Unit­ed Teach­ers Los Ange­les (UTLA), a union rep­re­sent­ing over 35,000 teach­ers in the area, is work­ing under terms of a con­tract that expired in 2011 but still remains in effect. Nego­ti­a­tions for a new con­tract began last July upon the swear­ing-in of Pres­i­dent Alex Caputo-Pearl. Caputo-Pearl is a mem­ber of the Pro­gres­sive Edu­ca­tors for Action Cau­cus, which joined with oth­er groups to form a slate, Union Pow­er, that ran suc­cess­ful­ly on a plat­form of aggres­sive orga­niz­ing based on com­mu­ni­ty and mem­ber engage­ment, mod­el­ing its vision on the mobi­liza­tion of the Chica­go Teach­ers Union by its Cau­cus of Rank-and-File Edu­ca­tors .

Los Ange­les may be close to its first teach­ers strike in 26 years after its school dis­trict and the local teach­ers’ union declared that they would be unable to make progress on con­tract nego­ti­a­tions. Con­se­quent­ly, lat­er this month California’s state labor board for pub­lic employ­ees will be medi­at­ing between the two sides in the first of sev­er­al ses­sions sched­uled thus far.

Scott Man­del, a union rep­re­sen­ta­tive and Los Ange­les Uni­fied school dis­trict teacher of 30 years, tells In These Times that the union’s pre­vi­ous lead­er­ship had ​“refused to con­front the dis­trict,” but the union’s new lead­er­ship was ​“absolute­ly proac­tive” as it gained pow­er of the sec­ond-largest teach­ers’ union in the country.

“[New lead­er­ship] start­ed a cam­paign of orga­niz­ing that was basi­cal­ly unheard of for years and years before. They have done more in the last eight months than UTLA has done in the last eight years in orga­niz­ing,” Man­del says. ​“We are now get­ting to the point where peo­ple are proud to be UTLA mem­bers again.”

Under the ​“Schools LA Stu­dents Deserve” ban­ner, UTLA’s new con­tract cam­paign out­lines demands for salary increas­es meant to make up the real over­all reduc­tions that stem from rank and file tak­ing unpaid days off at the behest of the dis­trict in the midst of the recent reces­sion as well as the lack of cost-of-liv­ing-based pay increas­es in as many years.

Anoth­er piv­otal part of the ​“Schools LA Stu­dents Deserve” is class size. Accord­ing to data released to school admin­is­tra­tors by LAUSD Super­in­ten­dent Ramon Cortines, near­ly 2,700 Mid­dle and High school class­rooms across the dis­trict have over 45 stu­dents as of Jan­u­ary 29.

Luis Blaz­er, a math teacher at Ran­cho Dominguez Prepara­to­ry School, says via email, ​“My biggest con­cern is that it is not just one class of 45 stu­dents. It is five class­es of 45 stu­dents. Two-hun­dred twen­ty-five stu­dents to grade, sup­port, give con­struc­tive feed­back, dif­fer­en­ti­ate instruc­tion for, inspire and guide.”

The union is seek­ing hard caps for class sizes and the dis­man­tling of emer­gency law dis­trict pow­ers that allow the dis­trict to con­trol these caps.

In an inter­view with In These Times, UTLA Pres­i­dent Caputo-Pearl says the ​“Schools LA Stu­dents Deserve” ini­tia­tive is built on edu­cat­ing their work­ers and par­ents in the com­mu­ni­ty through an unprece­dent­ed local effort to have teach­ers meet with par­ents as orga­niz­ers who are sup­port­ed and trained by the union.

“We’ve got about 150 par­ent liaisons — teacher mem­bers who are now par­ent liaisons — at about 150 of our schools across the city doing reg­u­lar work engag­ing par­ents about what their pri­or­i­ties are, but also engag­ing par­ents around what the ​‘Schools LA Stu­dents Deserve’ cam­paign is about and how par­ents can be involved,” Caputo-Pearl says. He char­ac­ter­ized these efforts as ​“school by school and on the ground.”

The UTLA Pres­i­dent said that the union has addi­tion­al­ly part­nered with UCLA’s Insti­tute for Democ­ra­cy, Edu­ca­tion and Access for month­ly gath­er­ings with 15 promi­nent com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tions in the city that deal with inequity issues in the class­room. ​“Those are going very well in terms of devel­op­ing a com­mon agen­da around racial jus­tice and edu­ca­tion­al jus­tice,” Caputo-Pearl says.

UTLA is mount­ing this orga­niz­ing while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly work­ing in local city elec­tions. Ear­ly last week, Los Ange­les had a pri­ma­ry elec­tion where three school dis­trict board seats were up for grabs. Sig­nif­i­cant mon­e­tary atten­tion was placed on the race between the union-favorite incum­bent Ben­nett Kayser and his chal­lenger Ref Rodriguez, a char­ter school chain founder, turn­ing the elec­tion into a proxy fight between union forces and char­ter school advocates.

