LOS ANGELES (CNS) - Representatives of the Los Angeles teachers union and Los Angeles Unified School District officials negotiated overnight at City Hall today on the eighth day of a teachers strike, with classes set to resume Tuesday, though maybe still without teachers.
Sunday's session started at about 11 a.m., marking the fourth straight day of talks following the United Teachers Los Angeles union's walkout January 14.
Just after 10 p.m., Mayor Eric Garcetti tweeted: “Today was a productive day of negotiations with UTLA and LAUSD. All parties reaffirm their commitment to continuing negotiations into the night and into tomorrow to resolve the remaining issues as soon as possible.”
The two sides returned to the negotiating table late Thursday morning following last Monday's walkout. With the mayor's office acting as mediator, the opposing teams clashed for more than 12 hours before recessing shortly after midnight.
Friday's, Saturday's and Sunday's bargaining sessions also began about 11 a.m. and continued throughout the afternoon and evening; Friday's talks adjourned after more than 10 hours and Saturday's after about 11 hours, 30 minutes.
“We're going to be here late,” LAUSD chief financial officer Scott Price told the Los Angeles Daily News Saturday night.
When asked by the Daily News if there would be an agreement this weekend, former LAUSD school board president Steve Zimmer said, “Stranger things have happened.”
No details have been released about potential revised contract offers that may have been placed on the table over the past three days.
LAUSD officials repeatedly have called for an end to the strike that has diminished classroom attendance and cost the district millions of dollars in state funding.
“The activism here cannot end. It must not end,” LAUSD board president Monica Garcia said. “The strike, however, it does need to end. We need our teachers and our children back at school doing the work that they need to do.”
Superintendent Austin Beutner has echoed that call, stressing the need for the district and union to come to an agreement over the weekend so schools can reopen at full strength.
“We need our educators and our students back in school on Tuesday morning,” Beutner said. “So the onus is us. The onus is on us as leaders to do what we have to do in the next 48, 72 hours to make sure schools are open and educators and students are back in school on Tuesday.”
Beutner reiterated his insistence that the district does not have the money to fully meet the demands of United Teachers Los Angeles but said he is prepared to talk throughout the weekend “to do what we have to do to make sure schools are open on Tuesday.”
The teachers' union appeared ready to continue walking picket lines this week.
“We are going to work relentlessly this weekend in negotiations,” UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl told the crowd during a Friday morning rally before the day's contract talks began. “But we have to come back on Tuesday with our picket lines even stronger than this week.”
UTLA teachers went on strike calling for increased pay, smaller class sizes and the hiring of more support staff, such as nurses, counselors and librarians. The last time teachers went on strike in Los Angeles was 1989, and the walkout lasted nine days.
Beutner said the union's demands would cost billions of dollars and bankrupt a district already teetering on insolvency.
The district last Friday presented the union with an offer that included the hiring of 1,200 teachers, capping middle and high school English/math classes at 39 students, capping grades four through six at 35 students, maintaining all other existing class sizes, adding a full-time nurse at every elementary school and adding another academic counselor at high schools.
UTLA officials rejected the proposal, saying it did not go far enough to bolster school staffing, reduce class sizes and prevent them from increasing in the future. The union also blasted the district's staff-increase proposal for being only a one-year offer, and contended the district's salary increase proposal is contingent on benefit cuts to future union members.
The LAUSD has offered teachers a 6 percent raise spread over the first two years of a three-year contract while UTLA wants a 6.5 percent raise that would take effect all at once and a year sooner.
The union disputes the district's claim it cannot afford more extensive investment in school staffing, pointing to what it calls an estimated $1.8 billion reserve fund and insisting the district has not faced a financial deficit in five years. The district contends that reserve fund is already being spent, in part on the salary increase for teachers.
The second-largest school district in the nation, the LAUSD covers 710 square miles and serves more than 694,000 students at 1,322 schools, although 216 schools are independent charter schools, most of which are staffed with non-union teachers unaffected by the strike.
The district says about 500,000 students are impacted by the walkout.
The district hired 400 substitutes, and 2,000 administrators with teaching credentials have been reassigned during the strike. The district has set up an information hotline for parents at (213) 443-1300.
District officials said the absentee rate over the first five school days of the strike has translated to a gross revenue loss of about $125 million in state funding, which is based on daily attendance.
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