LAUSD is broke, and the union knows it

After Los Angeles Unified delivered 3,200 pink slips to teachers and employees last month, the United Teachers Los Angeles has the temerity to strike for higher pay. As one of the most fiscally distressed school districts in America, drowning in an $11.4 billion unrestricted net deficit, hemorrhaging students, and still without its own superintendent due to ongoing legal troubles, it is absurd to demand a 17 percent raise over two years for results that would embarrass most private-sector employers. But the teachers’ unions have no shame, only contempt for the students they’re failing to serve while they abandon them yet again.

This isn’t a good-faith labor negotiation. This is a shakedown. And Californians should start asking why it keeps happening and whether it’s legal.

The California Policy Center’s fiscal health dashboard doesn’t lie. LAUSD’s financial situation is not merely challenging; it’s precarious. The district’s annual audit in 2025 revealed an $11.4 billion unrestricted net deficit. That number alone should end any conversation about retroactive salary increases, expanded staffing mandates, and gold-plated benefits expansions. Instead, the union is treating it as a floor.

The COVID-era federal and state funding that briefly papered over these structural deficits is drying up. There is no cavalry coming from D.C. or Sacramento. What remains is a district with declining enrollment, a shrinking tax base, a growing administrator-to-student ratio, and obligations it cannot meet.

And then there are the lawsuits. California’s AB 218 opened the floodgates on historical sexual assault claims against school districts, and LAUSD has already approved approximately $750 million in bond measures to cover those liabilities. Meanwhile, a family is now suing the district over the death of a student who was allegedly groomed by faculty. Given the district’s track record of ignoring parental rights and recent Supreme Court decisions like Mahmoud v. McKinney and Mirabelli v. Olson, it would be naive to assume that family’s lawsuit will be the last.

Then there is the district’s deliberate reversal of its charter school co-location policy. For years, charter schools rented space on district campuses, generating revenue. Now, that revenue stream is diminishing, replaced by empty buildings and ideological spite. The district is choosing to leave money on the table rather than share space with schools that are, in many cases, outperforming themselves.

And pension debt looms large. As AB 1383 (McKinnor) moves through the Legislature, there is every reason to believe UTLA is bargaining with full knowledge of its actuarial implications, structuring raises now in ways that will balloon pension costs for decades.

UTLA’s demands read like a parody of public-sector excess. A 12.6 percent retroactive increase to the base of every salary schedule with an additional 3 percent raise this July. A new wage floor of $80,000 for starting teachers and a top rate of nearly $134,000. Unreal.

In what universe does a public institution with these kinds of numbers think its employees deserve a raise?

But it gets richer. UTLA also wants four weeks of fully paid parental leave for all employees and contractual protections against artificial intelligence replacing union jobs. Read that again: the union wants to protect educators from AI even as many of those same educators use AI tools in their own classroom lessons every single day.

Parental leave at full pay for all employees sounds compassionate in the abstract, but the actuarial math is brutal, effectively doubling the cost of teacher absences. The costs cascade, drowning students in their wake.

The LAUSD standoff isn’t an isolated labor dispute. What is unfolding in Los Angeles is part of a deliberate, statewide political strategy by California’s teachers’ unions to use contract negotiations as leverage. These strikes are choreographed for maximum disruption in the final weeks of the school year and not during summer recess, when bargaining could proceed without holding children hostage.

Nobody disputes that teachers have every right to organize and to advocate for fair compensation. But a district without a permanent superintendent, operating under a fiscal cloud, and facing billions in legacy liabilities, shouldn’t sign a contract now that will compound these deficits for generations. This government union extortion exercise needs to stop now.

This article originally appeared in the OC Register

Lance Christensen is the Vice President of Government Affairs & Education Policy at California Policy Center.