Union officials in Los Angeles continue to hold education hostage for bigger salaries and more dues-paying jobs, though talks continue under the guiding hand of Mayor Eric Garcetti as the teachers strike drags into its second week.

United Teachers Los Angeles President Alex Caputo-Pearl urged members to continue to take to the streets to pressure officials with the Los Angeles Unified School District to accept the union’s contract terms, which an auditor found would bankrupt the nation’s second largest school system within three years.

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And while bureaucrats and union bosses haggle over money, parents, community leaders, teachers, education activists and others are pointing to bigger problems plaguing schools that are currently overshadowed by the UTLA strike.

Here’s some of the highlights.

Running on fumes

LAUSD is teetering on financial ruin, and could lose control of its finances if officials overspend on the UTLA contract. County Superintendent of Schools Debra Duardo told LA School Report “if (LAUSD and UTLA) did come to an agreement that was going to put them so much more in the red, then (district officials) would have to show us – and (I’m) not saying they can’t negotiate a higher rate – they just need to show us what cuts they’re going to make” to meet a 1 percent reserve requirement spelled out in California law.

California school districts are require to submit financial plans to county education officials that show reserves totaling at least 1 percent of the district’s budget. At LAUSD, that’s about $75 million, and the district is already working with the county because its projected reserve for 2020-21 already sits at $70.8 million, or about .96 percent of the budget.

The district’s budget deficit and other financial problems also have direct ties to pension and health care obligations outlined in the UTLA contract, including requirements for the district to pay both the employee and employer contributions for retirement. Other contractual expenses include an unnecessarily burdensome and expensive process to remove bad teachers – which has contributed to multi-million payouts for educators who abuse or harm students, as well as special bonuses, stipends, reimbursements, automatic raises, and other payments and buyouts.

Declining enrollment

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Enrollment in LAUSD’s traditional public schools has been on the decline for several years, and with fewer students comes fewer tax dollars. The district’s “2017-18 Superintendent’s Final Budget” explained that enrollment peaked in the 2002-03 school year with 746,831 students and has declined every year since.

And while many students have left traditional public schools for independent charter schools, that exodus only accounts for about 35 percent of the loss, according to a Reason Foundation study released this summer.

“The common narrative has been to blame charter schools for the decrease and the financial crisis,” Lisa Snell, the Foundation’s education director and co-author of the study, told the Los Angeles Daily News.

Even with charter students are taken into account, LAUSD’s data shows the district lost about 100,000 students since 2004-05.

According to the Reason study, “by 2022, pension and health care costs along with special education programs will be eating up over 57 percent of LAUSD’s main operational funding before the district spends a single dollar to run a regular school program.”

Illegal immigration

The extra special education costs are high in part due to a flood of illegal immigrants coming into the U.S. and settling near Los Angeles. The city is reportedly home to the second highest concentration of illegal immigrants after New York City, with an estimated 1 million illegal immigrants in Los Angeles County, though estimates vary widely.

Many students brought to the U.S. illegally by their parents cannot speak English and require special education, or English as a second language classes, as well as remedial education. Those families are undoubtedly attracted to LA because of its sanctuary status and plentiful social service programs.

92 different language

In total, LAUSD students speak 92 different languages, and the district educates more than 160,000 “English language learner students.”

“Their primary languages are Spanish (93.4% of English language learners), Korean (1.1%), and Armenian (1.1%) with Tagalog, Cantonese, Arabic, Vietnamese and Russian each accounting for less than 1% of the total,” according to the LAUSD website.

Low student achievement, persistent achievement gap

The California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress shows far fewer than half of LAUSD students are proficient in English and math. Results announced in October showed just over 42 percent of students proficient in English and nearly 32 percent proficient in math. The scores marked a modest increase over the previous year, though the achievement gap between students of different races persists.

“Overall, gaps remain between the performance of some student groups and the rest of the district. Students who are economically disadvantaged have proficiency rates of about 30 percentage points lower in both English and math. Gaps persist across all income levels between African American and Latino students compared to other student groups,” according to a district statement.

It’s those most vulnerable students who will lose out the most during the prolonged UTLA strike, with schools scrambling to staff classrooms with administrators and substitutes until union teachers recommit to their jobs.

Because, as nearly two dozen black pastors wrote in a letter to the union last week, “the fortunes of African-American children do not improve on a picket line.”

The same can be said, of course, for all students, regardless of race.