Accord­ing to cam­paign finance fil­ings pro­vid­ed by the Los Ange­les City Ethics Com­mis­sion, the mon­ey poured into the two can­di­dates’ cam­paigns by out­side sources out­num­bered financ­ing for oth­er school board races ten-to-one. Fur­ther exam­i­na­tion of these finance fil­ings, how­ev­er, reflects how much of an uphill bat­tle the race was for the union.

A polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee for UTLA was able to con­tribute to Kayser a total of $480,645. In com­par­i­son, Cal­i­for­nia Char­ter School Asso­ci­a­tion, an indus­try trade group, put for­ward $812,578 towards Rodriguez’s cam­paign via its own PAC.

The out­spend­ing of UTLA by CCSA is not sur­pris­ing in light of it’s all-star cast of sup­port­ers. The Los Ange­les Times reports that since Sep­tem­ber of last year, the PAC count­ed on the fol­low­ing as donors: ​“Net­flix Chief Exec­u­tive Reed Hast­ings ($1.5 mil­lion), for­mer New York May­or Michael R. Bloomberg ($450,000), Jim Wal­ton of the Wal-Mart found­ing fam­i­ly ($250,000) and local phil­an­thropist Eli Broad ($155,000).”

But the war-chest behind Rodriguez, as well as that of incum­bent school board mem­ber and fel­low char­ter school advo­cate cur­rent­ly run­ning for re-elec­tion, Tamar Galatzan, was not enough to stave off a union upset.

Last week’s pri­ma­ry results set the two can­di­dates up for runoff elec­tions in May, offer­ing the union a foothold on a school board that pre­sides over 140,000 pub­lic char­ter school stu­dents, the high­est enroll­ment fig­ure in the nation by far, accord­ing to 2013 figures.

With Cal­i­for­nia already dead last in per-pupil expen­di­tures among all states, the LA school district’s large num­ber of char­ter school stu­dents eats away at poten­tial fund­ing avail­able for the pub­lic school sys­tem. These lim­it­ed finan­cial resources are exact­ly the rea­son the dis­trict has thus far been reluc­tant to meet the demands of UTLA and the ​“Schools LA Stu­dents Deserve.” Caputo-Pearl claims that dis­trict finances have been been impact­ed neg­a­tive­ly by a ​“Wal­ton Foun­da­tion-fund­ed mind­set that run­ning schools and pub­lic ser­vices like a busi­ness is the way to go.” The Wal­tons, own­ers of Wal­mart, have been key fun­ders of the cor­po­rate school reform move­ment around the country.

UTLA is cur­rent­ly nego­ti­at­ing with inter­im Super­in­ten­dent Ramon Cortines after mount­ing the chal­lenge that led to the res­ig­na­tion of his pre­de­ces­sor John Deasy. Protest over Deasy’s lead­er­ship cen­tered on a failed $1.3 bil­lion plan to bring an iPad to every stu­dent in the dis­trict, a plan that has recent­ly result­ed in a fed­er­al grand jury inves­ti­ga­tion over its ques­tion­able bid­ding process. Pear­son, a test­ing soft­ware mak­er, is being named as the alleged fixed bene­fac­tor in Deasy’s efforts to com­ply with the tech­no­log­i­cal aspects of state Com­mon Core.

“They spent mil­lions of dol­lars on test­ing. Those iPads are not used in the class­room. They’re not acces­si­ble to kids. They’re used only for test­ing. If you need to use a com­put­er lab, or bring in a com­put­er cart for reg­u­lar school stuff, you use old com­put­ers,” says Man­del. ​“The mod­ern iPads test the kids only and that is a joke.” He says the con­tro­ver­sial iPad plan was also cham­pi­oned by school board mem­ber Galatzan, pro­vid­ing addi­tion­al rea­son for union oppo­si­tion in her run-off.

Despite inter­im Super­in­ten­dent Cortines’ claims of impend­ing fis­cal crises if the union receives what it is seek­ing in pay increas­es and class size reduc­tions, Caputo-Pearl says the dis­trict will have an unex­pect­ed infu­sion in state fund­ing that will make these demands possible.

“[The gov­er­nor] put for­ward a pro­posed bud­get in Jan­u­ary, which showed that prob­a­bly LAUSD would be com­ing in at some­thing like a 10% increase. Since that time, leg­isla­tive ana­lysts have come in and said that may actu­al­ly be low­balling it. There could be more mon­ey,” says Caputo-Pearl. ​“The news is get­ting bet­ter, not worse.”

The teach­ers’ union pres­i­dent says that UTLA will be enter­ing medi­a­tion on March 26 with hope of com­ing to an agree­ment with the dis­trict. He does say, how­ev­er, that the union will fur­ther build its ​“readi­ness for a strike” through con­sis­tent orga­niz­ing in case a strike is nec­es­sary if the dis­trict ​“con­tin­ues to stonewall” its needs.

“We strong­ly feel that not only do schools need fund­ing, but schools also need approach­es that are more demo­c­ra­t­ic and rely on par­ents, and edu­ca­tors, and stu­dents to real­ly be involved in school improve­ment efforts,” says Caputo-Pearl.