Not Bankrupting LAUSD, Just Getting The Contract We Deserve--In Defense Of UTLA

IN MY OPINION - During the 2025-2026 school year, United Teachers of Los Angeles successfully fought the Los Angeles Unified School District for a good contract. Then came the anti-union backlash.

The Los Angeles County Office of Education claimed our contract would spell fiscal Armageddon. Theatrically, they even threatened to take over LAUSD.

Conservative media claimed UTLA and other striking California teachers unions were “punishing children”, “hold[ing] everyone hostage”, “immoral”, committing “extortion” and “abuse”, and much more. 

How did we get here?

Like your hypochondriac relative who’s always “dying” but never seems to die, LAUSD has long claimed to be broke.  During our 2019 strike, then-LAUSD Board Member Scott Schmerelson denounced what he called LAUSD’s “‘doom, gloom and heading for bankruptcy’ predictions that we have heard for decades.” 

LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner had claimed LAUSD's reserve was down to only $700 million. Yet as the parties went through mediation and fact-finding, more information trickled out, and the reserve “grew”, first to $1.2 billion, then to $1.86 billion.

After UTLA won numerous contract gains, LAUSD saw its reserves almost double from 2019 to 2022, growing to $3.4 billion.

We heard more tales of financial doom before our strike in 2023, when we won a 21% raise over three years, but star-crossed LAUSD began the 2025-2026 school year with a $5.03 billion reserve.

During both strikes, as today, anti-union voices condemned us for forcing LAUSD to spend money it allegedly didn't have.

San Diego Unified School District school board member Richard Barrera, who is running for California Superintendent of Public Instruction, explains that in proclaiming this crisis, LACOE and other critics "conveniently ignore the $500 million that the state just gave LAUSD” in block grants, and that LAUSD will get another $300 million from the $3.9 billion in Proposition 98 money that Sacramento is temporarily withholding. These alone cover the raises UTLA won–it’s not hard to claim an entity doesn’t have enough money if you don’t count some of its revenue.

California requires LAUSD to hold only 1% of its budget in reserve. LAUSD currently holds 27%--far more than other school districts, and far above LAUSD board policy, which only calls for holding 5%. 

LAUSD also vastly overprojects its spending on certain budget items, which makes it appear to have considerably less money than it has. For example, in 2024, LAUSD budgeted $1.2 billion for textbooks, but actually spent only $460 million. In 2025, they budgeted $1.5 billion, but spent only $495 million.  

Longtime UTLA critic Marc Joffe of the California Policy Center acknowledges “LAUSD’s actual year-end reserves have come in above projections for the last 12 fiscal years.” In fact, the differences between LAUSD’s projected and actual reserves have been enormous. Not once have the losses LAUSD projects come close to materializing. 

Los Angeles County Superintendent of Schools Debra Duardo criticizes LAUSD over allegedly serious deficit spending, but UTLA instead considers such spending to be a course correction. LAUSD’s reserve reached a staggering $6.4 billion in 2024-2025--we demanded that they spend some of it on our schools, our students, and yes, on us.

A recent letter signed by school board President Schmerelson and board Vice President Rocio Rivas contested LACOE’s pessimism and alarmism, explaining, "We are proud of the stability these labor agreements bring to the district.”

LAUSD does face real challenges–declining enrollment, aggravated by federal immigration raids–as well as the fact that, as Barrera explains, California “ranks near rock bottom" of what we give to schools in relation to our state's wealth.

In condemning us, opponents are saying, in effect, that the financial pressures facing educators living in one of the most expensive cities in the world are educators’ problem. But LAUSD had been refusing to pay us what it should, and Sacramento has refused to provide the funding that it should. Our 2026 contract win helps make these pressures their problem. 

(Glenn Sacks teaches Government and is a representative of United Teachers Los Angeles at James Monroe High School in the Los Angeles Unified School District.)