The Los Angeles Unified School District plans to bring in about 400 substitutes if there is a strike starting Thursday, and about 2,000 district employees who have teaching credentials but are not in the teachers union have been assigned to work in specific schools or areas, it was reported Monday.
“We have a duty to provide an education to our students, and we will take appropriate measures to do so,” a district spokeswoman said in a statement cited by the Los Angeles Times.
The union has said it will fight the district on outside hiring for temporary positions and is exploring all options to consider legal action to protect the work of UTLA substitutes, according to a statement last month.
Contracts with agencies, including the Charter Substitute Teacher Network and Maxim Healthcare Services Inc., allow for more than 4,400 substitutes to be brought in, according to The Times. In many cases, these substitutes would make more than regular L.A. Unified substitutes for the same jobs.
A regular K-12 substitute for the district makes $190 a day for the first 20 days. The contract subs in the same position could make $227 to $315 a day, depending on which agency provides them, The Times reported.
Preschool substitute teachers ordinarily make a maximum of $167.12 daily in their first 35 days. The contract subs could make up to $240 a day.
Substitute teachers for students with disabilities usually can make up to $190 a day in their first 20 days. The contracted substitutes could reach maximum daily rates of $227 to $385, depending on the agency, according to The Times.
L.A. Unified officials would not say which roles the 400 substitutes they are initially planning for would fill or how they would be distributed across the district, which educates some 600,000 students.