Alex Caputo-Pearl is president of the United Teachers of Los Angeles. He explains why teachers may strike.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-caputo-pearl-teachers-strike-20190106-story.html
He writes:
Teachers in Los Angeles may be forced to strike on Jan. 10.
The Los Angeles Unified School District has a record-breaking reserve of nearly $2 billion that should be spent on its resource-starved students. Yet Supt. Austin Beutner, a multimillionaire with experience in corporate downsizing but none in education, argues that the reserve is already accounted for in future spending, and that cuts should be made. He simultaneously refuses to talk about charter school regulations, calling the issue a “shiny ball” that distracts from the real issues.
District officials have cast the impasse as a funding problem. But at its heart, the standoff between L.A. Unified and United Teachers Los Angeles is a struggle over the future of public education.
Consider the conditions within the district. Class sizes often exceed 45 students in secondary schools; 35 students in upper elementary grades; and 25 students in lower elementary grades.
The district does not have nearly enough counselors, psychologists or librarians to give students the support they need, and 80% of schools don’t even have full-time nurses. Unnecessary standardized testing is pushing the arts and ethnic studies out of the curriculum.
Parents have little say over how funding is spent at their schools. Charter schools, which are operated mostly by corporate chains, have expanded by 287% over the last 10 years, draining more than $600 million from non-charter schools every year. Salaries for educators are low compared to surrounding districts, a significant disadvantage as L.A. Unified tries to recruit and retain teachers during a national shortage.
With the vast majority of our students coming from low-income neighborhoods of color, there is no way to describe the persistence of such conditions other than racial discrimination.
Working together with parents, the teachers union has put forward proposals to address many of these issues. Over 20 months of negotiations, the district has responded with inadequate counter-proposals.
Meanwhile, Beutner has moved ahead with what we believe is his agenda to dismantle the district. Through an outside foundation, he has brought on firms that have led public school closures and charter expansion in some districts where they have worked, from New Orleans to Washington, D.C. This approach, drawn from Wall Street, is called the “portfolio” model, and it has been criticized for having a negative effect on student equity and parent inclusion.
It is for many of these reasons that 98% of L.A. Unified’s educators voted to authorize a strike. Parents are actively supporting the teachers. There were many parents among the estimated 50,000 people who attended the UTLA March for Public Education on Dec. 15.
Beutner has attempted to narrow the issues mainly to salary. Educators will not be bought off. We need a host of improvements for our students.
Beutner has also said that the district doesn’t have reserves that will last longer than two to three years. The reality is that L.A. Unified had a reserve of $1.86 billion at the end of the 2017-18 school year. Its latest budget documents show the reserve growing to $1.97 billion in the 2018-19 school year.
The district warns about a fiscal cliff, but its warnings ring hollow. Three years ago, district officials projected that the 2017-18 reserve would be $105 million. They were off by more than $1.7 billion.
L.A. Unified has also overestimated its spending on books and other supplies over the last five years to the tune of hundreds of millions, meaning more money is available. The district has also failed to collect the full amounts owed by charters that are located on its campuses.
My colleagues and I agree with Beutner on at least one thing: The real long-term solution is for Sacramento to increase statewide school funding. It is downright shameful that the richest state in the country ranks 43rd out of 50 when it comes to per-pupil spending.
We have been working to change this. Beutner should help by supporting legislation to close the carried interest loophole, which has allowed hedge fund managers to inappropriately classify income as capital gains. This could bring hundreds of millions to schools annually.
He should also build support among the wealthy for Schools and Communities First, which closes the corporate loophole in Proposition 13 and could bring up to $5 billion in new annual funding to public schools. This is on the 2020 ballot.
United Teachers Los Angeles’ struggle for a fair contract is just one part of a broader movement for students, families and schools. We will engage in whatever talks are possible before Jan. 10 to avert a strike. But for talks to be successful, the district needs to commit to improve public schools.
I have taught in Compton and at Crenshaw High School. I have been in my own children’s classrooms. And I have visited hundreds of other schools. There is wonderful promise in the students at all of our schools. But although they are surrounded by wealth, students across the city are not getting what they deserve
Enough is enough. Invest in our students now.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
45 students in a class is an abomination.
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Depends on the students–45 cooperative, respectful, hard-working students…under those ideal conditions, class size doesn’t matter. But in the real world, 45 cooperative, respectful, hard-working adults, teens, children….anyone….is a rarity, so in reality, class size DOES MATTER. Touche!
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No, it does NOT matter. I teach in a state with huge class sizes. 45 students is TOO MANY, even if they’re well-behaved. That’s an enormous amount of reading, for one thing.
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that many students also means a lot of student work to correct
When I was teaching, I had an average class load of 34 and not all of the students turned in work but to correct one assignment and record the grades in the grade book could take hours every night. That’s why I worked between 60 to 100 hours a week for most of the thirty years I was a public school teacher in California.
In fact, every school holiday meant more time to catch up correcting and grading. I loved the two weeks off around Christmas and New Year and the week around Easter.
