Los Angeles School Board Moms Push for Paid Parental Leave
The board passed the resolution unanimously last month — and now the district is putting together a preliminary plan, with a deadline of February, 2026 to produce a package of new parental benefits.
Board Member Tanya Ortiz-Franklin, who represents LAUSD's District Seven, which includes neighborhoods such as South L.A., Watts and San Pedro, is the sponsor and a co-author of the resolution.
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She said it's about time the nation's second-largest district treats its workforce of more than 70,000 employees, including thousands of working moms like her, more fairly.
'Parents are spending the vast majority of their paycheck on rent and childcare, and a little bit left over for food and gas and other bills,' said Ortiz-Franklin, a former LAUSD teacher who has two young children. 'It's really affecting people's livelihood.'
The resolution, which was co-sponsored by board members Karla Griego and Kelly Gonez, includes provisions for the district to support family planning, pregnancy, parental leave and childcare.
The district is beginning with a demographic study to determine which employees have families, or are planning to, and identify areas of need. The study will also assess the costs of expanding leave for new parents.
The district has contracts with unions that govern pay and benefits for its employees and is currently negotiating a new contract with the city's teachers union, which is also pushing for better benefits for parents.
Ortiz-Franklin said new parents who work for L.A. Unified currently face an impossible choice: pay for childcare for their family or pay other household expenses. The cost of high-quality childcare in L.A., she said, exceeds the income of many LAUSD employees.
She said teachers and other LAUSD workers are ineligible for the state's disability insurance program, which offers partially paid leave of up to 16 weeks for new parents. Teachers and other LAUSD employees are exempt from the state's family leave programs because the district's benefits programs predated those of the state.
Often, Ortiz-Franklin said, district employees have to use their limited sick days to take parental leave, leading many teachers and other school staffers to time their pregnancies so they give birth during the summer months, when they are off anyway.
In addition to calling for leave for pregnant employees, the resolution also calls on LAUSD to:
Provide more access to reproductive healthcare, including fertility treatments.
Create dedicated spaces for lactation at all district schools and offices.
Help employees enroll their children in LAUSD schools near where they work.
LAUSD officials are now working on a plan to provide these new benefits, Ortiz Franklin said, with some of the new services coming online in the current school year.
Maya Suzuki Daniels, a teacher at San Pedro High School and a mother to a kindergartner and an infant, said the district needs to do more to support working parents like her.
Suzuki Daniels said she's spent up to $1,600 a month for childcare, putting financial stress on her family while she's trying to work full time and raise young children.
'I exhausted all of my sick time, and I now am paying for their child care through personal loans,' Daniels said, 'which I'm told is very typical and normal for a working teacher. That sucks.'
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Los Angeles Times
14 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
Back-to-school season sees LAUSD, parents work to protect kids from ICE
Benjamin Marcelo Guerrero-Cruz was walking his family's dog in Van Nuys last week when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents took him, according to a GoFundMe page started on behalf of Guerrero-Cruz's family. The 18-year-old rising senior at Reseda Charter High School was scheduled to start the academic year Monday, along with more than half a million other students in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Instead, Guerrero-Cruz is spending his first week of school in a detention center — 'in a freezing detention cell with 50 strangers,' the GoFundMe page alleges. The detainee locator tool on the Department of Homeland Security website confirms that Guerrero-Cruz, who was born in Chile, is 'in ICE custody.' In a statement to KTLA-TV, a Homeland Security official said: 'Benjamin Guerrero-Cruz, an illegal alien from Chile, overstayed his visa by more than two years, abusing the Visa Waiver Program under which he entered the United States, which required him to depart the United States on March 15, 2023.' The fundraiser's organizer, Rita Silva, alleges that Guerrero-Cruz does not currently have access to basic hygiene or an adequate food source. 'He has only water, and since being detained, he has not had proper access to a bathroom, there are just two toilets for everyone to share. He is cold, scared, and one of the youngest there,' Silva says. 