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. 

����Ӱ�� 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 �䲹�����������’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 �䲹�����������’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.

�䲹�����������’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������������Dz�,” 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, �䲹�����������’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, �䲹�����������’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: . 

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.