The only time I didn’t work that many hours every week was after the school year ended during the summer months when I wasn’t paid.
In that district we were paid ten months a year and not for two of the summer months. Districts that had similar salary scheduled that paid 12 months a year, spread the salary out over 12 monthly payments instead of 10 and that mean lower amounts on the checks for the same annual salary.
For instance:
A $60K annual salary divided by 10 months paid $6,000 a month before all the deductions.
Twelve monthly payments for the same salary meant the gross pay for each month was $5,000.
Subtract the deceptions and the average college educated teacher isn’t earning that much cash to live off of.
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25 in an elementary classroom is an abomination.
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And 45 students registered into a room which can only hold 35 desks wall to wall adding even more to the insanity. Sometimes I feel as if teachers should skip working with the union/district and go straight to the fire marshal.
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I’ve seriously considered that for my classroom, which isn’t quite 45, but close.
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Here’s another up-to-the-minute L.A. Times article, this one about how UTLA Prez Alex and Supe Beutner “head to church” ( … errr. .. *sort of *…) on the eve of strike:
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-edu-teachers-strike-approaches-20190106-story.html
x x x x x x x x x x
Leaders of L.A. school district and teachers union head to church as scheduled strike approaches
By Howard Blume
Jan 06, 2019 | 8:30 PM
Leaders of L.A. school district and teachers union head to church as scheduled strike approaches
*Members of United Teachers Los Angeles pick up signs and other materials Saturday for a possible upcoming strike after a meeting at the Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)**
Leaders of the Los Angeles school district and its teachers union both went to church this weekend, but their sermons and audiences had little in common as a Thursday strike date approaches.
Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, gave a pep talk to his members Saturday at Immanuel Presbyterian Church, across the street from his union’s headquarters in Koreatown.
Among the faithful filling the pews was Emily Reyes, the union chapter chair for Crescent Heights Boulevard Elementary School in Mid-City.
“It was so fitting that it was in church,” Reyes said. “Walking into that big Gothic church and just taking in the energy, it was very exciting. People seemed very energized. We’re ready. We’re ready to strike.”
Austin Beutner scheduled three church visits Sunday and described in an interview his first stop, at Resurrection Church in Carson, where he spoke for several minutes.
“I said that we have to do the right thing for our students, and I believe the right thing is not to have a strike,” Beutner said. He said he also discussed the importance of adults modeling the civil conduct “that we’d all like to teach to our students every day.”
Representatives of the teachers union and the Los Angeles Unified School District are tentatively scheduled to meet for a last-ditch negotiation session Monday morning. The school district accepted an offer from L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti to hold the meeting at City Hall. Beutner said the fresh setting might help.
But union leaders decided over the weekend against that location. A union spokeswoman said Sunday that the union had agreed to meet instead at school district headquarters, just west of downtown.
Garcetti has offered to play the role of mediator, but the move away from City Hall suggests that he is unlikely to be called in at this stage.
The back-and-forth over the venue was indicative of how the two parties perceive the meeting and how they want the meeting to be perceived.
L.A. Unified officials want to send the message — to the public as much as to UTLA — that they will do whatever they can to stop a strike.
“On our agenda, we plan to bring counter proposals to UTLA’s Last, Best and Final offer,” Robert Samples, the district’s interim labor relations director, wrote in an in email to the union.
Samples said the district would “augment” its team by having Beutner and other senior officials attend the session and invited the union to follow suit with its leaders, assuring UTLA that participants would be cleared to leave their work sites.
“Look forward to seeing you and your team tomorrow,” he wrote.*
The union, on the other hand, has fired up its members for a walkout *— *on the grounds that it would be good for the future of traditional public education.
By declining a City Hall setting for talks, the union appears to be dampening any expectation of a last-minute settlement.
“UTLA will engage in whatever talks are possible to avoid a strike, but the district must be willing to spend a substantial portion of its record-breaking $1.9-billion reserve to serve our students and must engage our full package of proposals rather than dismiss them,” Caputo-Pearl said in a statement Sunday.
The district has offered teachers a 6% raise spread over the first two years of a three-year contract. The union wants a 6.5% raise that would take effect all at once and a year sooner.
But the issues that the union is pressing for go well beyond wages. UTLA also is demanding a significant reduction in class sizes and the hiring of enough nurses, librarians and counselors to “fully staff” campuses across the nation’s second-largest school system. Union leaders have framed their activism as a fight for the future of public education.
Beutner has said that some of the union’s proposals are worthy but that, if accepted, they would immediately push the school district into insolvency.
The superintendent wants as narrow a focus as possible in contract talks. Unlike the teachers, he doesn’t want to deliberate over whether there is too much standardized testing or too little control over privately run charter schools that operate on district-owned campuses.
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Austin Beutner’s “shiney ball” (his incorrect metaphor for corporate charter schools) is a black hole sucking everything in and crushing it.
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Wow! I’m with you on this one. Overworked and underpaid. Been there, done that. It’s the way the powers-that-be insure that government regulators can’t do their jobs properly, and the underclasses stay that way!
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