'Other detainees, many older than him, have taken him under their wing to protect him.' The fundraiser looks to help Guerrero-Cruz's single mother with legal services, immigration fees and living expenses while caring for her 5-month-old twin sons and 6-year-old son. As the school year starts this week, LAUSD is forced to deal with the reality of the ongoing ICE raids throughout the city and being monitored for how it plans to protect students and families.s This week, my colleague Howard Blume reported that a 15-year-old boy was reportedly handcuffed, detained and had guns drawn at him by immigration agents just outside Arleta High School on Monday. The situation was later described as an alleged case of mistaken identity by L.A. schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho. 'He was not an adult,' Carvalho said. 'This is the exact type of incident that traumatizes our community and it cannot repeat itself.' The teenager — a student with disabilities who attends a different school — was with his family members when the arrest occurred. He was ultimately released after his family intervened, L.A. Unified School District officials said. 'Such actions — violently detaining a child just outside a public school — are absolutely reprehensible and should have no place in our country,' Kelly Gonez, the LAUSD District 6 school board member who represents Arleta High, said in a social media post. 'As we prepare for the start of the school year this week, we are doubling down on our efforts to protect students and families such as by providing safe zones outside of our campuses, working with partners,' she continued in her statement. 'I denounce these violent aggressions, the continued unconstitutional targeting of our Latino community and call on the federal government to immediately stop harassing, abducting and tearing apart our communities.' Speaking to the concern that Gonez and many parents across L.A. have regarding student safety, Carvalho said that the district will create and expand 'safe zones' around campuses before and after school, and that everyone must work to protect the most vulnerable populations. Carvalho will send staff across the school system beginning the first day of classes to patrol the streets around schools and ensure the safe passage of students from school to home. The safe zones will cover areas most affected by immigration enforcement. In recent weeks, Carvalho said LAUSD has been equipping households with informational packets that explain 'the rights of our children and their parents, but also providing easy access to the resources that we have available to all of them.' Additionally, LAUSD is working to reroute buses to make transportation more accessible to families and has created a 'compassion fund' to provide general help for families, including legal assistance. LAUSD officials aren't the only ones looking out for students as classes start. Community organizations are equipping parents and fellow concerned citizens with tools and plans for how to ensure a safe start to the academic year. On Wednesday night, Unión del Barrio — an independent political organization advocating for immigrant rights and social justice — held a Zoom meeting called 'Community Plan to Defend Our Schools.' Guadalupe Carrasco Cardona, an LAUSD educator, coordinator and leading member of Unión del Barrio, spoke to the Times ahead of the meeting. 'It's really going to be about community members coming out around the school areas [and] even small businesses,' she said. 'I know at my school a lot of students go to the liquor store, they pick up their little munchies, they pick up their coffee or beverages and things like that. And so it's a callout to all those other folks to know what to do in the event that ICE is in their vicinity and how they can help protect all students.' The agenda for Wednesday's online gathering was in part informed by the crowdsourced concerns from parents and educators. 'A lot of parents are concerned about transportation, [specifically] what's going to happen from their house to the bus and then on the bus and then from the bus to school,' Cardona said. 'We have a lot of parents who are afraid of what happened at the Arleta orientation. I know at my school, we have a lot of parents that have been asking for alternative ways to complete all the paperwork that's necessary for students to register for the new school year.' But for Cardona, Thursday, the first day of classes in the district, will become the new reference point for how deeply affected families in the school system were by ICE over the summer. 'As a teacher I fear for students that don't return, that aren't just like in hiding, but that may have been been kidnapped and deported without us knowing because over the summer it's really difficult to keep track,' Cardona explained. 'Some things happen by word of mouth, but some things just happen, especially during the mass raids. We've been trying to keep track, but it's been very difficult to confront.' The organization's goal is to have families' trips to school be as uneventful as possible so that students can focus on getting an education. And although LAUSD has put forward a strong face and message about student protection, Cardona expressed concern about the district's current, seemingly nonexistent implementation strategy. 'I have not as an educator — and I'm also a coordinator, so I actually deal with buses — heard a single peep about how [the student protection strategy] is going to be different and what I need to be doing for my students so that it's different than last year, for instance,' she said. 