Last week, 31,000 Los Angeles Unified School District teachers represented by the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) union went on strike for the first time in 30 years.
Substitute teachers and administrators make up a skeleton crew that is keeping schools open, and about one-third of the 640,000 district students are attending class.
The strike is exacting a tremendous toll on parents, many of whom are poor and who must decide whether to take time off of work to care for their children or send their children to grossly understaffed schools.
The issues underlying the strike highlight the challenges facing public school administration, teacher unions and school funding, and shows what must change if U.S. public schools are to increase student achievement.
The strike is about teacher pay, classroom size and increasing the number of school support staff, including counselors, librarians and nurses. But at a deeper level, the strike is really about suppressing the state’s charter schools, which are the major competition facing traditional schools.
Charter schools, which grew out of interest in having public alternatives to traditional schools, began in 1992 and now enroll over 600,000 students within California. Charters have become increasingly popular, and their number has doubled over the last decade. …
Click here to read the full article from The Hill
My feed won’t let me read the rest of the article.There is no jump where it says there is one. The problem seems to be at the CPR main site. I went there but the jump to the rest of the article again did not work
Everyone’s response to this strike should be similar to the response to the caterwauling about the missed paychecks among Fed. employees:
Who … …. cares!
This is the bed you made, now sleep in it.
Nothing prevents laid off workers from getting another job. Economy is good and employers are ready to hire. If they ‘can’t put food on their family table” this is their fault; not ours. They are non-essential workers. They jobs are better handled by contract workers; not more federal full time and fully benefited workers.
The UTLA strike was about adding more $1000 a year union dues to their coffers, demanding a slew of new hires. That is all this was about. It had nothing to do with education or improving the current #45 ranking of our state K-12 system. More teachers, more nurses, more librarians, more counselors — all at $1000 more union dues each, every single year.
No amount of money procured though shifty programs will cure the illness of LAUSD, it’s now septic, the bacteria of greed has engulfed this rotten system of Union and Political malfeasance.
The operative word regarding the future of California: Authoritarianism.