parents scrambling to find plans.

And this reporter noted more kids out than usual while on a grocery run:

Outside of Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools, a signs reads “School resumes Friday, March 24” as UTLA President Cecily Mart Cruz addresses a press conference.

Bookmark this page to follow rolling strike updates from LAUSD.

But there are no sides to pick. What there is is a labor problem that needs to be solved and an education-interruption problem that must be avoided at all costs – namely closing schools and disrupting the education of 420,000 students.

Families throughout the district need the adults to sit in a room and get to a resolution so that their children can be in school and continue learning.

For many families, their urgency is more than we can ever imagine – these are the families whose kids were already struggling pre-pandemic and are further behind now because of school closures. And these are parents, many of them LAUSD/SEIU employees, who will struggle to find and pay for child care or go without pay to stay home with their children.

Our families want LAUSD to be fair and respectful to its employees – they want a good contract with living wages. They also want to see good faith negotiations, which means SEIU needs to return to the bargaining table to hear what more LAUSD will offer and keep negotiating until a resolution is reached.

But, above all, our families want their schools to deliver on the promise of a good education. They want their kids to learn to read, to be critical thinkers, to go on to college if they choose, be prepared to succeed in life, to be happy and healthy.

They desperately want to see more progress by a system that has denied too many children – especially low-income children, English learners, foster kids, special needs kids, and children of color – the opportunity to reach their dreams and aspirations.

We will never deliver on this dream if we close schools. That option should never be on the table. What we must do is work together to end poverty wages – starting by immediately returning to negotiations – and hold each other accountable for delivering on the promise for our students.

Our families expect no less and our students deserve better.

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 °ä˛š°ůąš˛šąôłó´Ç’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.

During an afternoon press conference, Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said the two sides were never able to be “in the same room,” but that the district’s latest offer of a 23% raise was still on the table. “We’ve run out of time,” he said.

After Alberto °ä˛š°ůąš˛šąôłó´Ç’s first three months as superintendent of the Los Angeles schools, Nery Paiz, president of the district’s administrators’ union, predicted the job would only “get exponentially harder.”

He was right. 

Thirteen months into his post as chief of the nation’s second-largest district, the former Miami-Dade superintendent has had to contend with , and a cyberattack that exposed students’ mental health records. Now the district’s two largest unions are poised to walk off the job for three days, closing schools for the system’s 430,000 students.

Service Employees International Union Local 99, which represents roughly 30,000 custodians, cafeteria staff, bus drivers and other service workers, announced the strike last week. United Teachers Los Angeles, also in contract talks with the district, is joining in support. 

Last week, Carvalho braced families for another disruption.

“You deserve better,” he said in a statement. “Know that we are doing everything possible to avoid a strike.”

But some education advocates say Carvalho — who never faced a strike in his 14 years as Miami-Dade schools superintendent — hasn’t done enough to avert the work stoppage and may have underestimated the strength of California’s labor unions. While observers give him credit for trying to polish the district’s image and fill teacher vacancies, they say reaching an agreement with the employees who served meals, sanitized schools and delivered devices to students’ homes during the darkest days of the pandemic should have been one of his first priorities. 

“This is a defining moment for the superintendent and for LAUSD. This is a union town and that’s a huge lesson,” said Elmer Roldan, executive director of Communities in Schools of Los Angeles, a nonprofit that serves many students whose parents are Local 99 members. “When we were praising school employees for their bravery, this is who we were talking about.”

Local 99’s leaders say their three-day stoppage is technically not about money. The union called the because they said supervisors have tried to prevent or retaliate against them for participating in union meetings. They were offended that Carvalho referred to the union’s organizing activities as a “circus” in a that was later deleted.

On Sunday, the state’s Public Employment Relations Board from the district to seek a court order to prevent the strike. The agency’s general counsel is still considering the district’s allegation that the strike is illegal. Officials contend the union hasn’t exhausted efforts to resolve its differences with the district.

°ä˛š°ůąš˛šąôłó´Ç’s , made Friday, is a one-time 5% bonus for 2020-21 and a 19% raise spread over 2021-22 though 2024-25. But the union, whose members earn an average of $25,000, wants a 30% increase, increased staffing levels and more full-time work. 

They argue that with almost $5 billion in reserves, the district can afford to meet their demands. But district financial data shows that all but $140 million of that money is spoken for. Carvalho has also warned of an impending fiscal cliff — “A°ůłž˛š˛ľąđťĺťĺ´Ç˛Ô,” he called it — as and federal relief funds run out. 

Local 99 has been without a contract for nearly three years, but relations with Carvalho began to sour after he rescheduled four optional “acceleration days” to help students catch up from learning loss due to school closures. Originally scattered throughout the school year, Carvalho moved them to coincide with winter and spring break after UTLA pushed back.

Local 99 leaders said they weren’t consulted and that almost half of their members wouldn’t be able to work on those days. They filed an in October over the move, calling it “disrespectful” and a violation of collective bargaining laws.

