Teaching Assistants, District Continue Talks
Contract negotiations continued Tuesday evening between the Los Angeles Unified School District and Local 99 of the Service Employees International Union, which is negotiating its first contract for 10,000 teaching assistants.
The assistants, 70% of whom are bilingual Latinas, are entering the sixth day of a “rolling strike” aimed at heavily Latino schools with few Spanish-speaking teachers. The assistants are striking for a minimum four-hour workday and medical insurance, which the district says it cannot afford to pay.
Union leaders said 1,200 teaching assistants at 117 schools in the San Pedro-Wilmington area, West Los Angeles and South-Central Los Angeles stayed out of their classrooms Tuesday. The district put the figure at 250 assistants at 22 schools.
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