If your 8th grade student in LAUSD goes back to the physical classroom, thanks to a union, the teacher will still be at home!
“Timothy Snowball, an attorney for the four plaintiffs, said in an interview Wednesday, March 31, that UTLA used students as a “bargaining chip” by refusing to have its members return to campuses sooner in order to try and advance the union’s own agenda. For example, the complaint alleges that during negotiations with the district on reopening schools, the union wanted other issues addressed, such as the defunding of police.
“UTLA used the tragedy of COVID-19 as an excuse to extract concessions based on its preferred personal and ideological policies by holding the education and future of LAUSD’s children hostage,” the complaint states. “UTLA was willing for teachers to remain out of the classroom, and children, including Plaintiffs, [sic] to suffer the mental, social, and academic consequences.”
Attorneys for the plaintiffs are working on the case pro bono. The attorneys are part of the Freedom Foundation, which is known for taking on public employee unions throughout the country.
Literally, the union wanted to make the children in school and at home unsafe—prefers to leave the streets to criminals, making victims out of the students and their families.
LAUSD, UTLA sued by parents unhappy with school reopening efforts
Lawsuit alleges district breached its duty to act in best interest of students by allowing teachers union to set agenda
By Linh Tat, LA Daily News, 3/31/21
A group of parents frustrated by efforts made to date to reopen classrooms in the nation’s second-largest K-12 system is suing the Los Angeles Unified School District and local teachers union.
The lawsuit, filed this week in Los Angeles County Superior Court, alleges that LAUSD breached its responsibility to act in the best interest of students by allowing the teachers union to dictate when schools should reopen.
LAUSD, United Teachers Los Angeles and UTLA President Cecily Myart-Cruz are named as defendants in the complaint.
Timothy Snowball, an attorney for the four plaintiffs, said in an interview Wednesday, March 31, that UTLA used students as a “bargaining chip” by refusing to have its members return to campuses sooner in order to try and advance the union’s own agenda. For example, the complaint alleges that during negotiations with the district on reopening schools, the union wanted other issues addressed, such as the defunding of police.
“UTLA used the tragedy of COVID-19 as an excuse to extract concessions based on its preferred personal and ideological policies by holding the education and future of LAUSD’s children hostage,” the complaint states. “UTLA was willing for teachers to remain out of the classroom, and children, including Plaintiffs, [sic] to suffer the mental, social, and academic consequences.”
Attorneys for the plaintiffs are working on the case pro bono. The attorneys are part of the Freedom Foundation, which is known for taking on public employee unions throughout the country.
A spokeswoman for LAUSD declined to comment on the complaint.
UTLA did not respond to a request for comment. Over the course of the pandemic, union officials have insisted that schools not rush to reopen. They’ve cited concerns for the health and safety of LAUSD students and their families, many of whom are people of color and who live in low-income neighborhoods that have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.
“As educators, we should be proud that we used our collective voice and power as a union to stand up for our students and their families,” Myart-Cruz said in mid-March after UTLA had struck a school reopening deal with the district that met all of the union’s key health and safety demands. The agreement happened “despite the unfair and malicious attacks by those who want nothing more than to destroy collective bargaining and the opportunities afforded from an equitable public education,” she said at the time.
Although students are scheduled to return to the classroom starting in a couple of weeks, Snowball said parents are worried UTLA will renege on the deal “on a whim” and that they want the district to offer in-person instruction full time.
Under the district’s hybrid program, elementary students will be on campus Monday through Friday, but some parents have complained that three hours of in-person instruction with their teachers is not enough. Middle and high school students, meanwhile, will be on campus for just half the week and will continue learning online those days instead of being taught in person by their teachers.
Snowball said his clients want the district to reopen schools full time as soon as possible, citing the learning loss and harm to students’ mental wellbeing that distance learning has caused. Even though classrooms will reopen soon, Snowball noted that because of the hybrid model, students will continue to learn online for at least part of the time.
The four parents named as plaintiffs in the personal-injury lawsuit — identified in the complaint only by their initials — are alleging their children have suffered academically and emotionally as a result of the prolonged school closures.
One parent reported that their 11-year-old son used to be socially active and a member of his school’s student council. But since schools closed over a year ago, the student has become depressed, addicted to video games and expressed a desire to commit suicide, according to the complaint.
Another parent has an 11-year-old child with autism who has struggled to remain focused during online learning, has become aggressive and has gained 30 pounds due to a lack of opportunity to exercise.
The academic setbacks and social and emotional harm that students across the country have experienced as a result of the pandemic and the resulting school closures are well documented. Just on Wednesday, Great Public Schools Now released a report discussing the impacts a year of distance learning has had on LAUSD students.
The Los Angeles-based advocacy group, which is not involved in the lawsuit, noted high levels of student disengagement from school during distance learning — especially among historically underserved or disadvantaged students — and said about 40,000 LAUSD students currently in grades 9 through 12 are at risk of not graduating high school due to at least one failing grade. The authors of the report also cited a host of mental health issues among students and recommended the district come up with a comprehensive educational recovery plan.
As for plaintiffs in the lawsuit, they’re asking a judge to declare that LAUSD has a duty to act in the best interest of students yet “breached this duty by refusing to safely return to in-person instruction according to the demands of UTLA”; that the union had “substantial assistance in” the district’s breach of its duties and that LAUSD is in violation of the state Constitution by failing to provide at least six months of in-person instruction each year.
They also want the judge to issue a permanent injunction, ordering UTLA “to cease aiding and abetting LAUSD’s breach of their fiduciary duties” and to order the union to stop preventing the district from providing in-person instruction.
The plaintiffs are seeking compensatory damages equal to the annual per-pupil cost to educate a student in LAUSD — about $16,000 per child — in order to pay for tuition at another school that provides in-person learning, in addition to other compensatory damages and the cost of the lawsuit, including attorney fees.
