The nation’s second-largest school district in June approved a $18.8 billion budget, avoiding layoffs by tapping into retirement money for teachers. School officials said it was necessary after the end of federal COVID relief money, and less state funding tied to falling enrollment. 

LAUSD’s school board passed the budget unanimously. But the influential union that represents 35,000 teachers and educators in LAUSD, , wasn’t happy. 

The union opposed the new financial plan because it doesn’t anticipate the UTLA is pushing.

“Stability means staffing that is experienced, familiar, and trusted,” said UTLA President Cecily Myart-Cruz at a board meeting in June. “We need a budget that raises salaries. We need to recruit and retain educators.”

UTLA has been fighting for increased salaries for years — and the union scored a , with a contract that raised teachers’ pay by 21% on average. However, that contract expires in 2025, setting up another round of tough negotiations. 

Carvalho said he sympathized with the teachers’ union, but LAUSD has never received the federal and state money it needs. “Those are the culprits,” Carvalho said. 

Carvalho said he would not allow any furloughs or layoffs this year. But he and the board will reconsider staffing cuts when they take up the budget again in December, he said. 

“No one is losing their job. But we do have a problem for FY27, and we will be revisiting this issue,” said Carvalho.

Meanwhile, Joseph Williams, Executive Director for the non-profit Students Deserve and a partner with the Police Free in LAUSD Coalition, said the groups opposed the district’s new budget because it contains funding for school police. 

“We are definitely of the opinion that absolutely no educational positions should be touched before every single police position is eliminated,” Williams said. 

Some demands from Williams’ groups and the teachers union were realized in the new budget.

For example, UTLA’s Myart-Cruz urged Carvalho to make funding cuts to district operations and off-campus consultants in order to preserve funding for teachers. 

Carvalho made moves to honor that wish, reducing central operations funding by $200 million. 

The district then redirected that money to projects supported by the union and community groups such as Williams’.

Myart-Cruz and others had asked the district to fund projects including the Black Student Achievement Plan, student centers, early education, LGBTQ+ support groups, and arts in schools. 

In Los Angeles, the school board is expected to vote this fall on a measure that could significantly limit the practice, known as co-location. 

And in New York, the United Federation of Teachers a judge’s Aug. 11 that allowed Success Academy, a large and high-performing charter network, to open new schools in two district facilities.

“In both New York City and L.A., the general relationship between traditional public and charter schools is not great, so asking schools from these two different sectors to share a building could be contentious,” Sarah Cordes, an associate professor at Temple University who has studied co-location, told ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ. “If schools view each other as competitors rather than collaborators, it will make co-location challenging.”

Charter schools have long faced challenges securing facilities and financing renovations. California voters that requires districts to provide facilities for charters, including through co-location. shows the policy can work if district and charter leaders are willing to compromise, and can even benefit district students. But such partnerships are hard to come by in cities with strong teachers unions, where disputes over issues like parking and access to the gym can spark resentment between charter and district families.

Co-location bubbled up as a major issue in United Teachers Los Angeles’s strike against the district in 2019. Following the strike, board President Jackie Goldberg and fellow Board Member Nick Melvoin pushed through a $5.5 million on facility upgrades that could make co-location more tolerable, such as designated entrances for charter students and staff and separate drop-off and pick-up areas. But that wasn’t enough to overcome the argument that charters take space away from district students.

For Board Member Rocio Rivas, who wrote the proposed resolution with Goldberg, the current proposal is a step toward fulfilling a promise to her supporters during last year’s campaign. In an interview for Jacobin, a , she called co-location ”a cancer that comes in and then metastasizes and spreads.

A draft of the resolution says the practice “has a tangible negative impact” and would require Superintendent Alberto Carvalho to write a new policy that would prohibit co-locations at the district’s 55 , which offer food pantries, health clinics and other services for families. The resolution, which the board is expected to discuss Sept. 19, would further bar co-location at the district’s 100 low-performing “priority” schools and those targeted by the .

Those special programs shouldn’t displace charter students who need classrooms for “core educational coursework,” wrote the California Charter School Association. The group would consider suing the district if it moves forward with the policy. The association has over the issue before. The proposal, the group says, would lock charters out of at least 236 schools and impact 28 facilities that are currently co-located.

