Seth Saavedra
As Retort has documented over and over, UTLA is the tip of the spear for outlandish and opportunistic COVID-related demands.
Making the rounds today is this visual outlining UTLA’s demands for schools re-opening:
Alarmed that their crisis capitalization would go viral and make them look bad, UTLA leadership scrambled to push out a response via social media:
Of course, UTLA was forced to respond because their demands are embarrassing and outright alarming to the average person. As with most anti-reform efforts, behind the flowery language of “save our schools” resides the more pragmatic reasoning:
UTLA’s refutation hinges on a technicality. While defunding the police and charter schools, along with funding Medicare For All, aren’t official bargaining pieces with LAUSD, those recommendations are all in UTLA’s July 2020 research report (a term very loosely used here) titled “The Same Storm, but Different Boats: The Safe and Equitable Conditions for Starting LAUSD in 2020-21”:
Predictably, missing from UTLA’s recommendations are any sort of racial bias training, professional development, accountability measures, or need to diversify their teacher ranks when 43% of teachers are White while only 11% of students are.
UTLA has been more than willing to prop up astro-turf groups and a slew of Edu-Karens gleefully boasting about reducing the access of Black and Brown families to charter schools in LAUSD:
UTLA is not to be trusted in any negotiation involving our students or schools. The co-opting of social justice language to enact long held turf battles with charters schools (which largely educate Latinx students in Los Angeles), belies true motivations.
UTLA only fights for students attending union-controlled schools. Otherwise, you’re simply a political target to be used as leverage for higher salaries and budget.
