More than half a million children will miss school next week due to a planned three-day strike in employees of the nation’s second-largest school system, demanding higher wages because of rising inflation and housing costs.
The development comes as the latest round of negotiations between Los Angeles Unified School District schools and a union representing 30,000 of its cafeteria workers, bus drivers and other school staff apparently broke down on Friday.
Called in hopes of avoiding a strike that would close more than 1,000 schools, the negotiations stalled, even after Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said the district was prepared to improve its offer of three consecutive raises in as many years to avoid any closures
The offer was apparently not enough to sway members of the Service Employees International Union Local 99 (SEIU Local 99), which is seeking a 30 percent raise for school staff. United Teachers LA, which represents 30,000 other district employees, will join Local 99 in the strike.
Parents are now desperate for a solution and are pleading with officials to think of the more than 565,000 students who will miss school due to the closures. Several of these children are also unhappy with the interruptions.many of whom have already seen their education interrupted in the course of the pandemic.
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More than half a million children will miss school next week due to a planned three-day walkout by Los Angeles Unified School District employees, who are demanding higher wages due to rising inflation and housing costs. .
Students like fourth grader Talia Ball said they are not happy with the disruptions, after seeing their education interrupted multiple times over the course of the pandemic.
“I’m sad,” said fourth-grader Talia Ball. FOX 11 Los Angeles how she felt about the impending strike, and the strong possibility that she would be forced to miss class on Tuesday.
Asked what she’d miss most while home next week, the Wadsworth Avenue Elementary School student replied with a hopeful smile: “Math.”
His sister Tiana, a first grader at Los Angeles Elementary School, similarly responded, ‘My friends’, after being questioned about the now seemingly inevitable closures.
The sisters spoke to the Fox affiliate on the steps of their school, where their classmates could be seen playing on a nearby playground.
With that being said, come next week.that playground and hundreds of others could be eerily empty, as the nearby streets are still filled with hundreds of homeless people camps that, for the most part, arose during the pandemic.
The current state of the city, along with other Golden State strongholds like San Francisco and San Diego, has tested citizens’ patience for years, and impending closures, coupled with years of rising crime, aren’t helping. .
While citizens are fed up, public school workers in the embattled state, which is currently mulling a proposal that would see an estimated 1.8 million black Californians give away $360,000 in ‘repairs,’ are just as fed up with local government. , leading to the planned strikes that were announced last week.
The development comes as the latest round of negotiations between the district and a union representing 30,000 of its cafeteria workers, bus drivers and other school staff failed on Friday. District workers and other supporters are seen protesting on Wednesday.
Talias’ younger sister, Tiana, a first grader at Wadsworth Avenue Elementary School, responded in a similar way, ‘my friends’, after being questioned about the now-unavoidable closures.
Seen here with Father Hassan, the sisters serve as just two of the estimated 565,000 students who will miss class Tuesday due to workers’ demands for better compensation.
“Workers are fed up with living on poverty wages and having their jobs threatened for demanding equal pay,” SEIU Local 99 Executive Director Max Arais said in a statement last week criticizing the district for not giving in to their demands for an immediate salary increase.
“Workers are fed up with LAUSD understaffing and being harassed for speaking out.”
Arais would then set a date for the three-day procession, which comes on the heels of other protests seen in recent months by his union and the aforementioned teachers’ organization.
That union, which represents teachers and other instructors in the district, is demanding a slightly less steep 20 percent pay increase.
District’s failed appeasement package reportedly offered a 5 percent wage increase retroactive to July 2021, as well as an additional 5 percent increase retroactive to July 2022 to account for rising rental costs in the City of Los Angeles, which is in the midst of an unprecedented housing crisis.
Carvalho also reportedly offered an additional 5 percent raise that would take effect this July, along with a 4 percent bonus for the 2022-23 school year and a 5 percent bonus for 2023-24.
The union announced Wednesday at a rally in Grand Park that the strike would begin Tuesday as workers are fed up with local government and district chief Alberto Carvahlo being forced to live ‘on poverty wages and that their jobs are threatened for demanding equal pay.’
United Teachers LA, which represents 30,000 other district employees, will join Local 99 in the strike.
The offer was apparently not enough to end the talks, as the district has yet to announce that a solution has been reached.
On Wednesday, Superintendent Carvahlo denounced the possibility of a strike, especially after prolonged campus closures that have disrupted student learning during the pandemic.
‘What are the consequences?’ Carvalho said about the possible repercussions of another week of closures. “The consequences are once again the loss of learning, the deprivation of the safety that schools provide for our children, the deprivation of food and nutrition on which so many of our children depend.”
He added: ‘I know we focused our attention on the needs of the workforce. I need to focus my attention also primarily on the needs of our children.’