The teachers won a 6 percent pay raise and caps on class sizes, which had become one of the most contentious issue between the union and district officials. The city and county will also spend money to expand services in schools, including hiring more nurses, counselors and psychologists.
The settlement came after tens of thousands of teachers marched in downtown Los Angeles and picketed outside schools for six school days, and a round of marathon negotiating sessions over the holiday weekend.
The contract still needs to be ratified by members of the union, but that approval is widely expected. Teachers are expected to be back in their classrooms Wednesday morning.
“Today is a day full of good news,” Mayor Eric Garcetti said during a news conference at City Hall on Tuesday morning, as he stood alongside Austin Beutner, superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, and Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of United Teachers Los Angeles.
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The victory for the teachers’ union goes beyond the new two-year contract. The strike attracted widespread public support and sympathy, and helped to change the way teachers are perceived both in Los Angeles and around the country.
The strike also drew attention to how California, one of the wealthiest and most liberal states in the country, spends relatively little on its public schools.
The state’s chronically constrained school spending is largely attributed to its property tax laws, and especially to Proposition 13, a ballot initiative passed in 1978 that drastically limits tax rates and makes increases difficult to enact. Affluent, fast-growing suburban communities have suffered less under the law than large urban systems like the Los Angeles Unified School District, where declining enrollment and rising costs for pensions and health care have created budget problems year after year.
With fewer than half the district’s students attending school during the strike, officials said the walkout had cost the district roughly $125 million in state financing that is distributed based on attendance.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.