LA teachers reach deal to end strike

After more than a week of picketing and bargaining sessions, teachers and staff at the nation’s second-largest school district will return to classrooms Wednesday.

Officials at the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) announced Tuesday that they had reached a tentative agreement that includes higher pay, smaller class sizes, more support staff, and community-based schools.

“For a city that embraces the idea that public education matters, that children matter, that teachers matter, today is a day full of good news,” Mayor Eric Garcetti said at a joint news conference with LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner and UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl.

The announcement put an end to five days of negotiation facilitated by the mayor’s office, with the latest being a 21-hour marathon bargaining session that wrapped up just before sunrise Tuesday, Garcetti said.

Beutner said Tuesday marks a new chapter in public education for the district.

“The strike nobody wanted is now behind us,” he said.

Beutner said he is committed to strengthening the voice of educators and to “invest every nickel we have in our classrooms while maintaining the fiscal solvency of Los Angeles Unified”.

But he also noted that the funding problem that the district has been facing could not be solved so easily.

“The issue has always been how do we pay for it? That issue does not go away now that we have a contract. We can’t solve 40 years of underinvestment in public education in just one week or just one contract,” he said.

According to the LAUSD, the tentative agreement includes: 6 percent salary increase (3 percent in 2017-18 and 3 percent in 2018-19); a reduction of class size by four students in Grades 4 to 12; an increase in nursing services at every school; an increase in library services at every secondary school; and new counselors at secondary schools.

The district will also spend $175 million in 2019-2021 and $228 million in 2021-2022 for staffing and class-size reduction.

As part of the agreement, the Board of Education will vote on a resolution calling on the state to establish a charter school cap and the creation of a governor’s committee on charter schools at its next meeting, the union said.

The district also will designate 20 community schools by June 2019 and 10 more community schools by June 2020.

“The creativity, innovation, passion, love, and emotion of our members were out on the streets, in the communities, in the parks, for everyone to see,” Caputo-Pearl said.

“Public education desperately needs attention from the city, from the country, from the state,” he added.

Caputo-Pearl said the 34,000 members of his union will discuss the agreement and vote on it Tuesday. He said the decision would be made either later Tuesday afternoon or early evening.

The strike, which started Jan 14, was the first in the city in more than 30 years. It affected over 600,000 students in more than 1,000 schools (kindergarten through Grade 12) and 200 independently operated public charter schools in the district.

Although schools have remained open, only a third of the district’s students attended classes last week.

The LAUSD said it lost an estimated $10 million to $15 million per day because state funding is based on student attendance. The total gross revenue lost from the six days of the strike is $151.4 million.