The 140-member UTLA Bargaining Team met with LAUSD on Wednesday, May 28, over Zoom for the eighth bargaining session on the Win Our Future platform.

Our schools are in a recruitment and retention crisis, with 2,200 vacancies this semester. To address it, UTLA members have proposed fixing the broken salary schedule by building a new pay scale that attracts new teachers, rewards each year of service, and results in an average wage increase of 21% over 2 years.

After receiving the salary proposal three months ago, LAUSD still has no response.

Shockingly, in bargaining LAUSD acknowledged they have a recruitment problem, admitting they cannot fill vacant Special Education positions requiring a moderate to severe credential. But instead of addressing the problem by creating good working conditions and well-paid positions, they actually proposed to increase the class size for the Autism Alt Curriculum classes.

In the same bargaining session, LAUSD rejected dozens of specific proposals developed by educators to address real problems faced every day in our schools. 

LAUSD’s proposals:

• No increase in prep time
• No paid parental leave
• No protections against program cuts, reductions, or subcontracting
• No funding for basic supplies like crayons and pencils
• Nothing to address the substandard working conditions of HHS professionals
• No movement on 90% of our staffing and class size proposals

The UTLA Bargaining Team will meet on Saturday, May 31, to develop a response to LAUSD on every issue and discuss a plan of collective action to use our power as 38,000 educators to force LAUSD to respect us, our work, and our students. The next bargaining session with LAUSD is scheduled for June 17.

LAUSD’s outright rejection of so many of our proposals indicates that we should prepare for a massive escalation in the fall. We will take it step by step, but ultimately we will be prepared to do whatever it takes to force LAUSD to meet the demands that educators voted to fight for and the community stands behind.