(CNN) — Thousands of Los Angeles teachers returned to classrooms Wednesday after their six-day strike reaped an array of wins. But they didn’t get everything they wanted. And some parents are wishing for more. Still, most of the 34,000 members of the United Teachers Los Angeles union were satisfied with a deal struck between UTLA leaders and the Los Angeles Unified School District. “For years, our students were being starved of the resources they need,” UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl said. “It’s a historic day.” What did the teachers’ union get? Smaller class sizes: This was a huge deal for teachers, who said there’s no way they can give enough individual attention when they have 45 to 50 students in a class. With this new deal, class sizes in grades 4-12 will be reduced by 1 in the 2019-20 school year; 1 in the 2020-21 school year; and 2 in the 2021-22 school year. In addition, classes in grades 3 and lower will be capped at 24 to 27 students, UTLA said. All TK-3 classes will finally be capped to 24-27 students. No more 28+ elementary classes. There were over 100 TK-3 classes in the fall of 2018 that exceeded the MOU cap of 27 due to section 1.5. #UTLAStrong pic.twitter.com/KZRddFFQLm — United Teachers Los Angeles (@UTLAnow) January 23, 2019 More nurses: LAUSD will add 300 school nurses over the next two years. These permanent hires mean every LAUSD school will finally have a nurse, Caputo-Pearl said. More counselors: Over the next three years, LAUSD will add 77 new counselors – which will help reduce the student-to-counselor ratio to about 500:1. More librarians: LAUSD said it will add 82 librarians to all secondary schools. That will allow all middle schools and high schools to have a teacher-librarian, Caputo-Pearl said. Teacher raises: The school district agreed to a combined 6% raise for teachers – 3% retroactively for the 2017-18 school year, and 3% for the current school year. The teachers’ union had asked for 6.5% raises, but had to settle for the 6% raises. . @LASchools today announced that it has reached an agreement with UTLA on a new contract that provides a 6% salary increase for educators, reduces class sizes, adds a significant number of librarians, counselors and nurses, and maintains the fiscal solvency of the school district pic.twitter.com/LKYM1QogMC — Los Angeles Unified (@LASchools) January 22, 2019 How much will all this cost? LAUSD said the investment in nurses, librarians, counselors and class size reduction will cost $175 million over the next two school years, and $228 million in the 2021-22 school year. That’s a total of $403 million over the next three school years. But before and during the strike, LAUSD said it was already stretched to its financial limit. The school district said its $1.8 billion in reserves was already earmarked for future education spending, and projections showed the district was facing years of deficits. The situation is so bad, the Los Angeles County Office of Education is intervening. The state-funded regulatory agency assigned fiscal experts to work with the school district to help “eliminate deficit spending and restore required financial reserve levels.” So where will this $403 million come from? “A portion of the $403 million will come from assigned reserves … and a portion will come from an anticipated increase in state revenue,” LAUSD spokeswoman Barbara Jones said. ROBYN BECK/AFP/AFP/Getty Images Teachers rallied after union leaders and the school district reached a deal. “We also have commitments from the state and county, such as the $10 million approved by the (Los Angeles County) Board of Supervisors for mental health.” The district could help fund the deal with: – A state tax referendum on the 2020 ballot, which could generate $1.4 billion for Los Angeles-area schools – A parcel tax at the county level, which would need approval from a majority of the district’s voters – City money, since Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said he is open to redirecting some city funds toward school needs. Why are some parents not thrilled? While many parents celebrated news of the deal – and the end of the teachers’ strike – Andrew Krowne said he’s not satisfied with the agreement. “I’m not impressed,” said Krowne, the father of four LAUSD students. He said elementary school students won’t benefit as much as older students because the younger kids won’t get additional librarians or counselors. “As a parent of a child who was bullied so badly she had to change schools, I’m not a supporter” of the contract, Krowne said. “There was a chance to save lives by providing services to the most vulnerable among us, to identify and address problems before they lead to tragedy.” Evelyn Alemán said she’s glad the strike is over and appreciates the union, school district and mayor for helping bring a resolution. But she wants parents like herself to have a greater voice in negotiations that directly impact their children. “Parents cannot and should not be left as spectators on the sidelines while others make decisions about their children’s future and education,” said Alemán, the mother of a high school freshman. And if the school district and union have another impasse like this one, she said parents should have a seat at the table. “As partners in education, parents can offer unique perspectives and support, but they need transparency from all entities at the negotiating table,” Alemán said. “They need inclusion – and action.” CNN’s Rosalina Nieves, Sarah Moon and Cheri Mossburg contributed to this report.