United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) is set to strike alongside Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles (AALA) Tuesday, April 14.

UTLA is bargaining with the district for increased wages, more funding and staffing for special education, lower class sizes, and funding for more counselors, psychologists, and psychiatric social workers.

After nearly 14 months of contract negotiations and going through the motions of bargaining, declaring an impasse, mediation, fact-finding and authorizing a strike, UTLA hosted a rally at Grand Park in Downtown Los Angeles to raise union spirits and to announce the date for the strike. 

Before the rally, teachers and staff were hopeful that so many people coming together would show the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) that teachers and staff are standing together and are willing to strike if LAUSD does not come to the table and agree on a tentative contract. 

Social studies teacher Ahsan Minhas was optimistic about the rally.

”I think the goal of the rally is to show the district that teachers, students, and community members are fed up with the district not prioritizing schools and spending the district’s money on outside contractors that really don’t benefit our schools and hoarding money for a rainy day instead of using it on improving our schools,” he said. “I’m optimistic that if we have a good turnout, it will lead the district to write and come to a fair contract agreement with all the different unions and avoid a strike.”

Biology teacher Julia Bare was also hopeful that the rally would send a message to the community. 

“I’m hoping that the rally has a real emphatic show of solidarity,” she said. “The main goal is to show LAUSD that you can’t continue to take money from our kids, but ultimately I want this to not just be about showing the district that. We want to show each other that and we want to show the city of Los Angeles that we are here advocating for our students.”

Social studies teacher Taylor Vivanco said that despite the fact that some students want the strike to happen, he was still hopeful that it could be avoided. 

“I know a lot of students are really wanting us to go on strike but I would actually hope that the district sees the unity that teachers have and that a contract could be negotiated before we have to go on strike,” he said. 

Biology teacher Emma Hirji-Johnson thought that the rally would be helpful but would not eliminate the need for a strike. 

“I’m hopeful but I don’t think that this rally is going to completely negate the need for a strike,” they said. “I think that the rally is going to show a lot of solidarity but I think that the district itself is a beast that we are constantly battling with to make our jobs easier and to make our jobs more sustainable. There is so much work that needs to be done and the district is not going to budge on every single need that we have.”

Bare was counting on a large turnout at the rally. 

”I’m excited because it’s always a really edifying experience. It feels like community and it feels like solidarity,’ she said. “I’m also nervous. I hope that there’s a lot of people there.”

Bare’s hopes were answered. According to UTLA, over 30,000 people attended the rally in Grand Park.

At the rally, Venice’s UTLA chapter chair Drake Witham said Venice teachers do not want to strike, but are willing to if it means improving conditions for both themselves and their students. 

“They would rather be working but if they need to, they will be out there and they will be fighting for the conditions that make educating our students much easier and make it a better job,” he said. 

Social studies teacher Taylor Vivanco mentioned a statement often shared between teachers. 

“Something we’ll often say is ‘the teachers’ working conditions are the students’ learning conditions,” he said. “We’re asking for a lot of stuff that will benefit us as teachers but that will also ultimately benefit our students as well.”

The rally was filled with music and speeches and concluded with the announcement of the strike date: April 14. The rally was attended by UTLA members, SEIU members, AALA members, students, parents, and community members. One attendee was Los Angeles City Council District 11 Candidate Faizah Malik whose campaign was endorsed by UTLA on that same day. 

“I want to make sure that all working people in the city of Los Angeles make enough to have a decent living here for their families and have a good, dignified job,” she said. “Our educators are so critical to the next generation so we have to make sure our educators are cared for.”

Malik said she was honored to be endorsed by UTLA.

”I love to be the educator’s choice in this race,” she said. 

Throughout the bargaining process, both LAUSD and UTLA have posted consistent updates on their website about the progress of contract negotiations. Beginning March 30, LAUSD began posting Labor Updates on their Instagram (@laschools). 

In an April 7 statement, LAUSD wrote, “We continue to meet with our labor partners and remain committed to reaching an agreement that supports our students, employees, and school communities.” 

LAUSD wrote that they are ensuring that they are prepared in case of a work stoppage. If a work stoppage does occur, they plan to offer food distribution, technology support, mental health resources, continuity-of-learning resources, and community-based child care options.

Principal Yavonka Hairston-Truitt said that there is currently no information on if schools will continue to operate and how students will be affected if a strike does occur. 

“If the date we are striking is the 14th, we’d have to have some answer before the 14th,” she said. “I would assume that by 11:59pm on the 13th, I’d get an email and some update.”

Hairston-Truitt said the decision on if schools would remain open or not would come from the district and depends on which unions are striking. She said the district has multiple options for how to ensure learning is not suspended. One of the options is asynchronous learning. 

“If they close the school and all the kids are learning at home, they’re learning without the personal touch of having teachers,” she said. “When learning in asynchronous atmospheres, learning gaps start to show up.”

