Garcetti on the Teachers' Strike: 'I Could Do Things Other People Weren't Able to Do'

After about a week on the picket lines, Los Angeles teachers and district officials reached a deal Tuesday to end a historic strike that put the struggles of public schools front and center for a national audience.

And although Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles has previously shied away from involving himself in the affairs of the nation’s second-largest school system, with the brighter spotlight and a potential 2020 presidential bid on the horizon, he jumped into action over the past several days, acting as a kind of mediator.

My colleague Jennifer Medina, who’s been following the strike closely, spoke to Garcetti about the strike. Here’s part of their conversation.

Jennifer Medina:Before the strike, contract negotiations had stretched on for nearly two years. How and why did you step up to get involved as a mediator?

Eric Garcetti: I have a good relationship with the school district and the union knows me and trusts me, so it seemed clear that I could do things other people weren’t able to do. The depth of the lack of the communication took my breath away. Everybody had an excuse to say, “We’re not going to sit down.” There’s plenty of blame, but I think I can help people get to know each other. In August, I started these conversations and then got more involved in December, saying you should be sitting down with each other and offered City Hall or even my office. There was just a lot of mistrust at the beginning. I laid down some ground rules: no surprises, positivity, confidentiality and a commitment — nobody was going to walk away from the table.

JM: You called this a “new day” for public schools in Los Angeles — do you think this will significantly change the public’s attitude about public education?

EG: Absolutely. For 10 or 15 years, it’s just been: Are you pro-charter or pro-union? There hasn’t been a culture of cooperation. I said from all along, I will only stay involved if we move beyond that.

JM: The final round of negotiations stretched into dawn Tuesday morning. Did you ever think a deal might not happen?

EG: It almost all fell apart [Tuesday] morning. It had gone over the cliff. We had done all the other items — I think there were 27 other issues that had been resolved by then. But we still had a disagreement about the class size cap. The teachers have for so long seen class size as an unachievable, never-enforced ideal. Superintendent Austin Beutner really wanted to hold on to the prerogative to change it if he needed to. I said it was time for a new day on this, because I think it’s the right thing to do.

JM: What do you see as the future of charter schools here? Will we stop seeing their growth in Los Angeles or in the rest of the state?

EG: I’m very agnostic on whether our schools are charters or noncharters. I think we should focus on the schools we already have and not have more charters pull away from the district to continue their expansion. We should have more accountability on what’s the costs and consequences of having these charter schools.

JM: How will the district come up with the money to pay for all this?

EG: I think they realized they could stretch further than they initially thought, while the union realized they could get something in every category they wanted. I think this is a new day to say how people can come together, not just for one philosophy versus another. It’s about making labs of innovation, about a joint commitment to make these schools work for kids who are already there.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.