The Los Angeles Unified School District, the second-largest in the nation, was forced to close today—and potentially Wednesday and Thursday—as tens of thousands of teachers and school staff take hold of their picket signs demanding better pay.
“All schools across LAUSD will be closed tomorrow,” Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said during a news conference Monday afternoon.
The union, SEIU Local 99, said conversations with the district began on Monday. Yet, Carvalho said he never heard from them.
“I made myself available alongside my team for hours today, hoping that we would, in fact, be able to have a conversation for a whole host of reasons, some of which I do not understand,” he said. “We were never in the same room, or even in the same building.”
According to the union, their decision to strike came in response to the district’s “disrespect of school workers.” A statement from the union said that LAUSD “broke confidentiality” by sharing information regarding the bargaining with media outlets.
Carvalho said he is making himself available all day today in hopes to restart talks and possibly cut the three-day strike short.
“My appeal is that we go into tomorrow, despite the event that will take place tomorrow, that our partners decide to come into the room where we can, in fact, hash out an agreement, a solution, that will narrow the bandwidth of this strike,” he said.
“For me,” he added later in the conference, “one day out of school is one day too many.”
Schools are a place where students not only get a great education, he said, but it’s where many come for food, social-emotional and mental health support.
“They happen to be the safest places in our community for kids,” he said.
In the meantime, Carvalho said he will be patiently waiting for a call from a willing partner to have a “meaningful conversation.”
As for the union, they’re “fed-up with the district’s disrespect.” They’re calling on the district to use its nearly $5 billion in reserves to invest in staff, students and communities and to achieve 30% raises and $2 per hour equity wage increases.
“We want to be clear that we are not in negotiations with LAUSD,” according to the union. “We continue to be engaged in the impasse process with the state.”
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