<doc-sep>Topping the union’s list of priorities were demands around class sizes, which in many schools often exceeded the limits stipulated in the teachers’ previous contract—and in some cases were well upwards of 40 kids. While research on the benefits of class-size reduction is mixed, a number of compelling studies suggest that smaller class sizes can be a significant predictor of student success. Another concern: the paucity of school staff tasked with supporting students’ extracurricular needs and well-being. Many campuses, for example, have for years operated without a full-time librarian or nurse, and a 2017 report found that a Los Angeles public-high-school counselor’s average caseload was 378 students, though that might have been a conservative estimate given recent analyses of the settlement, which concluded that the small number of additional hires will leave the ratio at 1 to 500. Nationally, the recommended student-to-counselor ratio is 250 to 1. Yet the ratio should, arguably, be even lower than that in the Los Angeles public schools, which suffer from one of the greatest concentrations of student poverty among California’s school districts, with more than eight in 10 students relying on subsidized meals. On both of these issues the teachers basically got what they wanted: class sizes will go down—immediate reductions for secondary math and English classes (from a limit of 46 students to 39) and, eventually, modest cuts to the size caps for every class in all but the earliest grade levels—and the number of support staff will go up, including hundreds of new nurses and dozens of new librarians. And it was on these issues that the differences between LAUSD’s earlier offers and the final compromises are most striking. Pronounced juxtapositions tend to signal areas that were the biggest sources of dispute in the negotiations, revealing what most preoccupied teachers. Read: The unique racial dynamics of the L.A. teachers’ strike In general, the agreement requires that the district, over the course of several school years, invest $403 million in those staffing increases and class-size reductions—more than three times the amount the district had offered in its final contract proposal before the strikes. Beyond those funding commitments, the union is claiming victories in its promotion of “community schools” designed to improve the well-being of both the students and their broader social networks, as well as in its condemnation of random searches of students on certain campuses. It even secured the district’s vow to add more green space to school campuses (by removing asphalt, for example, or creating more verdant play areas), though the details have yet to be hashed out. While the strike’s outcomes are largely school- and student-focused, educators, too, will benefit, notes Mark Hlavacik, a communications professor at the University of North Texas who studies teachers’ union rhetoric. They’ll have smaller classes to manage, more help from other school staff, and fewer headaches over standardized testing, which, as part of the contract, the school district has agreed to curtail. But the important takeaway is that teachers are advancing themselves as advocates for students and and schools.<doc-sep>LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) – Teachers for three South Los Angeles charter schools who have been on strike for 10 days held a rally Thursday morning along dozens of student and parent supporters in attendance. About 80 teachers have been on strike since Jan. 15 as they try and negotiate a deal with The Accelerated Schools founder and CEO Johnathan Williams. The teachers are represented by United Teachers Los Angeles — the same union which also represents the approximately 34,000 teachers in the L.A. Unified School District, whose own nine-day strike ended with an agreement Tuesday. “While the LAUSD strike that had over 30,000 folks out on the street fighting for basic common sense demands, while that strike is over, the strike here at Accelerated is not, and we’re gonna put every bit of our power and influence here to support the educators, the parents, the students,” UTLA President Alex Caputo- Pearl said Thursday. “We’re going to make sure that Accelerated wins this strike.” It is the first charter school strike in California history, according to UTLA. Negotiations between teachers and The Accelerated Schools have been ongoing since April of 2017. Along with higher salaries and better health insurance, the union says a major issue has been teacher turnover. The Accelerated Schools average 30 to 50 percent turnover per year, UTLA said. “You have had years where up to 40 percent of the educators have turned over from one year to the next, that is not what students need,” Caputo- Pearl said. Two other related issues include binding arbitration and due process for teachers. “It’s important that two out of the remaining key demands are not even financial demands, they are demands about basic respect and dignity: for binding arbitration and due process,” Caputo-Pearl said. “So educators cannot just be summarily let go at the end of a school year for no reason and no cause given.” Attendance has been at about 50 percent since the walkout began. “Accelerated Schools is disheartened that United Teachers Los Angeles leadership has called for a strike, putting our students and families in the middle of contract demands,” Williams said in a statement provided to CBS2. Accelerated’s three schools, founded in the mid-1990s, have about 1,700 K-12 students, according to the Los Angeles Times.