By Mallika Seshadri And Betty Márquez Rosales for EdSource
Originally published on April 14. 2026
With contract negotiations between the Los Angeles School District and three unions coming down to the wire, the district’s 400,000 students and their families didn’t know when they went to sleep Monday night whether there would be school Tuesday morning.
In the end, school is open this week after the district and unions averted what would have been a historic joint labor strike Tuesday morning. District negotiators reached agreements with three labor partners over a 48-hour period. And the tentative contracts were celebrated at a joint press conference with labor and district leaders talking about unity after months of negotiations.
What are the takeaways from the averted 3-union strike?
1. The power of joint action and brinkmanship
For months, the focus had been on contract negotiations between the district and UTLA — which represents 38,000 teachers, counselors, psychologists, nurses, librarians and social workers — and SEIU Local 99, representing 30,000 cafeteria workers, bus drivers, custodians, teachers’ aides and special education assistants, among others.
Then the administrators union’s 3,000 members joined in the final weeks. Together, the three unions made it clear — they all reach an agreement with LAUSD, or they all walk out.
The administrators joining on “gave weight to the negotiations and showed solidarity has a broad reach,” said UC Berkeley labor expert Harley Shaiken.
“These workers were clearly willing to go onto the picket line if their demands weren’t met, and it was stop and go until 2 a.m. this morning, meaning it wasn’t an easy set of negotiations,” he said. “But it shows that if workers stick together and have unions, it can really pay off.”
The joint action allowed members of different unions to better understand the financial pressures each other faces, particularly the workers represented by SEIU, said John Rogers, associate dean and professor at the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies.
“Certainly some members of the public, some parents and other community members have even more extreme financial hardship than SEIU members, but it’s important for teachers and administrators to learn from the experience of SEIU members who are facing even more financial pinch than they do, given their different income levels,” said Rogers.
“My guess is that this shared labor action will further strengthen that alliance and the ways that those different parties understand each other’s role, and respect each other’s role moving forward,” he said.
2. Community support for teachers and staff
The three unions were buoyed by support from parents, students, community leaders and state politicians.
Reclaim Our Schools LA, a coalition that works to improve access to Los Angeles public education, held parent town halls to raise awareness of the negotiations and facilitated discussions between unions and community members at local churches.
Arelia Valdivia, the group’s executive director, says its members spoke with thousands of parents — resulting in a group of roughly 150 who regularly attended events leading up to the planned strike.
The group is “really proud of the coalition that we’ve built and the amount of solidarity that we’ve been able to see,” she said.
Vanessa Guerrero, an LAUSD senior at Miguel Contreras Learning Complex, said she and other members of Students Deserve, a youth-led movement that works to end school-to-prison pipelines, helped organize a school walkout on Monday.
About 50 students marched to LAUSD’s headquarters, where about 30 engaged in a sit-in, she said.
“I feel like us just talking about it wasn’t enough,” Guerrero said. “We had to actually do an action to show how much teachers actually mean to us as students.”
3. It comes down to money
At the heart of the negotiations was the issue of financial pressures — how much LAUSD employees struggle to make ends meet with increasing costs in the region, and how much the district has, and doesn’t have, to meet salary demands.
About 56% of UTLA members have acquired credit card debt, and 30% have worked a second job, the union said. Meanwhile, SEIU Local 99 maintains that 99% of its members cannot afford a one-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles County, and 65% have experienced hunger.
Salary agreements
United Teachers Los Angeles
Average salary increase of 13.86%.
SEIU Local 99
24% wage increase over three years, including 12% in retroactive pay
Associated Administrators of Los Angeles
12.15% in compounded wage increases over two years
The unions pointed to the district’s $5 billion in reserves to pay for their demands.
At the same time, LAUSD had projected a $191 million deficit in the 2027-28 school year. Its enrollment has dropped faster than the state average and two months ago the district approved a possible reduction in force, which acting LAUSD Superintendent Andrés Chait said Tuesday at a press conference they are still bargaining over.
“Any settlement that goes beyond what the district anticipated would add to that deficit,” said Mike Fine, the CEO of California’s Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team. He said “the real important question is: what did the district anticipate that was in their forecast versus what’s new to them.”
The total financial costs to the district of the agreements is unclear.
SEIU Local 99’s agreement has a 24% wage increase over three years, including 12% in retroactive pay. The district’s agreement with administrators includes 12.15% in compounded wage increases over two years, and its two-year agreement with UTLA includes an average salary increase of 13.86%.
Yolie Flores, president and CEO of Families in Schools, a nonprofit focused on student success, and a former LAUSD school board vice president, expressed concern that LAUSD may now have to compensate by cutting costs elsewhere, such as elective AP courses, tutors and sports. Those programs are critical, especially for low-income students who rely on school for enrichment opportunities, she said.
Chait said Tuesday that the district will comb through how funds are currently spent, including the district’s use of subcontractors. “We’re taking a laser-like focus on what we can do there,” he said.
Both he and LA Mayor Karen Bass, also at the press conference, said the state will likely play some role in funding the agreements.
“As the Los Angeles delegation in Sacramento, we have the largest, most powerful delegation and the solidarity that you see here today is going up to Sacramento,” said Bass, who joined the negotiations late Monday night.
Bass and Chait didn’t say how the state would step in to help LAUSD specifically. The labor agreements come at a time when some education leaders are looking to change how the state funds education to increase funding.
“What has happened, not just in LA., but across the state, is a demonstration of just how fragile our education funding is in California,” Flores said. “It’s going to increase pressure on the state to finally step in financially. It has got to figure out how to address the fiscal crisis in almost every district in California.”
It’s a point also made by UCLA’s Rogers.
LAUSD “as far and away the largest school district entity in the state, is going to have to leverage its political resources to put increasing pressure on the state government to bring more resources into the district,” he said.
4. Stress comes with last-minute negotiations
If there had been no agreement, Tuesday would have been the start of the third strike in seven years. And families are wary of what is starting to feel like a routine.
Tuesday’s early-morning decision left many families, teachers and students in a scramble — unsure of whether to pack books or picket signs. Carmel Levitan, who has two kids who go to school in the district, said the last-minute nature of negotiations made it harder for many parents to plan whether to sign up for child care or take days off from work.
“It was very frustrating to kind of watch and wait: refresh, refresh, refresh,” Levitan said.
She had hoped for a final decision Monday evening, and told her kids to be ready for anything.
“I just don’t want to be here again in two years,” Levitan said. “What can we do as a district to not go down to the wire again?”
During the Tuesday press conference, city, district and union leaders expressed gratitude toward each other despite coming out of intense negotiations. Chait said his goal is to lean on the partnership forged during the negotiations to avoid having to go down to the wire with last-minute agreements in the future.
“I’ve never believed in an adversarial role or relationship, rather, between a district and its workforce,” Chait said. “It just doesn’t make sense and I hope this is an opportunity for us to reset that.”
