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teachers
The Lesson From the LA Teachers' Win: There Is Money to Pay Educators If We Demand It
For too long, the narrative has been that we cannot afford to support teachers. We’ve just shown we cannot afford not to.
Apr 25, 2026
Before stepping into the classroom, I spent 12 years as an investigator with the California State Bar, examining cases of attorney misconduct. I chose to teach because I saw a meaningful way to serve my community, and I understood there would be sacrifice. Still, it took 10 years before my salary caught up to what I earned in my final year as an investigator.
In California, becoming an educator is neither easy nor inexpensive. In fact, it is one of the most challenging states to obtain a teaching license. Despite this, teachers remain among the most underpaid professionals relative to their level of education. According to the US Census Bureau, teacher earnings have not only lagged behind comparable fields, but have experienced a steady annual decline.
The debate is not whether schools have enough money, it is about what we choose to spend it on. Today, many educators cannot afford to live where they teach. Teaching, while never lucrative, used to offer a stable path to a middle class life. Educators could buy a home, live in the communities where they worked, and maintain the financial stability expected of other professions with similar levels of education. Sadly, even the most modest of those expectations are rapidly disappearing. I only own a home because I purchased it prior to switching my career.
Most educators did not choose this career for the money, but there is a clear difference between modest compensation and exploitation. Nearly 1 in 5 teachers in Los Angeles are housing insecure. And nearly 60% of educators across the country take on second jobs outside of teaching to make ends meet. It is unacceptable that the people responsible for educating our children are struggling to hold their head above water.
These victories for Los Angeles educators are not perks. They are the foundation of a functioning school system, and a respected career.
Teachers are also expected to subsidize their classrooms out of their own pockets. These stories are often framed as heartwarming and altruistic, but they reflect systemic failure and a lack of meaningful investment in public education. Few other professions require employees to pay out of pocket while already being underpaid.
The consequences of this underinvestment are becoming impossible to ignore. As the cost of living rises, fewer educators can afford to remain in the classroom. A teacher shortage has already hit Southern California, and the impact is profound. Nationally, teaching shortages have led to larger class sizes, burnout, and financial strain on the education system.
Education is expected to operate in scarcity while other sectors experience enormous growth. The education technology market alone is projected to grow by $170.8 billion by 2029. In the Los Angeles Unified School District alone, more than $1.6 billion has been spent on edtech. Framing this as a funding problem misses the point; it is a question of priorities. We are told we can’t make investments in educators, while billions continue to flow toward technology and outside contracts instead of the classrooms they are meant to serve.
And yet, during recent labor negotiations in Los Angeles, we were told a familiar refrain: There is no money.
This was the backdrop of three educational unions, representing more than 70,000 workers, on the brink of striking across Los Angeles. At the center of the dispute for United Teachers Los Angeles was a straightforward demand: a salary structure that reflects economic reality. As negotiations stretched over 14 months, frustration grew not only among educators but across school communities, culminating in escalating public pressure, organizing efforts at school sites, and an overwhelming strike authorization vote that made clear teachers were prepared to act if necessary.
Only when the possibility of a strike became real did the district return to the table with urgency. We ultimately won the majority of our demands, including overhauling the outdated pay system that kept incoming educators at artificially low salaries, raising the starting salary from $68,966 to $77,000 for teachers, and securing an average salary increase of 13.86% across the board. This is evidence that the “no money” claim is negotiable, not factual.
Just as significantly, for the first time in California, educators in Los Angeles have secured four weeks of paid parental leave. This is a historic breakthrough that now sets a precedent for teachers across the state of California, as well as the entire country. Additionally, we won a major expansion of student support, including more than 450 additional social workers, to address the growing mental health crisis among our youth.
These victories for Los Angeles educators are not perks. They are the foundation of a functioning school system, and a respected career.
When teachers are paid a living wage, they stay. When they can afford to live in the communities they serve, schools are more stable. And when students have access to trained mental health professionals, they are better able to learn. Investment is what makes public schools strong. Without it, everything else collapses.
For too long, the narrative has been that we cannot afford to support teachers. We’ve just shown we cannot afford not to. The lesson from Los Angeles is simple: School funding is not fixed by scarcity, but by priorities. And when educators and school workers organize, those priorities can change—for the better.
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Sanders Spurns Melania Trump's Vision of Robots 'Replacing Teachers'
"We should attract the best and brightest in our country to become teachers and pay them the decent wages that they deserve."
Mar 27, 2026
US Sen. Bernie Sanders on Friday rejected First Lady Melania Trump's vision of a near-future in which artificial intelligence-powered humanoid robots do the work of human school teachers, arguing that society should instead do better by its human educators.
The wife of President Donald Trump entered Wednesday's gathering of the Global First Ladies Alliance accompanied by Figure 03, an AI-powered "general purpose humanoid robot" developed by the Sunnyvale, California-based company Figure.
“The future of AI is personified," Trump told attendees, who included Brigitte Macron of France, Sara Netanyahu of Israel, and Olena Zelenska of Ukraine. “It will be formed in the shape of humans. Very soon artificial intelligence will move from our mobile phones to humanoids that deliver utility.”
“Imagine a humanoid educator named Plato," she said. “Access to the classical studies is now instantaneous: literature, science, art, philosophy, mathematics, and history. Humanity’s entire corpus of information is available in the comfort of your home.”
Responding to Trump's remarks, Sanders (I-Vt.) said Friday on social media: "Call me a radical, but NO."
