In the wake of historic pay increases approved at Los Angeles Unified School District, teachers and school staff in Culver City are clamoring for raises of their own and rallied outside of Culver City Hall this week to make their case.
Following a three-day strike and months of heated negotiations, LAUSD approved a 30% raise for service workers by 2024 and a 21% raise for teachers by 2025. In comparison, the current offer to teachers and staff at Culver City Unified School District, where raises are negotiated one year at a time, is 2%.
Union leaders have called the offer insulting, noting that the Culver City school district will get an 8% boost in state funding from this year’s cost of living adjustment, or COLA.
“We are not going to settle for two percent. We are not going to settle for less than the COLA,” said Culver City Federation of Teachers President Ray Long at a school board meeting on April 25. “We are fed up. It’s time for us to be paid what we deserve to be paid.”
CCUSD Superintendent Quoc Tran, on the other hand, said in an interview that the 2% offer is a starting point and that the district is willing to put more on the table.
How much more? He’s not sure yet, Tran said, because the district is waiting for legislators to adjust the state budget on May 19, which will provide a firmer understanding of its financial position for the next year.
“We could definitely afford more (than 2%), but we are not going to put the district in a position where two years from now we are unable to support salaries,” said Tran.
Before Tuesday’s school board meeting, scores of CCUSD teachers and staff rallied on the steps of Culver City Hall calling for better pay and more respect from the district. Parents who support the unions’ demands organized a rally of their own outside middle and high schools on Friday morning.
“As a parent of four CCUSD children, I know teachers and staff directly impact their life on a daily basis,”…
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