LOS ANGELES — Students in the Los Angeles Unified School District, or LAUSD, are one step closer to being assured they can still go to school for the rest of the week. The school district has reached a deal with the two unions ahead of a potential strike, including the teachers’ union.
The crisis is not quite over, because that deal doesn’t necessarily mean those teachers will remain in the classroom. Another union is still at odds with the school district and could draw the unions that have struck a deal out to the picket line.
“This is not quite ‘crisis over,’ but I think it’s the big step, and I think the district was eager to settle,” Manuel Pastor, director of the Equity Research Institute at USC, told Straight Arrow News.
New deals
United Teachers Los Angeles, or UTLA, announced a two-year agreement with LAUSD.
The new deal gives teachers a nearly 12% raise, meaning the starting salary for a teacher in the district will be $77,000.
“The flexing of our collective power forced LAUSD to direct significant funding into critical priorities identified by UTLA members in the Win Our Future contract demands,” UTLA wrote on Instagram.
The deal comes with other agreements as well.
“An agreement to hire more counselors, paid parental leave, and some efforts to reduce class sizes,” Jake Rosenfeld, professor of sociology at Washington University in St. Louis, told Straight Arrow News.
That new starting salary is more than $30,000 higher than the national average for new teachers.
LAUSD is one of the highest-paying districts in the country for teachers, and the state of California has the highest average teacher salary at $101,000, according to the National Education Association.
This all comes at the same time enrollment in California schools continues to decline.
“The basic demographics and then the proliferation of charter alternatives means that these agreements, while they certainly reflect what teachers deserve for such a tough job, become increasingly difficult to pay for,” Pastor said.
Another part of the issue is that the cost of living in LA is roughly 50% higher than the national average.
“There’s been some analyses to show that California teacher pay is quite lower than otherwise similar college-educated professionals in California, so they could make the argument that while we might be getting paid handsomely relative to other teachers in other states, we’re earning much less than otherwise similar workers in our high-cost state,” Rosenfeld said.
Late Sunday, the LAUSD also announced they’ve reached a deal with the Associated Administrators of LA, which represents school principals and other management.
“The District reached a tentative agreement with Associated Administrators Los Angeles (AALA)/Teamsters 2010 that increases their members’ salary by 11.65% over two years and a reopener for year three,” the LAUSD wrote in a short news release.
Other union negotiations
However, one other union is still negotiating with the LAUSD.
SEIU Local 99 represents some 30,000 school employees, including bus drivers, custodians, and more.
They’re threatening to strike over similar issues.
“It’s really pay,” Rosenfeld said. “You’re talking about an incredibly high-cost area of the country. And the salaries here, you’re talking mid 30s, lower 40s. And so, for them, it’s about making ends meet.”
The deadline to get the deal done is April 14.
Experts SAN spoke with both said that the LAUSD getting a deal done with the major teachers’ union is a good sign to getting a deal done with the other unions, which has already happened in the case of AALA.
“UTLA is the most powerful of the unions, and so I think that this is actually quite significant, and it probably will give a lot of opportunity for the district to be able to settle with the two other unions as well,” Pastor said.
Strike still possible
If a deal doesn’t get done with the other union, the teachers will likely join them in solidarity on the picket line.
“When the SEIU went on a strike before, the one thing that made that strike successful was the teachers were out in sympathy,” Pastor said.
That strike was in 2023 when SEIU 99 Local workers went on a three-day strike before reaching a deal with LAUSD.
Late Sunday evening, SEIU Local 99 posted a video on Facebook of one of their workers explaining why she is willing to go on strike. At least three comments underneath that post were from UTLA teachers expressing their willingness to go on strike in solidarity.
“They’re being clear that if the other two unions don’t settle by Tuesday and vote to strike, then the teachers will honor their picket lines,” Rosenfeld said.
Rosenfeld believes the district has significant incentives to get the deals done.
“We learned coming out of COVID that keeping kids in school is quite important, and I know the district is well aware of that,” he said.
For parents of LAUSD students, this is something they’re paying close attention to.
While many support the teachers, potentially losing their child’s care during the day has them scrambling.
“You need to make contingency plans now and hope for the best,” Rosenfeld said.
The district has posted advice for parents on its website.
Pastor said all of this is actually representative of a bigger picture in America.
“It’s quite interesting that unions remain quite militant, even with an economy that’s weakening, in a federal government that shifted to the right,” he said. “So, there’s a story here that is about the district, school kids and teachers. But there’s a story here that’s also about the balance of power between labor, government and capital in this moment.”