Blue In Name Only: On the Los Angeles Teachers’ Strike

Typically gray, when heavy rains wash into our so-called rivers, in January my corner of Los Angeles in Highland Park was a bright, militant red. The neighborhood was strewn with signs that read: “ESTAMOS CON LOS MAESTROS DE LOS ANGELES”, “OUR STUDENTS DESERVE A NURSE EVERYDAY” and “EDUCATORS DESERVE A FAIR PAY RAISE”, while local businesses chalked “SUPPORT OUR TEACHERS” in big, bold letters on their curbside displays. In fact, during the third week of the month, when the UTLA’s thirty-three thousand teachers walked off the job, the sight of scarlet t-shirts emblazoned with “RED FOR ED” never left my field of vision.

Indeed, in a show of strength unseen since LA’s teachers last went on strike in 1989, tens of thousands of people sporting red plastic ponchos filled the city’s streets to support the staff of the nation’s second-largest school district in their bid for a new contract. Following nearly two years of failed negotiations, the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) was finally making its demands heard: more support staff, smaller class sizes, fewer standardized tests, a cap on charter schools, and higher wages. California therefore became the latest state to take part in a wave of teachers’ strikes that began in early 2018, joining West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona, Colorado and Illinois to protest privatization efforts and cuts to public school budgets.

For years, teachers across the US have endured a two-pronged assault: a push toward charter schools led by corporate interests and a refusal by politicians to address underfunding. Today, public school districts across the country receive around 7% less than they did a decade ago, and with Betsy DeVos at the helm of the Department of Education, more of that federal funding is being directed to ‘voucher initiatives’, in other words programs that pay for students to attend private schools, although these schemes have been generally found to produce no major results. In Los Angeles, where middle and high school classes can have upwards of 40 students, one of the teachers’ main concerns revolved around lowering class sizes.

Contending that its teachers were under intense financial hardship, often forced to buy their own school supplies, the UTLA insisted that the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) be made to spend its $1.8 million surplus on much-needed improvements. However, the LAUSD’s recently appointed Superintendent, Austin Beutner, instead spent several weeks making media appearances claiming that much of the aforementioned surplus had already been earmarked to counter deficits in the budget and that the district was furthermore facing insolvency by 2021. The problem, of course, comes down to funding. California public schools receive only 9% of their funding from the federal government and the lion’s share is provided by...