Charter parents said animosity toward their schools, including outside the school gates in recent years, has affected students. 

“It’s simmered over into the community,” said Angelica Solis-Montero, who has two children at Gabriella Charter School, which shares a campus with Logan Elementary in the Echo Park neighborhood. “These families shop in the same places; they access the same public resources. One group of students has been pitted against another group of students.”

But charter advocates aren’t the only ones opposed to the proposal as currently written. Twenty-six organizations, including Educators for Excellence Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Urban League, wrote a letter to the board, saying the resolution is filled with “hateful rhetoric.” 

“The charter fight is over. [Charters are] under enrolled. They’re not growing,” said Ana Teresa Dahan, managing director of GPSN, one of the nonprofits that signed the letter. “We need to really focus on improving the experience for kids in all our public schools.”

‘In limbo’ 

Co-location is a more recent policy in New York. A 2014 permits new charters or those adding grade levels to access space in district buildings. But in allowing Success Academy to move into those two buildings, UFT said New York Supreme Court Judge Lyle Frank didn’t consider a that sets caps on class sizes, putting an even greater premium on available classrooms. 

While the dispute focuses on just two schools, it exemplifies the challenges that arise when multiple schools occupy the same building.

Ken Zhang, principal at Success Academy Rockaway Park Middle School, said it’s taken about four years to get a permanent site. Until this year, his students shared a building with another Success Academy elementary and two district schools. Now they’ve moved into P.S. 225 in Queens, site of the district’s Waterside Leadership School. 

“We were in limbo at every turn,” he said. Co-location can work, he said, when principals are clear about what’s important to them — for him, it’s access to the stage for his theater students — but are willing to bend in other areas. “I’m not going into these meetings looking to take space away from their kids.”

But Elli Weinert, a district music teacher and one of the plaintiffs in the UFT lawsuit, said just because a building has unused space doesn’t mean it’s suitable for young students. She teaches at Professional Pathways High, one of three small schools serving high school students or adults in the Frank J. Macchiarola Educational Complex in Brooklyn. 

Success Academy Sheepshead Bay, a K-4, moved into a space in the Macchiarola complex previously occupied by another high school. 

“We do need something in that space,” said Weinert. “But it was built for the young adults in that neighborhood.”

She’s not opposed to co-location in general. Staff and students from the four schools within the Macchiarola complex, she said, learned to accommodate each other “like roommates.” 

“At first it wasn’t easy — four different schools with four different visions,” she said. “We’ve been able to work through some difficult stuff.”

Sharing space with a charter can actually boost math and reading performance among students in traditional schools, according to research Cordes published in 2017. 

But she agreed that given the practical challenges co-located schools face, it can be hard to “maintain a unique school climate.” 

“I’m not sure anyone has created a framework for how to make this kind of arrangement successful,” she said. “There needs to be a lot more work done in this area.”

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 °ä˛š°ůąš˛šąôłó´Ç’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 â€” 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 łÜ˛Ôžą´Ç˛Ô’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.

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 łÜ˛Ôžą´Ç˛Ô’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 łÜ˛Ôžą´Ç˛Ô’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.

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 łÜ˛Ôžą´Ç˛Ô’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 łÜ˛Ôžą´Ç˛Ô’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.

The executive director of Great Public Schools Now, an advocacy organization, hoped the district would pick someone from the community, not an outsider from 2,700 miles away. But so far, the charismatic educator who led Miami-Dade for 14 years has won her over. She called his efforts to talk publicly about next year’s budget “refreshing” and applauded his move to add to the school calendar to tackle student learning loss. 

“He has shown bold and decisive leadership quite early,” she said. 

That sentiment is echoed by observers from union leaders to parent groups in the nation’s second-largest school system. Since he started, Carvalho has tried to rally the city around a district that is 100,000 students over the next decade. On social media, he plays the role of cheerleader and one-man hype machine, applauding student and celebrating this year’s graduates while pushing for more options to attract families. 

But for Carvalho, whose tenure began on Valentine’s Day, the honeymoon is likely to be short-lived.

Some worry that state test scores, due later this year, will reveal further pandemic-related decline. And with hemorrhaging enrollment, he’ll soon need to make tough calls about closing schools and moving staff. That could put him on a collision course with the district’s notoriously tough teachers union as it prepares for upcoming contract negotiations. 

