A Striking Proposition

In the first of an anticipated wave of California school strikes this spring, more than half of the 25,000 teachers in the Los Angeles city school system walked out last week after contract negotiations between the United Teachers of Los Angeles and the Board of Education broke down. At week's end the teachers were still on strike despite a temporary court injunction ordering them back to work and threatened contempt citations for union leaders.

The basic issue in the dispute is money--and not just for higher salaries. The Los Angeles teachers are demanding that their pay scale, which now runs from $7,200 to $14,350, be raised to a range of $10,000 to $20,000. But they are also making a major pitch for smaller classes, better textbooks, new courses, more teachers for Chicano students and free breakfasts for ghetto children. Before striking, the teachers rejected an offer of a 5% wage hike, claiming that no action was promised on their other demands for vital improvements.

Pressure on Reagan. Underlying the strike is the fact that the Los Angeles school system, like most in California, is rapidly going broke. Under economy-minded Governor Ronald Reagan, the share of local school costs borne by the state has been declining steadily and now stands at about 35%--compared with New York State's 45%, Washington's 59% and Hawaii's 87%, highest in the nation. Thus Los Angeles expects 1% more pupils next year but 3% less state aid. Meanwhile, costs have been rising and the willingness of citizens to pick up the difference through higher property taxes has run out. When Los Angeles voters were asked to approve a hike in local school taxes last month, for example, they rejected the proposal by a 3-to-1 margin.

Convinced that the only solution to the schools' worsening financial crisis lies in increased state aid, the 170,000-member California Teachers Association is co-sponsoring Proposition Eight, an initiative that will be presented to all California voters on June 2. Among other things, the proposition calls for the state to match the amount of school taxes collected locally on a fifty-fifty basis.

Governor Reagan opposes the measure because it would require an immediate boost in state sales or income taxes or both, a development that Reagan, running for re-election next year, is eager to avoid. But C.T.A. officials remain hopeful that the Los Angeles strike--and others like it threatened in Oakland, San Francisco, Torrance and several more cities--will galvanize California voters behind Proposition Eight.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.