Last month’s three-day teacher and support staff strike has caused many teachers to rethink what they can actually fit into their curriculums. With less than two months left in the year and less than one month until AP testing, teachers are managing to struggle to include various learning topics in their teaching. 

The SEIU Local 99 strike lasted three instructional days. The union reached an agreement with LAUSD, for a 30% pay raise. The branch of SEIU is composed of LAUSD support staff, who all striked along with UTLA members which encapsulates non-administrative staff. 

After this strike, teachers are finding themselves having to remove instruction from their courses to adapt. 

Math teacher Mariah Lara had to cut several sections of her teaching to adjust and accommodate losing days for the strike. 

“When losing three days you have to figure out where to cut out material,” she said. “Three days is probably like three sections if you think about a math textbook, so a good amount.”

Sophomore Pauline Lao is in AP Biology and found herself struggling to learn with the online assignments she had been given during the strike. Her teacher, Julia Bare, also had COVID-19 at the beginning of the semester causing her class to be even more behind. 

“Because of all the added-up days of no teacher, my class needs to fit two units of evolution and ecology that would take four weeks for each unit, now we have to spend two weeks for each,” said Lao. 

“We’re skipping over slides and condensing a lot of the information.”

To Lao, three days of class means a lot. 

Members of UTLA are now boycotting faculty meetings until their contract with LAUSD is reached or the school year ends. The demands of UTLA are to shrink class sizes, fully staff schools, and give educators pay raises.