If AALA or SEIU are not on strike, LAUSD also has the option to open schools which is what they did in the 9-day UTLA strike that occurred in 2019. 

“A layout which has happened before is administrators and other unions are not on strike and they will open the school,” Hairston-Truitt said. “When that happens, the number of students to staff ratio is not even close to being able to ensure instruction. During the last major strike, I taught math to 200 kids at once.”

Many students are showing support or interest in the strike. 

“Students know that we as teachers were negotiating and trying to fight for our rights and also fight for students’ rights,” Vivanco said. “A lot of students have expressed things like ‘get that bag’. I also know that some students are just hopeful for a day without school but either way, I am glad that students are very supportive.”

Witham thinks it’s important for students to care about the strike. 

“This is not about a money grab for teachers,” he said. “This is about making education the strongest it can be for students.”

Witham says that outreach and showing up at the picket lines are the best ways to support teachers and staff on strike.

”The number one way to help is reaching out to the board members,” he said. “They’re all available at the LAUSD school board. Email them, urge them to ask the acting superintendent to settle. Number two—if they want to walk with us, that would be great.”

If a strike occurs, Venice teachers would begin each day in front of the school and may go different places in the afternoons such as LAUSD headquarters or other schools to connect with other strike participants. 

“We’ll be here in front of the school every morning,” Witham said. “We’ll be in a couple of different spots around different gates trying to make sure that people don’t go in. We’re not going to block roads, we’re not going to get hit by cars, but we’ll have our picket signs and let people know, ‘You shouldn’t be crossing this picket line. We’re doing this for the betterment of education.’”

Hairston-Truitt thinks students should focus on continuing to learn rather than involving themselves in the strike. 

“I don’t really want students to be involved in what I’m doing about what I think my work conditions should be,” she said. “I need you worried about learning and I need me to worry about my work issues. If I go and walk, I need to know you’re still learning or it’s all for naught to me.”

UTLA has a lot of issues that they are bargaining for. Minhas highlighted what LAUSD is currently doing and what he thinks they need to do to improve.

”The district is using austerity measures where they’re trying to get teachers to do more with less and that almost never works,” he said. “You need to fund schools properly and adequately. You need to pay teachers a salary that allows them to live in the neighborhoods where they work so that they can stay in their jobs and not have to do a second job, not have to commute two hours to work, not have to sacrifice having children so that they can stay close to their school sites.”

 For Bare and Witham, the most important issue is keeping teachers in the profession and incentivizing young teachers to continue teaching. 

“To me, what is most important in this contract is retaining teachers and getting new teachers a fair wage,” Witham said. “What really hurts our teaching profession is the high turnover. In class, you can tell if a teacher has experience. As the union head of Venice, my job is to make teachers want to come here and want to stay here.”

“I think one of the biggest things to include is making sure that there is an incentive for new teachers because right now teaching is one of the lowest paying jobs you can go into if you’re a college-educated person, and if you’re a college-educated person, why would you go into a field where you can work so hard for less money?” Bare said in November. “I hope that the district sees how important it is to invest in schools and that one of the best ways they can invest in schools is by investing in teachers and keeping them in the profession. If you can’t keep teachers in the profession, schools continue to suffer.”

For Teacher Emma, funding special education and inclusion classrooms is incredibly important. 

“I’m an inclusion teacher which means I co-teach with a special education teacher in 4 of my 5 academic classes,” they said. “We’ve been seeing a lot of cuts to special education teachers and paraeducators. They are not getting the support or the job stability that they need to continue showing up for our students who really do need them. The public school system is not built for students with learning disabilities.”

Teacher Emma said legislation like the Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) have improved accessibility for disabled students but are not enough. 

“We truly need to support the programs that are working even harder towards supporting disabled students like the inclusion programs that we have here at Venice,” they said. “This is my first year teaching inclusion so it’s been a learning experience, but it’s something that I really enjoy and feel very passionate about. I think that the district needs to do more to support teachers who actually want to do this work and also to make this work sustainable for teacher who want to do it but don’t feel like they have the energy or capacity to.”

Hairston-Truitt is willing to sacrifice some of AALA’s demands to be at school. 

“I’d rather be here with you than even get some of the things that I want,” she said.

In an email

On April 9, a bargaining update was sent to UTLA leadership after a bargaining session. They wrote that LAUSD was behaving differently in that day’s bargaining session than they had in previous bargaining sessions and that UTLA would continue bargaining for their essential demands.

They ended their message with a bolded red statement: “If LAUSD fails to deliver on the remaining core issues, we strike on Tuesday, April 14, for our schools, for our students, and for each other. “

There will have been another bargaining session Saturday, April 11. 

An agreement can be reached at any time and Witham continues to hold out hope.

“As I’ve been saying for a year–I don’t want to go on strike,” he said. “I am holding out hope until the very last minute that they can reach a deal so we can focus on doing the jobs we want to do.”