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Los Angeles: First Day of Strike

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2019 //
37

This just in from UTLA:

JUST IN: Moments ago, Supt. Austin Beutner held a press conference and attempted to minimize the impact of our strike – he told the media that only 3,500 teachers participated.

THE TRUTH: As of now, and with 90% of UTLA chapters reporting, more than 27,000 UTLA members rallied, picketed, chanted, in the first morning of UTLA’s historic strike to take back public education in LA.

With initial estimates, our march from City Hall to Beaudry is well over 60,000 people. Stay tuned for more.

CLICK BELOW AND FOLLOW UTLA

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—
Anna Bakalis
UTLA Communications Director
(213) 305-9654 (c)
(213) 368-6247 (o)
Abakalis@UTLA.net
http://www.UTLA.net
http://www.WeArePublicSchools.org
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Categories Los Angeles

Los Angeles: Black Lives Matter Releases Statement Supporting UTLA Strike

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2019 //
5

Please read this statement released by Black Lives Matter in support of the United Teachers of Los Angeles and their strike for better conditions for teaching and learning.

It reads, in part:

The demands of the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) strike are in direct support of students and parents, and are directly aligned with the four demands of the Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action. It is therefore our duty to stand with UTLA in it’s fight for:

More nurses, counselors, school psychologists, librarians

Smaller class sizes

Less standardized testing

Sustainable community schools

End to privatization and charter expansion

End to criminalization of students through unlawful and random police searches

Categories Los Angeles, Students, Teachers, Union

Arne Duncan Blasts UTLA and Opposes Strike

By dianeravitch
January 13, 2019 //
69

Glenn Sacks, a high school teacher, read Arne Duncan’s editorial blast at the UTLA teachers’ strike and concluded that the former Secretary of Education really knows nothing about conditions of teaching in the Los Angeles public schools.

Obama’s Education Secretary Arne Duncan Slams LA Teachers for Strike 

Sacks begins:

“The closer we get to a strike, the more pressure is put on us to call it off. In a recent article in The Hill, pro-charter/anti-union former Education secretary Arne Duncan criticizes United Teachers of Los Angeles, citing the Los Angeles Unified School District’s alleged financial problems. Yet the neutral, state-appointed factfinder on the dispute contradicts many of LAUSD’s (and Duncan’s) claims.

“For example, Duncan tells us LAUSD “is headed toward insolvency in about two years if nothing changes…It simply does not have the money to fund UTLA’s demands.” But arbitrator David A. Weinberg, the Neutral Chair of the California Public Employment Relations Board fact-finding panel, while noting the challenges LAUSD faces, found that the District’s reserves skyrocketed from $500 million in 2013-2014 to $1.8 billion in 2017-2018. Three years ago LAUSD projected that their 2018-2019 reserve would be only $100 million—it’s actually $1.98 billion. We’ve heard these alarming claims for many years–for LAUSD, the sky is always falling, but somehow it never falls.

“Duncan tells us LAUSD “has an average of 26 students per class. Of the 10 largest school districts in California, only one has a smaller average class size than Los Angeles.” These numbers are disputed by UTLA. Moreover, even if 26 is correct on paper, Duncan should know that student-to-teacher ratios count special education and other specialized teachers who normally have much smaller classes than regular classroom teachers. Class sizes are significantly larger than standard student-teacher ratios indicate.

“At my high school, for example, we have over 30 academic classes with 41 or more students, including nine English/writing classes with as many as 49 students, and three AP classes with 46 or more students. One English teacher has well over 206 students—41+ per class. A US Government teacher has 52 students in his AP government class. Writing is a key component of both classes—the sizes make it is impossible for these teachers to properly review and help students with their essays.”

Duncan makes clear that he sides with management and against UTLA. Betsy DeVos and Duncan are on the same side. Why are we not surprised.

Categories Class size, Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, Los Angeles, Union

Los Angeles: News On the UTLA Strike, Which Begins Tomorrow

By dianeravitch
January 13, 2019 //
27

From the United Teachers of Los Angeles:


MEDIA ADVISORY
Contact: Anna Bakalis, 213-305-9654
Kim Turner, 213-305-9316

UTLA Strike Press Advisory

* United Teachers Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest teacher union local, with more than 33,000 members and thousands more supporters, is poised to lead one of the largest teacher union strikes in the nation’s history, beginning Monday.

