By: Noah Meadows
April 25, 2023
HARBOR CITY, CA– “What do we want? Better wages!” chanted the crowd of teachers in Downtown LA last March. From March 21st to the 23rd, Downtown LA and multiple LAUSD schools were sites of protest for LAUSD teachers showing solidarity demanding higher pay for service employees like security guards, cafeteria workers, bus drivers, and other roles that are covered by the service worker’s union SEIU.
Without much warning, these 3 days suddenly became off days for every student in the nation’s 2nd largest school district.
However, for teachers like Jennifer Morris-Barbee, who has been teaching at Narbonne High School for 22 years, this is nothing new.
“Most of the teachers on campus have been on strike before. As a teacher, we plan, we do everything we are supposed to do, it makes it a little bit easier for us to adjust.”
After a 30 year period without a UTLA teacher’s strike, 98% of teachers approved of a strike in 2019. After over 30,000 of UTLA’s members protested from January , the teachers were able to secure a slight pay raise along with resources like guaranteed full time nurses for every school and full time librarians for middle and high schools.
That strike, however, was under previous LAUSD superintendent Austin Beutner, who stepped down from his position in 2021.
Since February of 2022, Alberto Carvalho, former superintendent of the Miami-Dade school district, has been in Beutner’s previous position.
As detailed within the previous timeline, Carvalho’s contract for LAUSD allowed the superintendent to earn $440,000 every year for 4 years.
For many teachers, this contract felt like a slap in the face. Many teachers already struggle to get in-class supplies as the costs are not covered by the schools or district. Mrs. Morris-Barbee, in particular, sacrificed much of her off time over her long career to gain as much in raises as possible, and she barely makes a quarter of what Carvalho makes.
Carvalho even makes more than President Joe Biden, whose salary was set at $400,000 in 2001.
The workers, however, have always gotten the short end of the stick. For example, the average custodian only makes $40,000 a year.
With the cost of standard living in Southern California constantly rising due to inflation, there is an ever growing need for more monetary compensation. Frustration and tension continued to build. When the superintendent is making more money that the President, and essential workers like custodians are struggling to get by, it is easy to see why employees were upset.
This frustration and tension over the vast salary gap boiled over in March, when the Service Employees International Union, or SEIU, voted to protest. In a show of solidarity with their fellow campus employees, United Teachers of Los Angeles, or UTLA, voted to protest alongside their sister union, shutting down LAUSD schools for 3 days in the middle of the school week.
One of the overlooked elements of the teacher protests are the students. For many students, they depend on the presence of their teachers in the classroom, but they recognize the need for protest.
“It’s kind of sad because teachers do a lot to help students so we can be smarter and have a good future, and just seeing them and the staff not [getting] paid as much is just sad,” said Breanna Otte, graduating senior from Narbonne.
In Breanna’s case, the sudden time off was relaxing, but it was difficult to get back into the assignments that she was doing on Monday.
For many others, teachers are more than just educators. They are friends, they serve as confidantes, and their classrooms are safe havens for students. For an inner city school like Narbonne, teachers that do more than educate are vital to the mental health of the students they come across.
After the completion of the protests last March, UTLA and LAUSD continued to negotiate a deal to raise the salaries of teachers and staff in the district, which were completed on April 18th, just last week.
With the new 3 year deal, teachers and staff will be gaining a 3-4% pay raise every semester, totaling a 21% pay increase over the next 3 years.
“It would be nice if they just made the deal simpler. I will be voting yes on the deal, however I know many teachers that will be voting no on the deal [because of how vague the language is],” said Mrs. Morris-Barbee.
As someone currently running for the Union representative chair at Narbonne, Mrs. Morris-Barbee strives to look out for her coworkers while also fulfilling the needs of the students she teaches.