Ben Austin, a long-time parent advocate in the district, said Carvalho “seems to have found his initial footing,” but added that the leader’s first big test will be at the bargaining table.

“He will have to defy history by navigating a labyrinth of powerful special interests in order to actually put the children of Los Angeles first,” he said.

As Carvalho prepares to release his vision for the district, he said he has spent many of his 14-hour days visiting nearly 70 schools and interacting with 6,000 students, employees and community members in an effort to present an accurate picture of the challenges ahead.

In a wide-ranging interview with ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ, he described LA’s educators and principals as committed but stymied by a system that hampers their ability to address problems ranging from teacher vacancies to broken air-conditioners.

“The connection between supervision, expectation and outcome is weak,” he said. “That’s where I think there is a significant vulnerability that we need to overcome.”

Financially, he’s negotiating conflicting realities. The district still has $2.5 billion in relief funds to spend. But °ä˛š°ůąš˛šąôłó´Ç’s first budget will be aimed at preventing the system from falling off a so-called fiscal cliff in a few years when that money dries up. 

In April, he described the scenario as “Armageddon.” But during a May 17 board meeting, he offered a more positive spin, saying students should expect “enhanced” services.

“This is the right time to join LAUSD as a parent and employee,” he said. “No one should be thinking the sky is falling.”

Those words comforted board member Jackie Goldberg.

“We are not about to go under. We are not going to stop doing things for kids at schools,” she said. “We just have to find a way to restructure the budget so that as the money declines, it does not impact the things we care about most.”

‘Thorough’ reviews of closures

Some parents are already anxious about not knowing whether their child will need to move to a new school. Dena Vatcher, a parent in Los Angeles’s Westchester neighborhood, sends her younger son to Orville Wright Middle School STEAM Magnet, which now occupies a newly renovated site with a refurbished library and robotics lab. 

The district had tentative plans to relocate the school — which has a larger Black population than most L.A. middle schools — to Westchester Enriched Sciences Magnet, a high school campus. The charter schools now sharing that site would take over the Wright location.

The proposed switch didn’t sit well with Vatcher and other Wright parents who see it as a victory for charter schools that would get the upgraded facility. The plan appeared to be on a fast track until Carvalho came on board. In January, he , “This issue will be thoroughly reviewed.”

“He does know what’s going on, and has not greenlighted the move,” she said. “I’m encouraged that he came in and said, ‘We’re going to look at this.’ ”

During his tenure in Miami-Dade, Carvalho closed roughly 16 schools, he said. But he dislikes the option unless he can offer families something better in return. 

“If you close the school, you extinguish the only safe haven for kids in many neighborhoods. You shut down [what] may be the only playground … the only area where kids have connectivity,” he said. “Before you do that, you really need to check many boxes.”

At the same time, he takes issue with the state’s— and especially Los Angeles’s — practice of allowing charter schools to co-locate in buildings with traditional schools, which he calls “divisive.”

“Once you have five different schools in one single building with five principals and only one building facilities manager, it is a recipe for disaster,” he said.

While allows charters to occupy unused space in district schools, Carvalho said he wants to first look in his “own front yard and backyard” to reduce the friction.

‘Asking for a lot’

°ä˛š°ůąš˛šąôłó´Ç’s team is also about to enter into contract negotiations with — a process that proved contentious under his predecessor, Austin Beutner.

The union is proposing a 20% raise over the next two years, smaller class sizes and $5,000 retention bonuses for counselors and other support positions. They argue that with roughly $3 billion in , now is not the time to be making cuts 

Those negotiations will “be a challenge for him,” said Pedro Noguera, dean of education at the University of Southern California, who has known Carvalho since he was an assistant chief in Miami. “They are a strong union, and they are asking for a lot.”

But Carvalho said many of their proposals, such as lowering class sizes and adding more counselors, “resonate” with him, and he expects to be able to “carve out common ground” as the process moves ahead. 

Leaders of UTLA did not respond to requests for an interview. But Nery Paiz, president of Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, which represents principals, likes what he’s seen from Carvalho so far.

“He’s no nonsense,” Paiz said. “He knows things that work because they have worked in the past.”

