The weekend before the new school year began, RST teacher Joe Shields was getting ready for his eighth year at Marshall High when LAUSD notified him via email that he was being transferred to Venice High, effective immediately. 

“It was disorienting to say the least,” Shields says. “I was being taken from seniors I’d worked with for three years, families I’d built relationships with, and kids I knew well from advisory and home room.” 

The transfer was unexpected — the school had run the class size/ratio numbers under the new UTLA-LAUSD contract, and the enrollment was there for Shield’s position. As an 80-80 inclusion school, Marshall was to benefit from the contract win that calls for a 20:1 ratio for RSTs at 80-80 schools. 

To the shocked Marshall staff, it seemed like the displacement happened because LAUSD was following the old 28:1 ratios and, in fact, a telling email was eventually uncovered. The message, purportedly sent in late August by the LAUSD Special Education department, told principals to use the 28:1 ratio until they received “updated guidance from LAUSD.” If that email is genuine, LAUSD was basically telling administrators to violate the contract. 

“We were proud of the wins for Special Education in the new contract — proud that we memorialized in writing what we knew was good for the SPED community,” Marshall High Chapter Chair Joe Zeccola says. “And then LAUSD goes and does this. This transfer never should have happened.” 

The displacement occurred under the shadow of another disreputable action by LAUSD. Two years ago, Marshall staff agreed to move to the inclusion model with the promise that caseload norms would be 20:1 — but the district later reneged, claiming it was never an official agreement. That led to an educator-led fight in the 2025-2026 school year that saved some Special Education positions. 

Faced with the loss of Shields but this time armed with the new contract language, UTLA members were ready to fight again. 

“We were not going to let it slide,” Zeccola says. “UTLA members had organized and won the language that the district was violating.” 

The Marshall members decided to lean into the grievance process, filing a complaint on Shield’s transfer and pushing the grievance timeline to be as fast as possible. Every RST teacher with ratios even just a little high also filed individual grievances. Even though they could have combined the grievances, they had each teacher file separately to apply broader pressure. 

“While most of us know that grievances often do not solve problems as well as organizing does, in a situation like this, with a blatant violation and a simple remedy — to get our teacher back — a paper trail can be really useful,” Zeccola says. “Our 20-member Chapter Action Team was also ready for next steps if the fight needed to get bigger.” 

Filing grievances can sometimes feel like an attack on the principal, but they are really a tool to defend hard-won contract language. 

“Even when an administrator is an ally, you have to keep pressure on — it’s the principal’s job to communicate upward about issues at the school that need resolving,” Zeccola says. 

And in this case, the pressure worked. In the first informal conference, Shields received notice that he would be returning to Marshall. The news was welcome but complicated. 

“I worked at Venice for six weeks,” Shield says. “You can’t be around kids and not fully invest in them, so it was hard to leave. It was a bad dynamic that didn’t have to happen.” 

Zeccola says that even though Shields is back on campus, the district has not admitted fault, claiming that enrollment numbers and not the contract are what returned Shields to Marshall. 

“My gut tells me this came down to LAUSD wanting to see who fights and who doesn’t,” Zeccola says. “They were hoping to get away with it. If this is happening at other schools, don’t assume you have to take it. Start asking questions, start organizing.”