What’s in the LA teachers’ contract?

MEMBERS OF United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) voted overwhelmingly last week to approve a two-year labor contract that accepts furlough days in order to save the jobs of more than 2,000 teachers who received Reduction in Force (RIF) notices in March and to turn back efforts by the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) to raise class sizes for a second consecutive year.

Under the provisions of the new contract, five instructional days will be removed from the LAUSD calendar, both this year and next year. These furlough days will reduce school employees' pay by roughly 2.5 percent each year.

In exchange, LAUSD agreed to cancel plans to increase K-3 class sizes by five students and add two students per class in grades 4-8. Union negotiators expect the deal to save the jobs of around 2,100 UTLA members, including teachers, counselors, nurses, librarians, and social workers.

LAUSD had initially demanded that UTLA members accept a permanent 12 percent pay cut on top of the furlough days, with no guarantees against class size increases. The furlough days are only in effect for the two years of the agreement.

UTLA negotiators received documentation that LAUSD has made $82 million in cuts to non-school administrative expenses for the 2010-11 school year, although further cuts to the district's massive bureaucracy could still be made.

District negotiators even attempted to push for "furloughs" that would be scheduled on non-instructional days--meaning teachers would suffer the reduction in pay, but continue to have the same workload. Julie Washington, UTLA's chief negotiator and a vice president representing elementary school teachers, explained at a meeting of 400 UTLA chapter chairs that the union's position was: "if we're going to have furlough days, then shut the district down."

This contract represents a calculated retreat on the part of the UTLA. Decades of tax cuts that mostly benefit California corporations and millionaires have starved the state's public schools of desperately needed funds--dropping California to the bottom of national rankings in per-pupil education spending. What was already a funding crisis during times of economic growth has become a funding catastrophe in the current economic crisis.

As a UTLA document distributed to members before the vote argues, "Teachers should not be called upon to help pay for a public education system that the state refuses to adequately fund. But the crisis is so severe and the potential impact on our students and colleagues so harmful that we must consider all options."

The steps that this agreement take towards maintaining class sizes and staunching the hemorrhage of the UTLA's membership--without accepting permanent pay cuts--in this era of recession and cutbacks won it the "yes" votes of many militants and socialists among the union's ranks, including this writer.

UTLA President A.J. Duffy infuriated union activists by publicly calling the deal a "huge victory," in an awkward attempt to underline the importance of preventing class size increases.

No one thinks this is a win--not even other union officials. Instead, this contract and its aftermath demonstrate that public school employees and people who want more resources provided for public education have our work cut out for us.

AS OF this writing, LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines has announced the rescission of only 1,421 of the 2,826 RIFs that went out to UTLA members this year, despite the fact that all parties agree the financial savings to the district as a result of furlough days is equal to the salaries of an estimated 2,109 UTLA members.

It is likely that further piecemeal RIF rescissions will be announced, but every day a RIF teacher is forced to wait for their rescission is one day closer to reaching the summer with no secure employment for the coming school year.

Meanwhile, Cortines waited until after the contract was ratified to announce his plan to borrow $360 million for capital projects through the sale of Certificates of Participation (COPS, a type of school bond) to wealthy investors. The repayment of these bonds, with interest, will come from the LAUSD general fund in future years, taking away money that could otherwise be spent on teachers and other school employees. Duffy called the move "an irresponsible bait-and-switch tactic" and "a slap in the face of LAUSD employees."

These COPS will be used to install solar panels on 90 schools, replace school buses and rebuild a school auditorium. While these are all good things to do, it is the height of hypocrisy for LAUSD to plead poverty in wringing concessions from teachers, and then mortgage children's futures for programs that do not address the most urgent needs for lower class sizes, more counselors, more teaching assistants, more art and music programs, etc.

Furthermore, the Wall Street types who are buying these bonds could easily fund these projects and then some simply by paying taxes at the same rate that working-class people do. The LAUSD school board voted to approve Cortines' COPS proposal on April 14.

Meanwhile, the fates of hundreds more UTLA members hinge on school-by-school budget decisions being made right now by School Site Councils (SSCs). Many school employees' positions are funded through federal Title I funds and other supplementary sources, and the savings from their furlough days could be used by school sites to "buy back" the positions of RIF teachers.

UTLA is encouraging all SSCs, which include many teacher and parent representatives and are at least formally independent of administrative mandates, to use as much of these funds as possible to pay for the positions of school employees who work directly with students.

But this may be an uphill battle. Union activists have reported via a listserve sponsored by Progressive Educators for Action (PEAC), a left-liberal caucus of UTLA activists, that school administrators are trying to manipulate their SSCs to use the money for out-of-classroom "coordinators" and "coaches"--people who don't work with kids and are usually tasked with enforcing teachers' adherence to scripted curricula and "teaching to the test."

UTLA members can't wait to continue the fight against layoffs and budget cuts. We need to pressure SSCs at every school to do the right thing and "buy back" as many classroom and counseling positions as possible--including often-overlooked art and music teachers and special education teachers and assistants.

We need a large public campaign to demand that LAUSD rescind the rest of RIFs before RIF teachers are forced to look for other work. We need to renew demands for further cuts to the LAUSD bureaucracy that could save the jobs of hundreds more desperately needed school employees. All this has to be part of the union coming up with a long-term strategy for taking on the administration.

Last but not least, we need a mass, militant statewide campaign to demand that Sacramento tax the rich and start providing our public schools with the resources they've been denied for far too long.