A Strike Against Families

12Sep
by Anna Macias

The teachers’ union and LAUSD can’t agree on a contract and they are planning to strike. I don’t feel good about this. I have a lot of respect for teachers and the work that they do. At the same time, I feel lost in this conversation. What about what families need?

Schools are supposed to be about children. We trust the schools to be there for our children. The schools ask us to do everything we can to make sure our kids attend school and are ready to learn. They encourage families who need to take trips to Mexico to hold their trips for the summer. They have awards for children who have perfect attendance. Parents get phone calls whenever children are absent from school. How does this strike make sense?

I know many single parents who have 2 to 5 kids. I personally am a single mom with a special needs son. We all have our children enrolled in LAUSD schools. What are parents supposed to do if the teachers strike? They will need to miss work. If the strike lasts more than a few days, no employer is going to put up with that. Families will lose jobs. We are talking about the basic needs of families. We can’t miss work because we need to put food on the table.  

Then let’s talk about all the parents with special needs children such as myself, if there is no teacher in a classroom to provide the support that our high needs students have, what will happen? Students with special needs rely on a structured environment, a strike will be a disruption for our students and the impact worries me.

The schools and district demand a lot from parents. They want us to do our best to make sure our children are learning. How is striking helping to accomplish that? If children lose learning during the summer, how is a strike going to affect them? I don’t think a strike serves families on a day to day basis. The voice of parents and children gets lost in this process.

Everything I’ve read about this strike seems to be about money. The district doesn’t have this money. I don’t understand how striking is going to make there be more money. Striking isn’t going to make the district suddenly have more money. I think that union leaders should be working to solve these budget issues in Sacramento, where there might really be some results.

What do you think?

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Anna Macias

Anna Macias is an LAUSD parent and lives in the Southeast. She is a special needs mother. Her son Albert is 16 years old and has a diagnosis of cerebral palsy and hydrocephalus. She has recently become a more active parent in her community and is passionate about education access and equity.

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