Carvalho has imported a process he used in Miami to address what he calls the district’s most “fragile,” low-performing schools. Principals and their supervisors meet with Carvalho and top district leaders to examine achievement data on a “dashboard,” discuss staffing needs and identify successful practices other schools can adopt.

“He’s very focused on the right stuff,” said Tanya Ortiz Franklin, a member of the district’s school board, who frequently visits classrooms with Carvalho. With shifting COVID rates, he had to make some tough early decisions about lifting a and delaying a . Even so, she added, “He prioritizes student outcomes. He doesn’t push them to the side because we’re in a pandemic.”

He has also taken personal responsibility for some students — more than 40 who were chronically absent during the pandemic — and donated $8,000 from his early paychecks to provide some with scholarships. One mother he contacted told him her daughter was in foster care and not to call again. A high school student who had been missing classes told him he takes care of two younger siblings who are also missing school.

The student told him: “‘I’m so sorry. Are you really the superintendent? Can you help me?’ ”

Carvalho said he’s limited in addressing housing costs that are pushing families out of Los Angeles and combating a homelessness problem that has become so pervasive, children are encountering “unclothed individuals” outside schools. 

He’s already from the Los Angeles City Council to relocate homeless encampments away from school grounds and child care centers. 

“Everybody keeps asking me, ‘What’s your solution for declining enrollment? What’s your solution for [kids in poverty]?’” he said. “Seven-year-olds don’t wake up one day in the morning and tell parents, ‘You know, I’m leaving L.A.’ The issues we’re dealing with are a reflection of economic conditions that exist in this community.”

The Los Angeles Unified Board of EducationĚýĚýto delay its vaccine mandate for students 12 and up until next fall. The district was facing the possibility of transferring 34,000 unvaccinated students into an already understaffed remote learning program called City of Angels.Ěý

Leaders of the district’s administrators union were concerned about the potential loss of staff if schools lost more students.

Los Angeles Unified students 12 and over may have until next fall to comply with the district’s vaccine mandate — roughly nine months after the original Jan. 10 deadline, officials announced Friday.

The first large school system in the nation to mandate COVID-19 vaccines for students, the district is facing roughly 34,000 students who will not be fully vaccinated by the original deadline as well as concerns from parents and administrators over the surge in enrollment in the district’s remote learning program.

The plan would push thousands more unvaccinated students into an independent study program, which is already struggling to meet at a time when the district, like many others, has major . Under the contract with the union, teachers only provide remote instruction when students are in quarantine. But teachers still have flexibility in how much they interact with students learning at home.

Board members will discuss delaying the deadline at their meeting on Tuesday, when they also plan to ratify the contract of Miami-Dade superintendent Alberto Carvalho to lead the district’s schools.

Pushing back the deadline will “hopefully lessen the stress on administrators in terms of the possible number of students they may lose,” said Nery Paiz, president of the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles. 

When the nation’s second-largest school district announced its mandate three months ago, jumping out in front of vaccine requirement, some predicted it would spark a ripple effect in other districts across the country.  

With the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lowering the age for booster shots to 16, the Biden administration and state leaders continue to strongly encourage families to get their children vaccinated. are now considering whether to add COVID-19 vaccines to the list of immunizations needed for school, and many parents and educators say more mandates are inevitable. But at the local level, officials are still up against vaccine resistance — and sometimes refusal — among parents.

On Friday morning, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Los Angeles Unified should “fine tune” its policy to keep students in the classroom. Unvaccinated students in are facing a similar deadline.

Parent advocates suggest the Los Angeles district might have moved too quickly without a back-up plan.

“We hope the district anticipated a level of vaccine hesitancy and has drafted plans to protect every child’s right to receive a high-quality education,” Katie Braude, CEO of Los Angeles parent advocacy group Speak UP, said in a statement. She added that the organization is concerned about the virtual program’s “ability to expand this quickly to meet the needs of 34,000 more students and the domino effect of teacher displacement on kids remaining in the classroom.”

October from the Kaiser Family Foundation showed that vaccination rates among 12- to 17-year-olds have slowed down, with half of parents saying their child is vaccinated or will be soon. The survey was conducted before the vaccine for 5- to 11-year olds became available , but at the time, less than a third planned to jump at the chance and another third said they would wait to see how it was working. The remaining parents said they definitely would not be getting their children vaccinated.