* For planning purposes only. Times subject to change, will update media as needed with new info.

* UTLA will provide daily strike updates and briefings which will preview actions for the next day.

* UTLA will stream most events live on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 13
• 4 PM PRE-STRIKE NEWS CONFERENCE
Where: UTLA building, 3303 Wilshire Blvd, LA 90010.
What: UTLA Strike update and planning
Who: Alex Caputo Pearl (UTLA President), Arlene Inouye (Bargaining Chair), and UTLA leaders, joined by parents, students and supporters
MONDAY, JANUARY 14
• 7:30 am: PICKETING & NEWS CONFERENCE
Where: John Marshall High School, 3939 Tracy St, Los Angeles, CA 90027
Who: Alex Caputo Pearl (UTLA President) and officers
Randi Weingarten (AFT President)
Lily Eskelson-Garcia (NEA President)
Arlene Inouye (UTLA Officer and Bargaining Chair)
VISUALS: Teachers, parents, students and supporters picketing with homemade signs
• 10:30 am: RALLY & MARCH
Where: City Hall to LAUSD headquarters
Start: Grand Park, Spring St. in front of City Hall, downtown LA
End: LAUSD headquarters, 333 S. Beaudry
• 2:30-3:30: PICKETING (media availability)
Where: Marianna Elementary School
Who: Teachers, parents and students
VISUALS: Picketing with homemade signs

• 5 pm: NEWS CONFERENCE
Where: UTLA building, 3303 Wilshire Blvd, LA 90010.
Who: UTLA leaders, students, parents and supporters
What: UTLA will give an update on the day’s developments and plan for the next day

For more information, go to the following:

https://wearepublicschools.org

https://www.instagram.com/utlanow/
https://www.facebook.com/UTLAnow/

Categories Los Angeles

Los Angeles: UTLA Sees Big Risks, Big Rewards by Standing Up for Public Schools

By dianeravitch
January 11, 2019 //
14

What is at stake in the looming teachers’ strike in Los Angeles?

This article in Capital & Main provides a good summary.

A teacher walkout would cast the strike as a challenge to the creeping absorption of public schools by charter management organizations.

If Los Angeles’ public school teachers go on strike Monday, they will face off against a school district headed by superintendent Austin Beutner, a multimillionaire investment banker and former L.A. Times publisher with no experience in education policy. Perhaps more important, this strike will play out on an education landscape that has radically changed since 1989, when the United Teachers Los Angeles union last walked out. Foremost has been the national rise of charter schools — which, in California, are tax-supported, nonprofit schools that operate within public school districts, yet with far less oversight and transparency than traditional schools. Only a fraction of charter schools are unionized, a situation preferred by the charters’ most influential supporters, who include some of California’s wealthiest philanthropists.

Read More About the Potential ‘Meta-Strike’

For 21 months negotiations have ground on between UTLA and the second-largest district in the nation. (The Los Angeles Unified School District enrolls 640,000 students.) The more nuts-and-bolts issues on the table include union demands for a 6.5 percent pay raise, a limit to class sizes (that can now hover around 38 pupils per classroom), and a push for more support staff such as nurses and librarians.

Kent Wong, executive director of the University of California, Los Angeles’ Labor Center, notes that UTLA’s demands have moved away from larger raises and toward more funding to alleviate the deep education cuts that have been made over the years.

“It is important to understand the bigger forces at work here,” said Wong, who added that the pro-charter forces have invested millions of dollars to elect a pro-charter majority on the Los Angeles school board to shift resources from public schools to charters.

To be clear, the union is fighting for the survival of public education and against the forces of privatization.

Now is the time for all those involved to decide: Which side are you on? The plutocrats or the working teachers and other educators in public schools?

