Support for LAist comes from
Audience-funded nonprofit news
Stay Connected
Audience-funded nonprofit news
Listen

Share This

News

LAUSD Teachers Strike May Be Delayed By A Few Days

United Teachers Los Angeles President Alex Caputo-Pearl, left, joins teachers at a rally in downtown Los Angeles on Dec. 15, 2018. (Damian Dovarganes/AP)
()

With our free press under threat and federal funding for public media gone, your support matters more than ever. Help keep the LAist newsroom strong, become a monthly member or increase your support today. 

Teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District may not be able to begin their strike, as planned, on Jan. 10 -- the date they had picked to begin their work stoppage if they hadn't yet reached a contract deal with district management.

Instead, the strike may be delayed until Jan. 14. That's because of a disagreement about when and whether United Teachers Los Angeles officials filed the right paperwork giving formal notice of its intent to strike, according to a statement from the union sent Sunday.

In the statement, UTLA leaders said they plan to "proactively" go to court in the coming week to ensure its members -- more than 30,000 LAUSD teachers, counselors, nurses and social workers -- can strike on January 10 as planned. Union officials believe their original strike date should still stand.

If the strike date is delayed, that could mean not only more time for negotiators to hammer out a last-minute deal -- which has eluded both sides for almost two years -- and more time for the parents of 480,000 LAUSD students to make contingency plans.

Support for LAist comes from

READ MORE: A comprehensive guide to the UTLA-LAUSD dispute, including a breakdown of the issues at stake.


LAST-MINUTE TALKS APPARENTLY STILL ON

UTLA and LAUSD leaders are still set to meet Monday for their first face-to-face negotiation session since at least early December. Both UTLA president Alex Caputo-Pearl and LAUSD superintendent Austin Beutner -- who, for the most part, have left their bargaining delegations to conduct in-person talks -- are set to personally join the discussion.

Some uncertainty still loomed over the location of the Monday meeting. At the end of last week, LAUSD officials told union negotiators that Mayor Eric Garcetti had offered L.A. City Hall as a meeting place. As of late Sunday, there was still confusion about whether the two sides would meet at LAUSD's headquarters building, known as Beaudry, or take the mayor up on his offer.

Nevertheless, the Monday meeting appears to be on -- despite legal and public-relations vollies the two sides have continued to trade in recent days.

Support for LAist comes from

"We are going into bargaining with an open mind," read Sunday's UTLA statement, "but the onus is on Beutner to give us something different instead of more of the same unacceptable proposals."

"People are counting on us to solve this," Beutner said in an interview Sunday with KPCC/LAist. "Those same students and families that are going to be impacted by the strike are counting on us to put past frustrations aside."

SPECIAL ED TEACHERS -- FOR NOW -- CAN STILL STRIKE

The leaders' comments come two days after a federal judge rejected, at least for now, the district's attempt to block UTLA members who serve students with disabilities from striking.

District lawyers had filed the request Thursday, arguing a strike might throw the district out of compliance with a 1996 legal settlement that requires LAUSD to provide better services to students with disabilities.

But on Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Lew turned the district down on technical grounds, saying district officials were "attempting, prematurely, to bring an unrelated party into a long-settled dispute without any explanation as to how UTLA would be legally liable."

The judge, however, did leave open the door for the district to file a new lawsuit that might block special education teachers from striking.

Support for LAist comes from

Senior Editor Paul Glickman contributed to this story.


Hey, thanks. You read the entire story. And we love you for that. Here at LAist, our goal is to cover the stories that matter to you, not advertisers. We don't have paywalls, but we do have payments (aka bills). So if you love independent, local journalism, join us. Let's make the world a better place, together. Donate now.

At LAist, we believe in journalism without censorship and the right of a free press to speak truth to those in power. Our hard-hitting watchdog reporting on local government, climate, and the ongoing housing and homelessness crisis is trustworthy, independent and freely accessible to everyone thanks to the support of readers like you.

But the game has changed: Congress voted to eliminate funding for public media across the country. Here at LAist that means a loss of $1.7 million in our budget every year. We want to assure you that despite growing threats to free press and free speech, LAist will remain a voice you know and trust. Speaking frankly, the amount of reader support we receive will help determine how strong of a newsroom we are going forward to cover the important news in our community.

We’re asking you to stand up for independent reporting that will not be silenced. With more individuals like you supporting this public service, we can continue to provide essential coverage for Southern Californians that you can’t find anywhere else. Become a monthly member today to help sustain this mission.

Thank you for your generous support and belief in the value of independent news.

Chip in now to fund your local journalism
A row of graphics payment types: Visa, MasterCard, Apple Pay and PayPal, and  below a lock with Secure Payment text to the right
(
LAist
)

Trending on LAist