By Mallika Seshadri And Betty Márquez Rosales for EdSource
Originally published on April 10, 2026
A potential three-union strike – involving roughly 70,000 employees of the Los Angeles Unified School District — scheduled to start Tuesday if there is no settlement, would cause upheaval throughout Los Angeles. It would cut off not just classroom time for up to 400,000 students, but meals, supervision and other daily support families rely on.
The potential walkout, involving teachers, support staff and administrators, would be one of the largest school labor actions in the nation this year. If it happens, it will shut down the country’s second-largest school district, leading to widespread child care challenges, especially for low-income and undocumented families who rely on the district for safety and essential resources, including meals.
There is anxiety about this potential strike in all corners.
“We just finished spring break, and this is the last push of the school year,” said Nicolle Fefferman, a longtime LAUSD educator and co-founder of the Facebook advocacy group Parents Supporting Teachers. “And it just seems to me that LAUSD leaders could be doing more to prevent a strike.”
Leaders with the United Teachers Los Angeles, which represents roughly 38,000 LAUSD educators, told EdSource that if the union comes to an agreement with LAUSD by Tuesday, the whole strike would be called off for all three unions. That includes SEIU Local 99, which represents more than 30,000 cafeteria workers, bus drivers and special education assistants, among others, and the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, which represents 3,000 principals, assistant principals and central- and regional-office middle managers.
Many teachers and employees remember the last round of strikes: UTLA with a six-day strike in 2019, and SEIU Local 99 for three days in 2023. But Tuesday’s strike promises to be historic, marking the third LAUSD strike in the past seven years — and a joining of forces of teachers, support staff and administrators. LAUSD is one of the county’s largest employers, and the 2023 strike temporarily halted students’ education. Pedro Noguera, dean of the USC Rossier School of Education, told the Los Angeles Times then that “the district is losing money each day schools remain closed, which means they’ll have even less to negotiate with.”
Financial disagreements sit at the heart of the discussion; the district points to a projected $191 million deficit in the 2027-28 school year, and the unions point to $5 billion in reserves.
If the strike takes place next week, it would impact roughly 389,000 students. In 2025, about 86% of students in the district were socioeconomically disadvantaged, according to the state’s education department.
UTLA officials say they are hoping that the school board, with three of its members facing reelection, will step in to help facilitate an agreement. The board has special meetings scheduled for Friday and Monday.
“I just wonder what type of reflections are the folks inside Beaudry (referring to the district headquarters at 333 South Beaudry Ave.) engaging in when they think about this new history of strife,” Fefferman said. “Is there anybody in Beaudry really thinking about how do we make sure this doesn’t happen again?”
Learning and resources
LAUSD said that even though schools would close, the district will help to ensure that learning isn’t disrupted and that students would have access to take-home materials and continue to engage via online learning. As needed, the district maintains it can provide devices and assistance “options for home connectivity.”
“During a work stoppage, the district is committed to supporting families by ensuring access to essential services and resources,” including “updated information on food distribution sites and child care locations, as well as instructional materials through Schoology to support continuity of learning,” Los Angeles Unified said in a statement to EdSource.
Beyond learning, LAUSD will make food distribution sites available to families, help identify locations for child supervision and work with partners to secure community-based resources, including mental health support, the district said.
A family hotline will be available, along with daily webinars to provide updates, guidance and answer questions.
Community concerns
If schools close, Fefferman, the LAUSD educator, plans to make her two kids, a 17-year-old and a 13-year-old, read, take their dog for walks and make signs in solidarity with teachers.
Meanwhile, Antonieta Garcia, mother to a ninth grader who works in early education, said she is concerned about how her daughter will be looked after if there is a strike.
“It worries me because we’re not going to know where our children are going to stay,” Garcia said, “especially when you’re a working parent, you don’t know where you are actually going to leave them.” She is a member of Reclaim Our Schools LA, a coalition working to improve access and justice for Los Angeles students.
For now, Garcia plans to stay home from work to be with her daughter — and will take her to show support for teachers at a local picket “rain or shine.”
“Our students are going to be falling behind because it looks like the district doesn’t want to comply with the teachers’ needs that they really need,” Garcia said. She also raised concern about access to counseling during the strike.
Evelyn Aleman, the founder and CEO of the nonprofit parent group Our Voice/Nuestra Voz, whose primary hope is to avoid a strike, said that while LAUSD plans to offer food distribution, some undocumented and mixed-status families, or those with some members who are undocumented, may feel unsafe accessing those services.
“That just puts another level of concern,” Aleman said, “and maybe an economic burden for them, because now they’re thinking, ‘Okay, there’s fewer food resources available to us, and now it’s going to be either harder to access the foods resources because of fears of ICE or because the children won’t have access to their meals at school.’”
Janna Shadduck-Hernández, project director at the UCLA Labor Center, has helped develop curriculum on labor rights to implement Assembly Bill 800, which, in part, requires that students receive information on their rights as workers. Through that work, she has met students and families who fear being swept up in immigration enforcement actions.
“There’s been a really deep response by teachers staying after school, going the extra mile, to walk their students home, to pick them up, to be out front every single morning greeting them, making sure they’re safe,” said Shadduck-Hernández. “I think there’s even more solidarity with teachers and with the cafeteria and the bus drivers and classified workers than ever before.”
Shadduck-Hernández added that some parents may disagree with educators going on strike. But at the same time, there is widespread support for the teachers’ cause.
“LAUSD is a working-class community. The students come from low-wage communities of color. These are working families who really see their schools as partners with them,” Shadduck-Hernández said.
Community efforts
To help support families and students, community organizations are also stepping up, including Community Coalition, a local grassroots organization that has worked to promote equity in Los Angeles schools. They’re planning to host students, likely from the morning through part of the afternoon, according to Christian Flagg, director of youth organizing at the coalition.
“We’ll have our facilities open to accommodate as many people as possible,” Flagg said. “And we’ll be open and supportive as long as the strike happens, as long as it lasts.”
During previous strikes, the staff from the UCLA Labor Center have made their office space, located in MacArthur Park near several LAUSD school sites, available for educators and families. And it will once again be available as a community meeting space next week.
A triple-union strike “will certainly make life — daily life — more challenging for families,” said John Rogers, an associate dean and professor at the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies. During previous strikes, having one union striking while other staff were “holding down the fort” in schools created an environment where colleagues would “always find themselves acting with opposing interests.”
“So, in general, I think that the solidarity being demonstrated right now is a good thing for public schools when the different educational workers are thinking of themselves as part of a common sector,” said Rogers.
