Image by Maayan Nemanov.
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress…Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and it never will.”–Frederick Douglass
After 14 months of negotiations, at 4 AM Sunday morning UTLA signed a very favorable Tentative Agreement with Los Angeles Unified School District, winning a raise of almost 7% a year and the salary table reforms we sought.
Under the current contract, a new LAUSD teacher starting at the first salary level sees an increase of only $6 a month in their second year, $61 a month in their third and fourth years, and less than $10 a month in their fifth and sixth years. For veteran teachers, unless a teacher has taken a number of education units equivalent to two master’s degrees, after 10 years the teacher receives no yearly raises. Under the new agreement, starting teacher pay will go up ~$8K, and all veteran teachers will receive five figure ($10K or more) raises.
UTLA President Cecily Myart-Cruz told citywide chapter leaders:
“We achieved every single goal we had for fixing the salary tables–raising the (salary) floor, making it easier to reach higher levels, and with consistent step and column increases from year to year.”
Beyond salary, UTLA also won:
Over 450 new Pupil Services and Attendance (PSA) Counselors, Psychiatric Social Workers, School Psychologists, and Counselors will be added–funded by LAUSD directly, not by school site budgets, which are already stretched. The new PSAs will be concentrated in schools with attendance problems.
Secondary student-counselor ratios will be lowered to 335-1 for high school, 400-1 for middle school.
Reforms helping Special Education teachers, with much greater compensation for class size violations. This has two purposes–to compensate the teacher, and to incentivize the school to resolve class size violations ASAP.
Reforms helping schools with special education inclusion. Inclusion places students with disabilities in general education classrooms to the maximum extent appropriate. In some places in LAUSD, the rollout has been very rough. Reforms include better teacher-student ratios and 10 paid planning days for teachers.
Salary point reforms, so teachers who don’t have 98 educational units–the equivalent of two masters degrees–are no longer stalled out on the salary table, receiving no anniversary raises after 10 years. Overnight, teachers stalled for years may leap forward from pay for 10 years to pay for 15 or 20 years, based on however many years of service they have.
Four weeks of district-paid parental leave. Parental leave can even be applied for retroactively back to July 1, 2025, when our contract took effect. Up to now teachers have had to use pregnancy disability leave.
Substitute educators will qualify for healthcare after 93 work days, instead of 100
Reforms limiting LAUSD’s subcontracting, including a ban on subcontractors causing teacher displacements
Protections against AI abuses.
Striking This Week?
We won in part because Service Employees International Union Local 99, which represents LAUSD bus drivers, special education assistants, custodians, and cafeteria workers, made it clear to LAUSD that they would strike in solidarity with us, as we did with them in 2023. This meant LAUSD would have to close the schools.
SEIU’s pledge may well have prevented UTLA from having to launch an open-ended strike. We now return the favor–if SEIU’s negotiations with LAUSD do not bear fruit, on Tuesday April 14 they will launch a UPC (Unfair Practice Charge) strike, and both UTLA and Associated Administrators of Los Angeles will strike with them in solidarity.
Solidarity strikes were crucial in building American union power in the 1930s, and UTLA has played a leading role in bringing them back.
How Much More Will LAUSD Teachers Now Earn?
UTLA has created a Salary Calculator, so teachers can learn what their new pay will be.
Ratifying the Tentative Agreement
When we won the 2019 strike, the approval process for the Tentative Agreement was rushed, and some educators rightly felt that they were not given enough time to review it before voting. The flip side of this, of course, is that after losing six school days, teachers wanted to get back in the classroom ASAP.
In 2023 and again this time, UTLA will have a longer, slower process for the TA ratification vote.