Which side are YOU on?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Los Angeles, Unions

Leonie Haimson: Teachers in Los Angeles Are Right to Strike for Smaller Class Sizes

By dianeravitch
January 11, 2019 //
19

Leonie Haimson knows the research on class size, and she explains here why Los Angeles teachers are right to strike for smaller classes. The higher the needs of the students, the more they need smaller classes. Yet in our society, only the very wealthiest students attend schools where class sizes may be as low as 12 or 15.

She writes:

Though some people make the claim that class size doesn’t really matter for a great teacher, it does. Research conclusively shows that small classes benefit all students, but especially disadvantaged students of color, who reap twice the benefit from small classes.

In the Hill newspaper, former U.S. education secretary Arne Duncan, who worked under former president Barack Obama, wrote an op-ed in opposition to the strike and in defense of the district’s position in which he made several questionable claims. The first was to support the district’s statement that LAUSD has smaller average classes than any other large California district but San Francisco. He wrote:

“On class size, Los Angeles Unified has an average of 26 students per class. Of the 10 largest school districts in California, only one has a smaller average class size than Los Angeles.”

There is conflicting data on this, but suffice it to say that information on the LAUSD website supports the union’s position that average class sizes are probably far larger than 26 in every grade but K-3, with averages of more than 30 students per class in grades 4 through 8, and more than 40 in high school classes.

She adds:

The argument currently between the union and the district is not about average class sizes but maximum class sizes — and more specifically, whether the district should adhere to any limits on class size at all.

There is a waiver in the current contract that allows the district to ignore any and all class size caps, as long as they claim financial necessity — and the administration has take advantage of this waiver every single year since the great recession in 2009. That year, the district issued massive teacher layoffs, which increased class sizes in nearly every school. Since then, the administration has continued to use this loophole in the contract to unilaterally decide to violate previously agreed-upon contractual caps, despite the fact that the district has experienced budget surpluses for many years in a row.

Haimson is founder of a group called Class Size Matters, and she knows the research better than anyone else I know.

This is one of those common occurrences when teachers know what their students need. And they know it better than the non-educator/equity investor who now is in charge of the Los Angeles schools or the basketball player who used to be Secretary of Education.

Categories Class size, Education Reform, Los Angeles

Los Angeles: Judge Gives Go-Ahead to UTLA Strike

By dianeravitch
January 10, 2019 //
5

The UTLA delayed their possible strike to January 14, while waiting to hear a judge rule on the LAUSD effort to block the strike.

The judge gave her okay today.

Howard Blume writes in the LA Times:

A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge Thursday cleared the path for a Los Angeles teachers’ strike to start Monday.

At issue was whether the union, United Teachers Los Angeles, gave a legally required 10-day notice to the school district that its members would no longer work under terms of the previous contract. This notice provision is included in the contract between the union and the L.A. Unified School District.

Judge Mary H. Strobel ruled that there was no cause before her that would justify an order to delay a strike. On its own, the union had moved the strike date from Thursday to Monday out of concern about a potential adverse court decision.

Attorneys for L.A. Unified had argued that the union needed to start the 10-day period over — at the very least — because its leadership had “encouraged” a strike, something that is not allowed during the notice period.

But Strobel did not take issue with the union’s recent activities and also decided that all notice provisions would be satisfied by the union’s intended strike date.

Categories Los Angeles, Union

Is Los Angeles School District Really Going Bust?

By dianeravitch
January 10, 2019 //
16

Blogger Red Queen in LA lays out the facts. Los Angeles Unified School District is not in a fiscal crisis. It can afford to meet UTLA desmans.

There was plenty of spare change when John Deasy wanted to spend $1 Billion for iPads.

She writes:

“This essay was first published April 3, 2017. It concerns persistent LAUSD budgeting chicanery, and the narrative extended to surround it.

“Nothing has changed; not the past numbers or their variance from future projections, not the unfolding reality which reveals how conservative planning shortchanges immediate needs. Suffused with fear and doubt, stakeholders are distracted from the means to realize the democratic entitlement of a truly public education. It is the responsibility of educators and their managers, to spend funds designed to educate children on educating children.”

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Funding, Los Angeles

Los Angeles: UTLA Moves Strike Date to JANUARY 14: CORRECT DATE!