<doc-sep>LOS ANGELES —The Los Angeles teachers' union ended its week-long strike Tuesday night, union leaders said, overwhelmingly supporting an agreement with the nation's second-largest school district. Teachers will return to 900 Los Angeles Unified School District public schools on Wednesday, restoring a sense of normalcy for about 500,000 students. Although the union will finish counting votes tomorrow, union president Alex Caputo-Pearl said the vast supermajority approved the settlement reached Tuesday morning. The strike began on Jan. 14, with teachers calling for smaller class sizes, raises and more school nurses and counselors. "This is a historic agreement," Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said earlier in the day. "It's time for a new day in public education in Los Angeles." More:More strikes ahead? Teachers say they love their jobs but can't pay their bills, poll shows Related:We followed 15 of America's teachers on a day of frustrations, pressures and hard-earned victories As Los Angeles teachers prepared to return to the classroom, teachers in Denver voted to strike by a 93 percent vote, The Denver Post reported. Teachers can walk out as early as Monday, the Post reported, marking the union's first strike in 25 years. “I was hoping and praying it wouldn’t come to this,” teacher Nik Arnoldi told The Post after voting for the strike. “I’m worried for my kids, and I hope they’re in good hands, but we need to do this for them.” The Los Angeles agreement includes class size reductions in all grade levels, 300 additional school nurses, 80 new teacher librarians, one counselor for every 500 students and a 3 percent raise for teachers, Caputo-Pearl said during a Tuesday night press conference More:Los Angeles' striking teachers reach 'historic' settlement with school district L.A. teachers' strike:Homeless kids lose their island of stability during strike<doc-sep>
Teachers in Denver have authorized a strike against the public school district, but the pending labor action is not just about their pocketbooks. "They’re striking for better pay, they’re striking for our profession, and they’re striking for Denver students," Rob Gould, lead negotiator for the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, told reporters this week. The idea that taxpayers need to reinvest in often neglected public schools has been embraced by educators' unions from coast-to-coast. Teachers in Denver; Sacramento and Oakland, California; and Virginia are in the midst of labor disputes that could help shape the nature of public education funding in the years to come. If Los Angeles is a bellwether, the nation could be turning a corner when it comes to pumping fresh cash into classrooms instead of pinching education pennies. United Teachers Los Angeles embarked on a seven-day strike that ended Tuesday when the UTLA agreed to a new contract with the nation's second-largest school district. "What we are witnessing is not a moment but a movement of and by educators who are fighting for the public schools our students deserve," National Education Association president Lily Eskelsen García said in a statement. The Los Angeles Unified School District agreed to spend an additional $403 million on schools through 2022, reduce average class size, now at 42, for middle and high schools and give campus administrators some say when privately run charter schools come aboard. "The second-largest school district going on strike will inspire teachers across the nation to do what they need to to improve the quality of their schools," said Kent Wong, director of the UCLA Labor Center. In California's capital, the Sacramento City Teachers Association says the district has failed to live up to its end of previous bargaining, allegedly putting money into administrator bonuses instead of reducing class size as promised. The president of the labor group, David Fisher, said members have been clamoring for a strike vote. The timing doesn't bode well for the district if it's trying to avoid this national wave of pro-student labor action. "Our issues are very much like the ones in Los Angeles," Fisher said. "We already got the district to use health care savings to implement lower class sizes and other issues. We just need to get them to do it." In the Bay Area, members of the Oakland Education Association were expected to vote on a strike authorization next week. Keith Brown, president of the union, said in a statement, "Teachers are fed up with the poor working conditions and salaries, and with the learning conditions that our students are having to endure." On the other side of the country, Virginia Educators United was planning to take a day off from teaching and march in the state capital. The story is much the same: A lack of investment in the classroom, particularly at a time when state lawmakers were considering giving Amazon $550 million in tax breaks. "We haven’t brought school funding back up to adequate levels" seen before the Great Recession, said Virginia Educators United organizer Deanna Fierro. "We’re at a point where it’s getting well over 10 years and we’re starting feel the pinch, especially in our own pocketbooks." The labor disputes are part of a national surge of labor actions — in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona, Kentucky and North Carolina — that started last year under the National Education Association's "Red for Ed" banner. Teachers in Los Angeles wore red T-shirts as they demonstrated. UCLA education professor Pedro Noguera said the apparent victory in L.A., where more than 600,000 students were invited back to school Wednesday, will "inspire teachers around the country to focus beyond salary and benefits and think about the conditions they work under." "With cases like the L.A. strike it’s exciting because it gives educators courage and motivation," said Fierro of Virginia Educators United.