"We should not be replacing teachers in America with robots," the senator added. "We should attract the best and brightest in our country to become teachers and pay them the decent wages that they deserve."
Trump and Macron also warned about the dangers technology poses to children in remarks that came the same week that a New Mexico jury ordered tech titan Meta to pay a $375 million penalty for endangering youth and jurors in a landmark social media addiction trial found that Meta and YouTube harmed a child user of their platforms.
The office of California Gov. Gavin Newsom—who is believed to be a likely contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination—also slapped down the idea of robot teachers, as did ordinary social media users.
"They want to replace human beings. Where will we work? How do we make money?" asked one X account with tens of thousands of followers. "No one wants this. We did not ask for it. Fuck all of this shit."
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Minnesota Districts and Teachers Sue to Make ICE 'Stay Away From Our Schools'
"Students can't learn, and educators can't teach, when there are armed, masked federal agents stationed within view of classroom windows, sometimes for days on end," said the Education Minnesota president.
Feb 04, 2026
Just days after an educational leader in Minnesota said that "our families feel hunted" because of President Donald Trump's "Operation Metro Surge," two school districts and a teachers union on Wednesday sued to block immigration agents from targeting people in and around public schools.
"For decades, administrations of both parties recognized that schools are different—places where children learn, where families gather, and where fear has no place," noted June Hoidal of Zimmerman Reed LLP, one of the firms behind the new lawsuit filed in the District of Minnesota.
However, shortly after Trump returned to office last year, his Department of Homeland Security (DHS) revoked the rule barring agents from arresting undocumented immigrants in or around "sensitive" locations like schools, places of worship, and hospitals, as part of his pursuit of mass deportations.
"When enforcement moves into school zones, the harm isn't theoretical," Hoidal stressed. "Attendance drops, instruction stops, and school communities lose the stability public education depends on. Districts across the country are watching how courts draw the line around spaces dedicated to children."
Over the past year, members of DHS and its agencies—including Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—have flooded various communities, including in Minnesota. The districts in this case serve students in Fridley, a suburb of the Twin Cities, and Duluth, about 150 miles northeast of Minneapolis and Saint Paul.
"The removal of long-standing protections around schools has had immediate and real consequences for our learning community," said John Magas, superintendent of Duluth Public Schools. "We've seen increased anxiety among students, disruptions to attendance, and families questioning whether school remains a safe and predictable place for their children. Schools function best when families trust that education can happen without fear, and that stability has been undermined."
His counterpart in Fridley, Brenda Lewis, similarly said that "as superintendent, my responsibility is the safety, dignity, and education of every child entrusted to our schools. When immigration enforcement activity occurs near schools, it undermines trust and creates fear that directly interferes with students' ability to learn and feel safe. Schools depend on stability, and that stability has been disrupted."
As Common Dreams reported earlier this week, Lewis has recently spoken at a press conference and to media outlets about the flood of federal agents—and it's come at a cost. The superintendent said she was tailed by agents multiple times while driving to and from the district office, and three of the six school board members have spotted ICE vehicles outside of their homes.
"It is my responsibility to ensure that our students and staff and families are safe, and if that means [agents are] going to target me instead of them, then that's what we need to do, and then they can leave our families alone," Lewis said. "But at the end of the day, are they trying to intimidate me to stop? Yes. Will I stop? No."
In addition to the two districts, Education Minnesota, a labor union of more than 84,000 state educators, is part of the suit against DHS, CBP, ICE, and agency leaders. The group's president, Monica Byron, declared that "students can't learn, and educators can't teach, when there are armed, masked federal agents stationed within view of classroom windows, sometimes for days on end."
"ICE and Border Patrol need to stay away from our schools so students can go there safely each day to learn without fear," she continued, "and so that our members can focus on teaching instead of constantly reacting to the shocking and unconstitutional actions of federal agents."
Last February, a federal judge in Maryland blocked the Trump administration from conducting immigration enforcement actions at Baptist, Quaker, and Sikh places of worship that sued over the repeal of protections for sensitive locations. The new suit asks the court to throw out the 2025 policy and restore protections to all such places.
The legal group Democracy Forward is involved in both cases and several others challenging Trump policies. The organization's president and CEO, Skye Perryman, said Wednesday that "the trauma being inflicted on children in America by this president is horrific and must end. The Trump-Vance administration's decision to abandon long-standing protections for schools has injected fear into classrooms, driven families into hiding, and thrown entire school communities into chaos."
"This is unlawful, reckless, and legally and morally indefensible," Perryman added. "We are in court because children should never have to look over their shoulders at school or worry that their loved ones could be taken away at the schoolhouse gate, and because the government cannot undermine decades of settled policy without regard for students, educators, or the law."
The suit was filed as Tom Homan, Trump's "border czar" and one of the named defendants, announced that 700 immigration agents are departing from Minnesota, which will leave around 2,000 there. The move comes amid incredible pressure on the administration to end Operation Metro Surge. Protests in the state, and in solidarity around the country, have ramped up since agents fatally shot legal observers Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.
The deadly operation in Minnesota has also impacted federal spending decisions in Congress. On Tuesday, lawmakers passed and Trump signed a bill to end a short-term government shutdown, but the measure funds DHS for less than two weeks. However, even if future funding for the department isn't resolved in that time, ICE can continue its operations thanks to an extra $75 billion for the agency that Republicans put in last year's budget package.
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