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The Los Angeles Teachers Union has a moment of throwback when President Trump threatens to cut educational funds for institutions beyond him. It pushes the agenda of positive social justice and diversity and calls for a major raise from the LA Unified School District.
United teacher Cecily Myart Cruz, president of Los Angeles, said her members are fully aware of Trump’s hostility towards union priorities, but are determined to stick to them.
“Trump’s laser-like focus attack on immigrant families; LGBTQIA+ communities, diversity, equity, inclusion, our children are hitting our community hard,” MyART-Cruz said in a recent explanation to lay out negotiation requests ahead of the current contract’s expiration on June 30th. “We hear those fears and see concerns and worries every day through classrooms and school doors.”
The union’s platform “means that we will not only protect Los Angeles students, educators and families over the next three years, but will continue to build a monumental future,” she said. “In an age where the federal government is trying to demolish everything, we’re going to continue building.”
At the heart of the Union Platform is to drive an automatic annual salary increase to reward experience and additional education, proposed 3.25% per year in the first decade of the educator’s career. This is sometimes more than 26 times the current annual bump, and incorporates higher annual pay raises without negotiating with them in every contract cycle. Additional full pay increases are still possible, with UTLA offering such a 3% raise in the second year of a two-year contract.
Pay aside, UTLA’s widespread, socially conscious platform springs from 665 member meetings held at schools in the fall when unions sought a wide range of input from students, parents and other community members. The union’s official negotiation team has 140 members.
Cecily Myart-Cruz, president of United Teachers Los Angles, is lifting his arms at the 2020 Downtown Union Rally.
(Al Seib/Los Angeles Times)
In a direct challenge to Trump’s opposition to diversity, equity and inclusion practices known as DEI, UTLA is seeking the support of “new educators” with “target investments in the recruitment and retention of BIPOCs, multilingual, immigration educators and service providers.” Bipoc represents people of black, indigenous people and colour.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has cancelled around $600 million in teacher training grants nationwide, claiming that these programs promote inappropriate and “divorce ideology” associated with DEI. The judge issued an order temporarily blocking the measure.
The UTLA contract proposal also calls for “support, defense and expansion of achievement plans and ethnic studies for black students in the district.”
Even before Trump won the election in his second term as president, Los Angeles Unification had made changes to his black student achievement plan. Under pressure from the Biden administration, district officials have amended programs that recruit students of all races and ethnicities to comply with court bans on positive behavior.
The Trump administration has characterized a program that selects groups seeking support as illegal discrimination based on race. Trump-appointed Education Secretary Linda McMahon testified before Congress that black history courses could be scrutinized based on the content.
UTLA is also calling for “enhanced policies to support LGBTQIA+ students, educators and staff” when Trump announced that the government would only recognize two genders: male and female. Trump has eliminated non-binary individuals from among groups protected from discrimination.
Trump has allowed immigrants to enroll in schools to arrest immigrants for deportation, but UTLA calls it “with or without documents containing increased support for immigrant students and families, and support for new employees.”
Leaders at LA Unified work closely with the teachers’ union on protecting immigration and LGBTQ+ rights. After Trump won the election, district leaders accepted the role of being a “sanctuary” for immigrants and LGBTQ+ individuals.
These LA Unified policies put the district at the intersection of Trump’s directives, said Will Swaim, the group that includes persuading government employees to remove union membership.
“The district’s DEI initiative and self-declared sanctuary status are subject to potential federal investigations,” Swaim said.
Swaim’s organization is involved in filing the March 3rd IX complaint with the Civil Rights Office, currently led by Trump’s appointees. Title IX prohibits gender-based discrimination in federal financially supported educational programs or activities. The complaint alleges LA Unified violates federal civil rights laws by allowing students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that best match their gender identity. The complaint also covers the unification of San Francisco and Capistrano.
LA Unified defines its policy as complying with California law.
The complaint aims to state officials, accusing the California Department of Education of violating federal law. This said the Trump administration has not considered eligibility for sports teams, considering gender identity taking into account toilets and locker rooms. The administration has launched a survey of the California Interstate Statistics Federation, which controls San Jose and high school athletics.
The UTLA agenda also includes minimizing or eliminating school police, pursuing low-income housing for both union members and community members, and investing in campus green space and recycling.
Contract negotiations depend on what the district can afford to pay the 37,000 employees represented by UTLA, including teachers, psychologists, counselors and nurses.
“Lausd has the money to fund these contract proposals, but I’ve heard that isn’t,” says Myart-Cruz. “Don’t believe me.”
Myart-Cruz and other district employee union leaders point to a record ending balance of $6.4 billion.
United Teachers Los Angeles and SEIU 99 members will hold a rally at Grand Park at a solidarity show during contract negotiations in March 2023.
(Francine Orr/Los Angeles Times)
District officials declined to comment on the UTLA request, but have repeatedly stated that the size of the reserve is misleading, saying that most dollars are already committed to future obligations and that the district is currently spending at a much higher rate than it receives money. School district leaders, including Supt. Alberto Carvalho said Lausd is spending at a pace that almost wipes out its reserves over the next three years.
District officials also said they are concerned about future federal funds, which account for about 8% of the district’s total value, or an estimated $1.26 billion a year.
Another important cost factor in the UTLA proposal is to raise the minimum teacher salary from $69,000 to $80,000. This is a 16% increase to offset recruitment incentives and high cost of living in Southern California. The maximum salary for a 30-year teacher with full education credits increases from about 119,000 to about $134,000.
Additionally, UTLA wants to reduce the number of educational credits required to earn nearly 30% of salary bonuses. This allows for higher wages to be utilized early in the teacher’s career. UTLA claims that teachers must now obtain a degree equivalent to two masters’ degrees to get a full bonus.
The union calculated that the proposed automatic pay scale bump alone would increase wages by 10% against 95% of UTLA members. And the average salary increase over the two years is 20% overall proposal.
Negotiations are just beginning to increase at intensity. The union has been on strike twice since 2019.
The district’s other mega-employee unions, the United Nations of 99 local employees, are working under contracts that expired in June. The local 99 represents more than 30,000 LA unified employees, including bus drivers, teacher aides, campus supervisors, cafeteria workers and custodians.
Its members won a wage rise of 30% in previous negotiations, but union executive director Max Arias said more benefits are needed to increase wages and increase in working hours outweigh the poverty line.
In relation to UTLA requests, Arias states: “There’s a lot of consistency. There’s a shared analysis that LAUSD can certainly afford to meet all of this essential to education.”
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