Lab School Bargaining Update #4 August 17, 2022

On behalf of all Demonstration Teachers at the UCLA Lab School, our bargaining team presented twenty proposals, covering a full range of subjects, over four days of negotiations. Our team worked extremely hard to prepare our proposals, which establish and promote teacher working conditions that support the children in our learning community. Teaching conditions are learning conditions!

Our union is committed to transparency in this process. Consistent with this commitment, we have made our complete proposals available for review.

UC-AFT Demonstration Teacher Proposals (This document includes our complete set of initial proposals.)

Please read our union’s proposals and let us know if you have questions. Emails sent to contact@ucaft.org will be directed to our bargaining team members who will respond to inquiries about our proposals and the process.

26 of the 27 Lab School Demonstration Teachers have attended bargaining sessions to show support for our team, our proposals and our mission and work at the Lab School. Our teachers are united and determined to secure a union contract that will be the basis of a new era of collaboration and collegiality between Demonstration Teachers and the Lab School administrators.

In our session this morning, several Demonstration Teachers in attendance jointly read aloud portions of the statement below expressing the need for Principal Lazo to show leadership and to guide management's bargaining team toward a fair and robust UCLA Lab School Demonstration Teacher Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).

After we present Compensation, Demonstration Teachers will have presented our articles for the Lab School MOU. Georgia, we appreciate your attendance at bargaining and your participation in this process. As the principal of our school, you are the person best positioned to steward this process for the administration. You previously wrote the following: “I look forward to beginning the process of bargaining with the goal to ‘stabilize our community and move collaboratively into the upcoming academic year.’ ” At the beginning of our negotiations you also expressed a desire to improve relations and morale and move into a new era. Now, as our principal and the leader of our school, we are calling on you to back up your words with action. The way that you can do that is by negotiating a robust contract on a full range of topics. The Demonstration Teachers are standing behind the proposals we have given you. We need a binding response on every proposal. Our sincere hope and expectation is that you will accept our proposals or respond with counter proposals on a full range of topics, and that we will complete this process before the school year begins.

Thus far, we have not received any counter proposals from the UCLA management bargaining team. As Demonstration Teachers, we deserve a robust MOU like those negotiated by educators at The Geffen Academy and The Preuss School at UCSD, who are also members of our union.