Los Angeles — Bus drivers transport America’s children to schools where cafeteria workers feed them and teacher assistants assist students in desperate need of help.
It is known that their salaries are low. School support staff earn, on average, about $25,000 a year in Los Angeles, which is barely enough to live in one of the most expensive cities in America.
The paycheck is the driving factor behind a three-day strike that shut down the entire Los Angeles school system and highlighted the paltry pay of the support staff that serves as the backbone of schools nationwide.
Even outside of expensive California, school gigs often don’t pay enough to live on.
It’s a shame it took such an outing to bring attention to the chronic problem, says Arthur Anderson, a Virginia school worker, but he hopes it helps.
“People are so frustrated. We’re all frustrated,” said Anderson, a teacher’s aide in the Chesapeake Public School System where he worked for 30 years and made $32,000. He works three other part-time jobs to make ends meet. “I struggle to pay the rent,” he said. “I find it difficult to pay my bills.” “I love what I do. I just don’t like what I get paid.”
Anderson works 36 hour days as a Special Education Assistant in his school’s science department. But he is also asked to fill the job as a bus driver and a guard. When the science teacher is absent, he does substitute work, which pays an additional $10 per class. “I did it today. I got an extra $20.”
The strike against the Los Angeles Unified School District that began Monday is led by teacher assistants, guardians and other support staff who are among the lowest paid workers in the district. They demand better wages and more employment. Teachers joined the sit-in lines, in a show of solidarity that has forced the district to close schools in the country’s second-largest district that serves half a million students.
School support staff across the country tell stories of spending entire careers in public education, filling jobs that keep schools running. However, many do not earn a living wage and, like the striking workers in Los Angeles, cannot afford to live in the communities where they work.
said Princess Moss, vice president of the National Education Association, which represents about half a million education support staff. “It is an injustice to these school staff who work so hard and do so much for our students.”
The NEA, the nation’s largest teachers union, last year released data that showed full-time school support staff earned a median salary of $32,800. Delaware had the highest salary for full-time K-12 support workers ($44,738), while Idaho had the lowest ($25,830), but salaries vary widely by state. It can also vary by metro area and even within school districts, depending on how long the person has been in the job.
Amid staffing shortages exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, schools have struggled to staff during a strong job market, adding to the burden on remaining staff.
A RAND Corporation survey of school leaders last year found that about three-quarters of school leaders say they are trying to hire more substitutes, 58% are trying to hire more bus drivers, and 43% are trying to hire more teachers. Shortages add to the pressure on the school’s existing staff, often without a commensurate increase in wages. In recent years, staff have also found themselves on the front lines enforcing pandemic protocols or helping students who struggle with their mental health or behavior.
More than half of the nation’s public schools started this school year understaffed, with many struggling to fill key support staff jobs, especially in transportation and janitorial work, according to a survey by the Education Department. When asked what the biggest challenges were, almost four in 10 said candidates felt the salary and benefits were not good enough, and more than half of the schools said they did not receive enough applications.
The Local 99 of the Service Employees International Federation represents approximately 30,000 LAUSD teacher aides, special education aides, bus drivers, custodians, cafeteria workers, and other support staff. The union says many live in poverty due to low wages or limited working hours while suffering from inflation and the high cost of housing. Support workers, including many part-timers, earn about $25,000 a year, according to the union, which is asking for a 30% raise.
The school district provided a cumulative increase of 23%, starting at 2% retroactively as of the 2020-21 school year and ending at 5% in 2024-25. The package will also include more full-time jobs and expanded healthcare benefits. Superintendent Alberto Carvalho accused the union of refusing to negotiate and said he was ready to meet at any time.
Leaders of United Teachers of Los Angeles, which represents 35,000 teachers, counselors and other staff, pledged solidarity with the strikers.
“These are the lowest paid workers in our schools, and we cannot stand by as we constantly see them disrespected and mistreated by this district,” UTLA President Cecily Myart Cruz said at a news conference.
It’s unusual for different unions in the same school district to band together, experts say, but a united labor force in Los Angeles could mark an inflection point.
“The idea of a teachers’ union and a service personnel union that says we can do better if we stick together can be contagious in other communities looking and saying, ‘Hey, they did it in LA — maybe we can do that,'” said Lee Adler, the lecturer. and expert on education union issues at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
It is too early to say whether the Los Angeles strike will have a ripple effect. But people are paying attention.
“When something like this happens in a place like Los Angeles, people who have similar jobs in places like Chicago or Detroit wonder if they should raise more concern or demand more,” Adler said.
“When people see other people standing up and fighting, they definitely get a little anxious, and some think, ‘Can we do something like this to improve our lives?'”
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Associated Press education writer Colin Binkley contributed to this report from Washington, D.C
The Associated Press education team receives support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. AP is solely responsible for all content.
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