'I'm very happy about the fact that L.A. Unified, L.A. elected officials and our leaders are at least in word in support of our migrants and immigrants. So that's huge because that gives us the support to do this outside organizing that we're doing,' Cardona said. 'I mean, it's not enough because it would be better for us to have actual official resources and support instead of us just doing this on our own.' More than 350 people logged into the Wednesday night Zoom call, on which Unión del Barrio leadership shared phone numbers for community members to dial if they see suspicious activities, fielded questions from participants and gave a tutorial on how to spot ICE vehicles. (A helpful hint: Their cars are usually American brands and have unusual license plates.) 'We feel that as teachers, we are part of the front line of the defense of our students and community. We're proud of that, because not only do we get to work with students and educate them, but we also have that responsibility to make sure that they are OK,' said Unión del Barrio member Ron Gochez, who also serves as an LAUSD teacher in South L.A. 'What we are asking, our call to action to community members is every one of us lives near schools — it may be schools where your own children go, it may be schools that you don't have children at, but it's in your neighborhood,' Cardona said Wednesday night to an online crowd that included United Teachers Los Angeles union members and concerned citizens. 'We are asking you to come out. Show up to your local school tomorrow. Tomorrow's schools start at 8:30 a.m. throughout the L.A. area or whichever city that you're in. Come out be the eyes and ears.' As the academic year kicks off, Cedar-Sinai is offering free back-to-school vaccinations and general health screenings for young kids and teens through its mobile clinic. The program does not ask about immigration status and all clinics take place on LAUSD property. The goal of the program is simple: Increase access to family healthcare and protect communities from diseases. The mobile clinics look to provide as smooth a transition into the school year as possible by checking off inoculations required by institutions. 'Kids entering transitional kindergarten need boosters for measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (whooping cough) and polio. This includes the DTaP vaccine — given to younger children — which protects against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis,' Cedar-Sinai nurse practitioner Anne Traynor said in a news release. 'Older children, especially 11-year-olds and teens, receive the Tdap booster, which offers continued protection against the same three illnesses but in a smaller dose appropriate for adolescents and adults. It's not just one age group; we're vaccinating children from birth through age 18.' 'These vaccines protect against childhood preventable illnesses — measles, chickenpox, pneumonia, meningitis,' Cedar-Sinai pediatrician Arthur Cho said in a news release. 'In the past, we saw high rates of these infections. Today, because of vaccines, we rarely see them. When children aren't vaccinated, they're at greater risk of getting sick, ending up in the hospital, or even worse.' As for the people with vaccine hesitancy, Cho 'understands the concerns' but continues to trust the studies and science behind it all. 'We've studied these vaccines for decades. Side effects are generally mild — fever or some swelling — but the alternative is far worse,' Cho said. 'These diseases still exist and can be deadly. Getting vaccinated protects your child and others in the community.' To see where the mobile clinics will pop up throughout August, click here. This week De Los editor Suzy Exposito spoke with Mary Guibert, the Panamanian-born mother of late musician Jeff Buckley, about what it was like to raise the musical legend. Buckley's life and tragic death have resurfaced into the public conscience thanks to a recent documentary about his life, 'It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley,' which received a limited release Aug. 8 and is expanding to more theaters this weekend before going to HBO later in the year. In the piece, Guibert recounts moving to Orange County as an immigrant from the Panama Canal Zone in the '60s. She mentions the joyous and the fraught connections she has to Latinidad and how she shared her heritage with her son. Guibert also discusses what finally led her to agree to work with director Amy Berg on the new doc. Unless otherwise noted, all stories in this section are from the L.A. Times. It's been nearly 55 years since more than 20,000 demonstrators marched through East Los Angeles on Aug. 29, 1970, for the National Chicano Moratorium Against the Vietnam War. But the protest for peace devolved into conflict between demonstrators and sheriff's deputies. By day's end, hundreds were arrested and trailblazing Latino journalist Ruben Salazar was dead. In 2020, The Times commemorated the event's 50th anniversary with a holistic account of the actions that took place that day, the cultural moment in which it occurred and its lasting political/social/cultural ramifications. Check out our coverage here.
