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The leader of L.A.'s teachers union sharply criticized Gov. Gavin Newsom and state legislative leaders for their plan to bring the youngest elementary students back to campuses as early as April 1.
United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) president Cecily Myart-Cruz called the plan “a recipe for propagating structural racism.”
The plan offers more than $6.6 billion in reopening aid to K-12 schools — including $2 billion in incentives for schools to open up grades K through 2, even in situations when a county remains in California’s most-serious “purple tier.”
Myart-Cruz said that would put hard-hit school systems, like Los Angeles Unified, at a disadvantage:
“If you [use] condition funding on the reopening of schools, that money will only go to white and wealthier schools that don't have the transmission rates that low-income Black and brown communities do.”
The UTLA president’s statement stands in contrast with the leaders of the two statewide teacher unions, the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers:
UTLA's response is a markedly different tone than leaders of both state-level unions — both of which framed the #caleg/@CAgovernor deal as an encouraging step toward reopening schools. (@WeAreCTA statement here) pic.twitter.com/w5dvLryOrm
— Kyle Stokes (@kystokes) March 2, 2021
UTLA members are voting this week to decide what conditions would be necessary for them to return to the classroom.
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