Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears weekly at LA School Report. A day after a state fact-finding panel released its report, the Oakland Education Association announced a strike date of Feb. 21. On its face, this seems strange. The union released a press statement with the headline “Factfinding Recommendations Endorse OEA’s Bargaining Positions.” The district released a statement...

While the recent release of information about California’s lowest-performing schools, including more than 100 campuses in L.A. Unified that require intervention, is alarming, what we really need to ask is how committed school officials, educators, administrators and their unions are to improving student academic outcomes, starting now. Now is the time for parents and community-based organizations...

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears weekly at LA School Report. The stage is set for what promises to be the largest and most expensive ballot initiative campaign in California history. The State Council of the California Teachers Association voted last week to support the Schools and Local Communities Funding Act, a measure scheduled for the November 2020...

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears weekly at LA School Report. Members of the Oakland Education Association voted to authorize a strike by a margin of 2,206 to 105, the union announced Monday. A fact-finding report is not due to be issued until the middle of the month, so a potential strike probably cannot be launched until after...

Los Angeles faces many serious educational challenges that require immediate solutions, including a declining student population, inadequate funding and an expensive housing market that makes it difficult for families to stay in L.A. These are all real issues that require careful planning to solve. Unfortunately, we fear these problems will take a backseat to the...

When then-President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act in 2010, the law immediately made some employee benefits offered by state and local governments redundant at best or regressive at worst. This issue is playing out in a painful way in Los Angeles. Teachers in the second-largest school district are now back at work after...

Nearly a year ago, the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Directors voted to approve a new three-year agreement with United Teachers Los Angeles and seven other district bargaining units, extending union members’ ability to earn free lifetime health, dental, and vision care for themselves, their spouses, and their dependents. Long acknowledged as one...

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears weekly at LA School Report. *Updated The 40-page tentative agreement reached between L.A. Unified and United Teachers Los Angeles in the early hours of Jan. 22 has a lot of details and dense contract language. Teachers did not have much time to read and digest it before they had to vote, and...

There’s a simple and hard truth to public education in Los Angeles: education access in our city has never been equitable. Most of our well-off families live in neighborhoods with excellent neighborhood schools or can afford, and choose, private school. But for the vast majority of kids in our city — particularly low-income students, students...