Carvalho, meanwhile, said during a Wednesday press conference that Local 99 has not responded to the district’s last two offers. Jackie Goldberg, the school board’s pro-union president, said she’s confused by Local 99’s determination to strike even though the district was willing to increase the offer.

“This is the first time since I’ve been doing this that there’s been no back and forth,” she said. “That’s not negotiation. It makes me very disappointed.”

The district declined to make Carvalho available for an interview.

‘Relatively rare’

Unlike Local 99, UTLA hasn’t reached an impasse yet and was in a with the district on Friday over its demand for a 20% pay increase. 

The teachers union’s involvement in this week’s strike, however, could complicate the narrative that the action — and another disruption for families — is primarily about demanding respect and wage increases for low-wage workers. 

State law allows one bargaining unit to go on a with another union, but Bradley Marianno, an assistant education professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said it’s “highly unusual,” for a teachers union to join a walkout with non-teaching employees.

“They may issue statements of support, but to join in strike is a different, and relatively rare, matter,” he said. UTLA, he said, “can jump in and leverage it to influence their own bargaining negotiations without much fallout in terms of public perception.”

The joint walkout is further surprising because the two unions are often at odds politically. Just last fall, they supported different candidates for a highly contested seat on the school board. UTLA’s candidate Rocío Rivas, defeated Maria Brenes, who was backed by Local 99.

The solidarity over the strike, however, doesn’t mean there’s no division in the ranks. Paiz, the administrators union head, said he thinks some UTLA and Local 99 members will report to schools this week along with the administrators, secretaries, plant managers and others not on strike. The unions, he said, are “portraying 100% buy-in from both groups, but I don’t think that’s the case.”

Even so, °ä˛š°ůąš˛šąôłó´Ç’s troubled relationship with the two unions makes it tougher for him to keep the district moving toward the set last year, including 70% of students earning a C or higher in college-prep courses and increasing the percentage of third graders proficient in reading by 30 percentage points.

“This unprecedented moment has consequences beyond the relationship between the district and its labor partners,” said Ana Teresa Dahan, managing director of GPSN, the advocacy organization formerly known as Great Public Schools Now. “The successful implementation of the strategic plan is potentially at stake,” she added, as staff and families try to “navigate the tensions.

Board member Tanya Ortiz-Franklin said the board has given Carvalho the go-ahead to negotiate “a significant raise” and she said Carvalho has been handling the situation “prudently.” But she acknowledged the need for repair.

“There are important lessons to be learned about communication and respect that I hope can be used to improve relationships crucial to serving our students, families and employees,” she said.

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, °ä˛š°ůąš˛šąôłó´Ç’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 ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ, 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 °ä˛š°ůąš˛šąôłó´Ç’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 ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ 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.

SEIU Local 99 announced on Feb. 11 that the strike authorization had passed with 96% support from members who voted. The authorization does not guarantee a strike but allows the union’s bargaining team to call one if necessary. The union’s first state-run mediation session with LAUSD is scheduled for Feb. 21. 

If LAUSD workers, parents, and administrators agree on one thing it’s that nobody wants a strike.   

Earlier this month, the union representing Los Angeles Unified’s service workers — including 30,000 custodians, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, and special education assistants  —  issued its clearest threat to date in its years-long contract negotiations with LAUSD, announcing that it would hold a strike authorization vote this month. 

SEIU Local 99’s members regard the prospect grimly. Earning an average annual salary of $25,000, many said they could not afford to forgo a paycheck.

Yet, between now and Feb. 10, they plan to vote in favor of the work stoppage. 

“We’re having a hard time making it,” said Hugh Alston, a special education assistant at 93rd St. Elementary. “I would reluctantly have to vote yes. All of us. We’d stick together.” 

Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said at a press conference earlier this month that concluding contract negotiations with Local 99 was his “highest priority,” and promised to “offset the pressure of inflation for all our workforce” with “a multi-year contract that will, at all levels, outpace what has been provided to other workforce groups across the country.” 

“If we are to retain, incentivize, and recruit the highly skilled workforce we need as far as teachers and support staff, we need to provide adequate compensation that addresses the critical challenges facing anyone in this community,” he said.

LAUSD offered the union 5% wage increases for multiple school years, but union leaders called that insufficient, accusing the district of ignoring proposals regarding increased work hours and expanded health coverage. 

Though financially padded for the current school year, LAUSD officials expect budget cuts over the years to come, with persistent absenteeism and , the latter due in part to exasperated parents fleeing the district. Families still recovering from remote schooling and other pandemic disruptions worry that a strike could be the “nail in the coffin” for LAUSD. 

“I can absolutely tell you that one more major disruption like that, that’ll be it,” said Christie Pesicka, a parent advocate in the district. “Enrollment will plummet again.”

An LAUSD spokesman declined to comment on how the system would respond to a strike, refusing to lay out a backup plan for services like bussing, food prep, cleaning, and after-school programs. He also would not say if the district was considering remote schooling. 

What is clear is that workers are angry. In an interview with ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ, Local 99 executive director Max Arias described the union’s rally in front of the district’s administrative headquarters in December as “militant.” 

