Your donation will help us produce journalism like this. Please give today.

UTLA, the LA Unified teachers union, is offering tonight an unvarnished public view of its bargaining position in negotiations with LA Unified for a new teachers contract.

Board member Steve Zimmer is scheduled to moderate a panel discussion at Occidental College that includes UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten and Martha Sanchez of Alliance of Californians for Community Development.

The event begins at 7 p.m.

Weingarten is participating to demonstrate support for UTLA, which has been demanding lower class sizes, full staffing, restored funding of adult and early childhood education and higher salaries as part of its negotiations with the district. She ias also expected to discuss how the issues in Los Angeles are playing out across the country

The UTLA-district talks have produced little progress so far after months of negotiating although sources on both sides say parallel talks are underway to help close the gap.

Weingarten is also planning to appear with Caputo-Pearl and others at a news conference tomorrow morning at Slawson Southeast Occupational Center, a career and technical education facility that primarily serves adult students.

“Our class sizes are too large and our schools are not staffed fully to support the needs of our students,” Caputo-Pearl said in a news release from the union. “LAUSD educators are not being compensated fairly and we are in real danger of losing them to other, higher paying districts, and recruiting educators to LAUSD is getting increasingly more difficult.”