(CNN) — A massive teachers’ strike calling for millions of dollars more in school funding may have also cost the school district millions of dollars, the superintendent said.
But the Los Angeles teachers’ union isn’t backing down. In fact, it wants to “show such a massive presence that (it) disrupts business as usual in downtown LA.”
An estimated 32,000 Los Angeles teachers and staff members hit the picket lines this week, demanding lower class sizes, higher salaries and more counselors and nurses in over 1,000 schools.
“We have 46, 45, 50 students in a class. It’s unacceptable,” said Andrea Cohen, a teacher at John Marshall High School.
Even though the Los Angeles Unified School District said all students should keep going to school — and possibly be taught by substitute teachers or reassigned administrators — many did not on the first two days.
Only about 1/3 of the usual number of students who go to school on a rainy day actually showed up Monday, Superintendent Austin Beutner said. And because the state funds schools based on daily attendance, day one of the strike was extremely expensive.
“The district on a day like yesterday would lose approximately $25 million in funding,” Beutner said. Of that, the lost wages of UTLA members not at work Monday was approximately $10 million.
Attendance was up Tuesday by about 14,000, or 8% of those absent the prior day, he said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon.
None of that matters to members of the United Teachers Los Angeles union, who are also taking a personal financial hit as they strike.
“I’m not rich. This is a sacrifice for me,” said second-grade teacher Wendy Ron. “I am not getting paid while I’m out here.”
Beutner said he was willing to participate in negotiations.
“If it’s necessary, I’ll be anywhere or anytime with UTLA leadership to resolve this. We want this resolved now,” he told reporters.
‘We just don’t believe those numbers’
The months-long impasse between the UTLA union and LAUSD comes down to two issues: how much money to spend on more school staffing and teachers’ raises, and whether the school district actually has that kind of money.
Beutner noted that an independent fact-finder agreed that the district doesn’t have the money to cover UTLA’s demands.
“The experts have all said we do not have the ability to spend more than we’re spending,” he said.
LAUSD has offered $130 million toward what the union wants, but UTLA rejected that proposal.
The teachers’ union has a whole different take on the numbers.
UTLA says the school district should tap into $1.8 billion in reserves to fund more desperately needed staff members, as well as increasing teachers’ pay.
The superintendent says that the $1.8 billion is already earmarked for education spending during this three-year budget cycle. At this rate, LAUSD said, it might not even have enough money to meet a required 1% reserve by the 2021-2022 school year.
But UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl said the school district has “always been wrong in their projections, so we just don’t believe those numbers.”
“The district’s three-year projections have always been wrong,” Caputo-Pearl said Tuesday. “Three years ago, they predicted a $105 million reserve; they ended with a $1.86 billion reserve. They were off by $1.7 billion.”
But is the union fighting the right battle?
Beutner said the state actually provides 90% of the district’s funding, not LAUSD.
The union president acknowledged that much of the requested money would have to come from Sacramento, and said it’s taking steps to try to get it.
“We have been a big part of the fight for more state funding,” Caputo-Pearl said. “We’re in conversations with the governor’s office — that is a part of the puzzle. But that $2 billion reserve belongs with our students in classrooms. And that’s an LAUSD issue.”
Student calls school a waste of time now
While the adults keep struggling to find a resolution, students are still going to school minus their regular teachers.
With 32,000 educators on strike, LAUSD has hired about 400 substitute teachers and reassigned more than 2,000 administrators to help educate the 600,000 students.
Several parents at the school district’s news conference said their children were watching movies in classrooms all day.
In some cases, students were told to go to the auditorium instead of a regular classroom. CNN affiliate KCBS-TV said students at a South Los Angeles elementary school Monday were outside playing board games.
One student told KCBS that going to school Monday was a waste of time. Another said Tuesday that the impasse was a waste of time, and she needed a quick resolution so she could continue to prepare for the SAT.
Many people wonder why LAUSD doesn’t just close schools, with so many teachers missing. The superintendent said that for many low-income families, school may be the only safe place where children can go during the daytime and get a hot meal.
“I was asked yesterday by someone why I didn’t just join teachers on the picket line, close our schools, and go to Sacramento (to) fight for more funding. Ninety percent of our funding comes from Sacramento, after all. … It’s a fair question,” Beutner said Tuesday.
“Then I thought for a moment about Virgil Middle School and Telfair Elementary School.”
At the middle school, “100% of the students in Virgil come from families living in poverty,” Beutner said. And about 60% of those students went to school on the first day of the strike — much higher than the average for the rest of the district Monday.
At Telfair, about 40% of students came. And about 20% of that school’s children are homeless, Beutner said.
“They came for shelter from the rain. They came for a warm meal and a secure, welcoming environment,” he said. “And yes, they came to learn.”
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