LAUSD Teachers Vote Overwhelmingly To Ratify New Job Contract

LOS ANGELES (CBS) — In the end, it wasn't remotely close. More than eighty percent of LAUSD teachers voted to ratify a new contract that, in the process, helped save nearly 5,000 jobs and allows class sizes to stay at their present levels.

KNX 1070's Ed Mertz Reports

Over two days beginning Thursday, 20,429 teachers, or 83.2 percent, voted to approve the contract and 4,127, 16.8 percent, voted against, said United Teachers Los Angeles spokeswoman Marla Eby.

"This agreement will benefit teachers, health and human services professionals, parents and especially students, who will lose fewer instructional days and maintain class sizes next year," said union President A.J. Duffy

"We now need to find long-term solutions to the budget crisis so that the classroom is not continuously threatened."

The board of the LAUSD will vote on the deal on June 14.

"While this agreement does not restore all the (job) cuts -- because our schools are still drastically underfunded -- it goes a long way toward providing the resources and personnel for our students to succeed," LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy said in a statement on May 27, the day negotiators agreed on the draft contract.

Eby said the contract would have the effect of initially saving 3,400 jobs and ultimately more than 5,000 in the 2011-12 school year, with most of the more than 5,000 layoff notices previously sent by the district now expected to be rescinded. Additionally, class sizes will be maintained.

The teachers will have to take four mandatory furlough days during the period governed by the contract, not 12, as originally demanded by the LAUSD.

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