Today’s the day. Over 30,000 unionized, public school teachers employed by the second-largest school district in the nation are officially on strike. Many of them, by the looks of some Twitter posts, were awake way before dawn, laminating signs and prepping plastic canopies to huddle under because today, strike day, Los Angeles is getting bad weather it rarely gets — heavy rain.
I marched with the picket line at the nearest public school, Hollywood High. Hollywood High is, in many ways, a typical Los Angeles public school. Students are largely Latinx (over 70%), and most are low-income (83% receive free or reduced-price lunches). It’s a big school, with over 1,400 enrolled, which accounts for the rather large teacher and family turnout this morning, despite the downpour. You can’t exactly tell from my header image, but there were lots of kids striking alongside their parents and teachers. They seemed to fully understand that this strike was about much more than a pay raise.
While these teachers absolutely deserve better pay (their ask is for a 6.5 percent increase — one can hardly characterize this as greed), United Teachers LA are also asking for sweeping, positive changes to the school district:
- Smaller class sizes (some classes have over 40 students)
- More nurses and librarians (UTLA wants at least one full-time nurse at every LAUSD school and one full-time librarian for every middle and high school — having nurses at school seems reasonable, doesn’t it? Call me demanding but I think children deserve health care.)
- More social workers, counselors and deans
Perhaps most importantly, UTLA is looking to limit the number of charter schools that are taking over the city. According to Nelson Lichtenstein, a professor of history at UC Santa Barbara, “There are more than 1,250 [charter schools] statewide and more than 200 in L.A., the most and one of the largest proportions in any state. In what was the most expensive school board election in the country, charter backers spent $9.7 million in 2017 to help elect two pro-charter candidates in Los Angeles, flipping what was a pro–teacher’s union Board of Education to one that favors charter schools.”
Enrollment in public schools has declined a lot over the last ten years, with charters partially to blame. When there’s fewer students, there’s less money for the schools. UTLA estimates that charter schools have cost public schools $600 million. We have seen the damage charter schools in New Orleans have done, and why limiting them (and ultimately destroying them) will better serve the most marginalized students. Education should not be a business.
A fight against charter schools is a fight for a strong teacher’s union, a fight to fully realize a truly integrated and equal school system. As I type this, the strikers are assembling to march downtown and hold a rally in front of the LAUSD HQ. The rain shows no signs of letting up, but the strike will go on.