‘Outside the scope’

Interim Superintendent Megan Reilly said the district “applauds” the more than 85 percent of students who are in compliance with the mandate. “This is a major milestone, and there’s still more time to get vaccinated,” she said in . 

The L.A. board’s decision could set up a confrontation with the district’s powerful teachers union. United Teachers Los Angeles “made the demand [for the mandate] at the bargaining table,” according to its statement in support. 

But the district didn’t meet their demand. The contract ratified in early October only requires the district to “make every effort” to test unvaccinated students and staff weekly for COVID-19. According to the district’s statement only unvaccinated students would have to continue weekly testing after January.

Student vaccine mandates are “outside the scope of bargaining negotiations and teachers unions know this,” said Bradley Marianno, an assistant education professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. But with 500 Los Angeles Unified for not complying with the employee vaccine mandate, UTLA would likely want the district to “hold firm” on its deadline for students, he said.

A union spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.

Leslie Finger, an assistant professor of political science at the University of North Texas, said unions have had to perform a delicate balancing act to satisfy their large and diverse memberships.

When it comes to adults, “the unions have had to appease both the pro- and anti-vaccine membership, which I think has led the national unions to come out with somewhat tepid endorsements of vaccine mandates,” she said. “For students, however, I think unions can be more firmly pro-vaccine mandate because the policy doesn’t require anything of members who oppose getting vaccines themselves.”

Some opponents of student vaccine mandates have launched legal challenges, that shots for younger students still don’t have full U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for ages 16 and up received full authorization in August. 

But on Wednesday, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge said he is leaning toward denying from parent groups to halt the district’s mandate. And in against San Diego Unified, the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals last week allowed the requirement to stand. The plaintiffs are asking for religious exemptions. 

Let Them Choose, an initiative of anti-mask mandate group Let Them Breathe, has also filed against San Diego. A hearing is set Dec. 20 in San Diego Superior Court. And the organization plans to file a lawsuit against a Los Angeles that issued its own vaccine mandate, said Sharon McKeeman, the organization’s founder. 

“No family should be coerced into making personal medical decisions, and no student should feel enticed or pressured into getting vaccinated without parental consent,” she said. “The district has created a huge logistical and legal issue for itself by unnecessarily trampling on students’ rights.”

‘Relentless family engagement’

Mike Magee, CEO of Chiefs for Change, said he didn’t think the challenges Los Angeles is facing would discourage other superintendents in the network from “pursuing every possible avenue to full community vaccination.”

“Whether districts require the vaccine or not, high vaccination rates will depend on a relentless family engagement effort along with simplicity of access to the shot,” he said.

Alma Farias of Los Angeles, who has custody of her niece Cindy, an 11th grader, said she is among those who had initial reservations about the vaccine. But her concerns were outweighed by the prospect of Cindy getting sick after returning to in-person learning last spring.

She said she can sympathize with parents who are holding out. 

“There are a lot of things probably going through their minds right now,” she said in Spanish through an interpreter. “Parents are still processing all the information that is out there, and they’re still processing everything that is going on with this pandemic.” 

Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez is among those who would like to see vaccine mandates for students and said he’s talked to the Chicago Teachers Union about it. But he said he’s not quite ready to issue a mandate for students because Chicago health officials advise waiting. 

Once the FDA grants full approval of the vaccine for younger students, that will “help our medical professionals feel more comfortable,” he said.

But he also thinks the federal government should take the lead on student vaccination mandates. Leaving it up to states, he said, means variants like Omicron are likely to spread, as long as families travel to places where a smaller percentage of the population is vaccinated.

The district has been under pressure from its teachers union  to implement “ across our schools” and to meet vaccination targets for students. But Martinez said access to the vaccine is not the problem: Regional clinics across the city offer the vaccine and 23 schools have on-site vaccination centers. 

“We’ve never had a day where we didn’t have enough supply,” he said.

According to city data, two thirds of children 5 and up are vaccinated, but among 5- to 11-year-olds, less than 10 percent of Black children and about 12 percent of Latino children are vaccinated. 

“Parents are either hesitant or there’s no urgency,” he said. “We still have to figure out what information our parents need.”