By dianeravitch
January 9, 2019 //
12

Sorry for the typo in the headline. I have been writing and editing all day and my eyes are weary.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Anna Bakalis, 213-305-9654
Kim Turner, 213-305-9316

UTLA announces January 14 strike date

While we believe we would eventually win in court against all of Austin Beutner’s anti-union, high-priced attempts to stop our legal right to strike, in order for clarity and to allow members, parents, and our communities to plan, UTLA is moving the strike date to Monday, January 14.

“Unlike Beutner and his administration, we do not want to bring confusion and chaos into an already fluid situation,” said UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl. “Although we believe we would ultimately prevail in court, for our members, our students, parents, and the community, absent an agreement we will plan to strike on Monday.”

As the UTLA bargaining team is back at the table to try to reach an agreement today, our lawyers are fighting Beutner’s desperate legal maneuvers in court. We need to be the ones to offer clarity, since the district has sent out confusing, contradicting messages to members and parents in the last few months.

We know there are tough decisions ahead for the more than 600,000 students and their families impacted by a strike. While every family will make their own decision on whether to send their child to school in the event of a strike, having many parents and allies on picket lines will be powerful and transformative.

UTLA will hold a Facebook live press briefing with Alex Caputo-Pearl, after negotiations, around 5 p.m.

Categories Los Angeles

Los Angeles: No Progress on Negotiations between UTLA and School Board

By dianeravitch
January 7, 2019 //
20

This just in from the UTLA:

OR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contacts:
Anna Bakalis, 213-305-9654
Kim Turner, 213-305-9316

No progress made in bargaining today

LOS ANGELES — UTLA met with LAUSD officials today in the hopes that the district would finally have a meaningful proposal to settle the contract, but the district made yet another unacceptable offer. LAUSD’s latest proposal ties a pay raise to cuts in healthcare for future employees, would actually increase class size instead of lower it, and does nothing to bring more long-term nurses, counselors, and librarians to work with our students.

It’s clear we are still deadlocked over the issues and an impasse between the two parties still exists. Tomorrow, we are in court to fight another anti-union attempt to stop our strike by LAUSD. We have agreed to meet with LAUSD on Wednesday at 9 AM, and we hope that the district brings a real proposal that genuinely supports our educators, students, and communities.

For UTLA’s part, today we pulled six issues from our bargaining package that the district says are “permissive” and claims we are not able to strike over—including important proposals to reduce overtesting and give parents and teachers more decision making at schools. We are disappointed that once again the district is putting up roadblocks to cost-neutral efforts to improve our students’ learning conditions. This is another last-minute, high-priced-lawyer maneuver by LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner. We disagree that these issues are “permissive” and are going to the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) to fight for our right to bargain over them, but for now, to protect our right to strike, we have withdrawn them.

“Austin Beutner once again reveals his disdain for the educators and parents of LAUSD by fighting tooth and nail against proposals to give parents and teachers a greater voice in how their schools are run,” UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl says. “These proposals have wide community support and would not have cost the district a dime.”

Meanwhile, our members were asked to send home Beutner’s letter to students today that claimed UTLA refused to bargain—this while our team was actually at the table with LAUSD. He claims LAUSD is broke, yet he is spending money on hundreds of thousands of letters with inaccurate and false information and dares to ask our members (98% of whom voted to strike) to distribute the letter. Beutner did this after telling teachers we can’t talk to parents, which is the subject of a pending unfair bargaining charge.

UTLA is planning to be in court tomorrow to fight another attempt by Austin Beutner to stop our potential strike. Last week, the federal court threw out Beutner’s attempt at an offensive special education injunction to stop a strike, and we expect PERB to dismiss his request for another injunction based on unsubstantiated bad faith bargaining claims in the next few days. This third attempt at an injunction is based on a disingenuous claim that UTLA did not give sufficient notice of our intent to strike.

We are fighting to keep our strike date of January 10 but we are ready to shift to Monday, January 14, if LAUSD’s pursuit of this technicality is allowed to stand. We wish Beunter would spend as much energy trying to reach an agreement as he does employing his high-priced lawyers to try to thwart our right to advocate for our students and strike if it comes to that.

Categories Los Angeles
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