“I fully expect that it’s gonna go through,” he said of the strike authorization vote. 

The union’s members have been working without a contract since June 2020. 

Initially, that was because of the pandemic. While teachers and administrators carried out their duties remotely, many service workers kept at their on-site tasks, cleaning facilities and preparing sack lunches. Little time, said Arias, was left for collective bargaining. 

Negotiations resumed with the easing of COVID restrictions, but the two parties have been at  loggerheads. The district’s latest move came in December, when it offered the workers a 5% wage increase for each of the 2021-22, 2022-23, and 2023-24 school years and a couple of one-time bonuses. 

Local 99 characterized the offer as , and in late December declared impasse before California’s labor relations board and requested a mediator to shepherd the parties towards an agreement. 

“To date, LAUSD is not engaging in good faith negotiations regarding proposed contract

language changes,” reads the request for mediation. “Ever since we started this process, LAUSD has not seriously considered most of our proposals.”

Workers say poor conditions, a lack of respect, and resulting staffing shortages harm morale and threaten the smooth operation of school facilities, making some of them unusable 

“We have urinals, toilets — we have sinks — that haven’t been serviced in two years,” said Edna Logan, a building and grounds worker at Manual Arts High School in South Central LA. “It’s across the board where we are low-staffed.”

Logan said she plans to vote yes on authorization even though she doesn’t “want it to come to that.”  

“We have to send a strong message,” she said.  

Alston, whose role as a special education assistant guarantees him only six hours a day, works a second job nights and weekends in order to afford the rising cost of living in Los Angeles.

He’s considered leaving the district — and he’s not alone. 

“Oh yes, I’m looking now,” said Elizabeth Thomas-Parker, a special education assistant and vice president of Local 99. “I’m looking at other districts.” 

Thomas-Parker, whose husband supports the family with a second income, said her main demand is more respect for her work.

“It’s so rude and so toxic to where I don’t want to have nothing to do with them,” she said. “It used to be fun to work for LAUSD. It’s not fun anymore.” 

Until Feb. 10, Local 99 representatives will collect ballots from the union’s 30,000 members at designated sites. Meanwhile, California’s labor relations board has assigned a mediator to the case.

Logan, also a member of the union’s bargaining team, wants one thing to come across clearly during mediation: “Without me, without my counterparts, the school would not be able to function.”

Parents, many of them service workers themselves, understand that keenly. According to Pesicka, they fear a reprise of the chaotic remote-learning months. 

“Everybody’s exhausted,” said Pesicka. “It’s so much easier just to go to a neighboring school district, or to go to a charter school, or to go to a private school if you can afford it.”

As Superintendent Alberto Carvalho and the school board met inside the downtown building, custodians, cafeteria workers, bus drivers and classroom assistants — arriving on buses from across the district — waved placards and chanted, “no justice, no peace.”

“I installed air filters to make sure students and staff would be able to breathe clean air in their classrooms while they were there working and studying,” SEIU 99 President Conrado Guerrero said from the flatbed of a truck. “We’ve gone from heroes to zeroes.” 

The two sides have been bargaining since 2020, when the pandemic interrupted negotiations. The 30,000-member SEIU 99 says the district is offering no raise for the 2020-21 school year, a 5% raise for 2021-22 and a 4% increase for 2022-23. Amounting to about $1,000 additional per year for most workers, that’s insufficient, said Max Arias, the union’s executive director. 

“These were the essential workers” in the district, he said. A strike authorization vote would take place in January.

Arias wants minimum wages for members increased from $18.50 per hour to $24. The union’s demands also include more eight-hour days and paid training for bus drivers and those in other positions. “We’re at an impasse,” he said. 

In a statement, the district said, “Los Angeles Unified continues to engage in respectful negotiations with our labor partners. We are committed to compensating our employees fairly in this current economic environment, while also preserving our ability to provide services to our students in a sustainable manner that promotes lasting student achievement.”

Talk of a strike is the latest conflict the district has faced with one of its labor unions. United Teachers Los Angeles opposed °ä˛š°ůąš˛šąôłó´Ç’s original plan to spread four learning “acceleration days” for students throughout the school year. The district rescheduled them for winter and spring break, even though students are now less likely to participate because they’re on vacation. of the district’s more than 420,000 students have signed up for the first two days, Dec. 19-20, according to the district.

SEIU 99 wanted the district to stick to the original schedule because it would have provided members additional work. 

The teachers union isn’t close to a strike vote yet, but members are increasing pressure on the district. Earlier this month, they at multiple locations.

The union went on a in January 2019, with many of the it is making now, such as smaller class sizes, less standardized testing and more nurses, librarians and counselors. The union wants a 20% raise and argues that the district has over $3 billion in budget reserves to cover it.

But on Tuesday, teachers union members were on hand to support SEIU 99 members. 

“We’ve been negotiating for seven months. They’ve been negotiating for three years,” said UTLA President Cecily Myart-Cruz. “It’s about solidarity.”