Teachers in the nation’s second-largest school district, Los Angeles Unified, went on strike Monday, inhibiting the learning of more than 640,000 mostly low-income students.
Among the union’s demands are higher pay and smaller class sizes — the simultaneous achievement of which is impossible according to the basic laws of economics. Lower class sizes mean more teachers and teachers’ aides, and increasing staffing is not prudent if a district wishes to pay current employees more.
Additionally, LAUSD salaries range from $50,368 for new teachers to $112,963 for senior teachers. Including benefits brings those ranges from $69,407 to $155,662.
As veteran educator and vehement union opponent Rebecca Friedrichs writes, “That’s pretty nice living for a 10-month job.”
The district warns that the union’s demands would bankrupt them; they already project a half-billion-dollar deficit for fiscal 2019 and have billions pledged toward retired teachers’ pension and healthcare payments. The average retiree from the district receives $55,000 a year.
The looming LAUSD budget deficit is “a death spiral,” said board member Nick Melvoin. The district predicts its pension and healthcare costs will climb $115 million over the next two years while its revenue will fall about $150 million.
Partially driving the revenue decrease are the increasing numbers of students exercising school choice in charter schools or seeking scholarships to private schools. District schools have lost 55,000 students since 2013 and tens of thousands more students sit on waiting lists for oversubscribed charters.
The exodus of students is unsurprising considering the academic performance of LAUSD. On the 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress, only 22 percent of LAUSD students scored proficient in fourth-grade math, only 13 percent of black students scored at least proficient or in fourth-grade reading, and only 15 percent of Latinos were deemed proficient in eighth-grade math.
Despite an apparent failure to successfully educate, teachers and their union are nevertheless demanding more compensation. Negotiations between the union and district have been ongoing for months. Recently, the district even offered $565 million to reduce class sizes, add nearly 1,200 educators, and provide all teachers with a 6 percent salary raise.
The union promptly rejected this offer, despite union president Alex Caputo-Pearl claiming that “teachers do not want to strike.”
The only people not standing to benefit from this debacle: students.
Kate Hardiman is a contributor to Red Alert Politics. She is pursuing a master’s in education from Notre Dame University and teaches English and religion at a high school in Chicago.
