The only good news about the weekend deal between Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and the United Teachers LA (UTLA) union is that kids likely won’t have to miss school, and parents can go to work.
That’s all there is to like about a deal in which the troubled district caved to union demands.
The cash-strapped district agreed to raise “salary scales” by 11.65%, leading to an average salary increase of nearly 14%.
And there may be even more concessions coming, as the district turns to negotiations with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
If the SEIU wants more, the other unions, including UTLA, will still go on strike in solidarity.
LA is the latest city whose public schools have folded under pressure, as unions across the state have coordinated their strike threats.
It’s an election year, and the all-powerful teachers’ unions often control who wins and loses.
Democrats rely on union organizers to get out the vote, and a union endorsement is also a signal to donors that a candidate is viable.
So school board members are often voting for their own political self-preservation when they spend taxpayers’ money.
The district is reeling from a string of recent scandals.
Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho is on administrative leave after an FBI raid on his homes in Florida and California over a failed AI contract that has been implicated in an investigation into alleged corruption.
And former LAUSD technical project manager Hong “Grace” Peng was recently charged in connection with a $22 million fraud scheme.
That weakened the district, politically, even though it theoretically should have been able to resist the union’s demands.
A fact-finding report by an independent arbitrator largely sided with the district, and proposed far lower salary increases than the union demanded (and lower than what it eventually received).
The district’s own financial reports projected deficits for the next three years, suggesting that there was little room to maneuver.
The unions chose to time this fight for the spring, during the last months of the school year, knowing that a strike would cause the maximum inconvenience to students and families.
It was a cynical form of hostage-taking, using public school children as leverage in a fight over money that could easily have waited until the summer.
Not that unions care much about LA’s children. Their first priority is their members — or, to be precise, their members’ dues money.
Their second priority is political ideology. It was UTLA that pushed the insane proposal to defund the LA School Police Department.
Children come last for UTLA — which is why academic performance has fallen as union power has grown.
More than half of LAUSD third-graders cannot read at their grade level.
And enrollment is collapsing, falling in LA at a faster rate than anywhere else in the country.
LAUSD needs new leadership, at every level, from the districts to the unions to the classrooms themselves. Our kids deserve much, much better.