Chicago Tribune
16 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Two priests who serve the poor at Evanston church could be forced to leave US, parish fears
Walking out of Catholic mass at St. John XXIII parish in Evanston Thursday morning, Lois Farley Shuford expressed alarm that the parish's two priests, who both came to the United States with a mission to serve the poor, might be forced to leave the country. The possibility of losing the immigrant priests intensifies the worry for people in the parish, where about half the congregants are immigrants from Mexico. They're facing heightened fears as they see news reports about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement seizing immigrants on the streets. The priests, Rev. Koudjo K. Jean-Philippe Lokpo, of the west African nation of Togo, and Rev. José Manuel Ortiz, of Mexico, are here on R1 religious worker visas that permit them to serve in the United States. But the federal government is so backed up in processing paperwork that Rev. Lokpo might be forced to leave in October, and only an attorney's intervention saved Rev. Ortiz from having to leave the country by the end of July. That has upset parishioners, who say the two men have devoted their lives to serving others, and have done tremendous good for the people in the parish. 'We were scared,' Lois Farley Shuford said after leaving the church service. 'I mean, in this [President Donald Trump] administration, we're scared about everything.' 'We're scared for many of our parishioners,' added Bob Shuford. About half of the St. John XXIII's parishioners are Hispanic in the multilingual parish, which offers mass in English, Spanish and French Creole. 'We're aware of what's happening with our priests,' Bob Shuford said. 'It's a part of a larger concern that we have, and we've all been through training on how we can best support our fellow parishioners.' The Archdiocese of Chicago consolidated the parishes of St. Nicholas and St. Mary to form St. John XXIII parish in early 2022. By the end of that year, Lokpo led the parish as its pastor, assisted by Ortiz as the parish's associate pastor. 'The core of this place, particularly at St. Nick, but the core of the whole parish has been that all are welcome. That's a critical thing here in this parish home, and so I think that has been extended to Jose and Jean-Philippe as well,' Lois Farley Shuford said. Ortiz remains philosophical about the possibility of being forced to leave St. John XXIII and return to Mexico. 'It is what it is,' Ortiz said. What really matters to him is his connection to the members of his parish, he added. 'You try to do what's best for the parish and for the people.' In an April letter to the parish, Lokpo wrote his initial concerns that his and Ortiz's green card application for continued residency had yet to be processed by the federal government, despite submitting his required documents to the government in 2022. At the time, he anticipated that Ortiz's visa would expire in July, which would require him to return to Mexico; however, immigration lawyers were able to obtain a 240-day extension on Ortiz's visa due to the time lost because of the pandemic. Lokpo is now seeking the same extension, according to Ortiz. Lokpo's visa is set to expire at the end of October. 'I ask for your prayers and your understanding as we navigate this challenge. I am concerned about the disruption this will cause for our St. John XXIII Parish, yet I trust in God's hand in this and in His care for our faith community,' Lokpo wrote. St. John XXIII is administered by an international Catholic organization called Comboni Missionaries, according to Comboni's Senior Communications Specialist Lindsay Braud. Comboni ministers to the 'world's poorest and most abandoned people,' according to its website. Comboni has 3,500 missionaries worldwide and operates in 41 countries, according to its website. Comboni's priests in North American parishes are selected by the Provincial Superior Rev. Ruffino Ezama. 'We are an international religious order,' Ezama said. 'Wherever there is need, we don't look at if someone is an immigrant or not, because we go there to serve the church.' Despite the mission serving in 41 countries, Ezama said the United States has the most rigorous requirements for religious workers. Comboni priests take vows of poverty, which prevents them from being paid for their work, chastity and obedience, which beholds them to orders from their superiors at Comboni. Lokpo did not respond to a request for comment for this story. Shelley Benson and Tom Lenz, the chair and vice-chair of the Parish Pastoral Council, respectively, responded on Lokpo's behalf, asking Pioneer Press to speak to the Archdiocese of Chicago. The Archdiocese commented, 'While we hope the federal government recognizes the special status of religious workers, we do not discuss personnel matters.' The archdiocese, like many others in the United States, is facing a shortage of priests as fewer men choose that vocation. Some Chicagoland parishes rely on immigrant priests to fill the gap. Nearly 60% of younger diocesan priests — under the age of 50 — who serve in the Archdiocese of Chicago are immigrants, according to a 2023 report. The number is a considerable contrast with priests over the age of 50, of whom 81% were born in the U.S. The average age of a priest in 2023 was 64. Prior to 2023, it would typically take 12 months for the government to process for a green card. That's well within the five-year time frame that an R1 visa gives a religious worker, according to immigration lawyer Tahreem Kalam, with Minsky, McCormick and Hallagan. But that changed drastically after a 2023 decision from the Department of Homeland Security during the Biden administration. That created a significant backlog, according to Kalam, who said the five years might run out for some R1 visa holders. She said they're in an 'impossible' situation. A workaround that some attorneys try for their clients is to have them apply for an H-1B visa, Kalam said, but that won't work for most religious since they take vows of poverty. 'It's a huge problem in the community,' she said. 'Especially an institution like the Catholic Church — It's a global [institution] — They send people to different countries all the time.' She represents a large group of Catholic nuns, and 'they've all just kind of come to terms now that they have to leave [the country],' she remarked. At the national level, some dioceses are taking their demands to government. Last year, the Diocese of Paterson, New Jersey, and five of its priests sued the federal government over its backlog of green card approvals. Steps are being taken in the U.S. House and Senate to bring a resolution for religious workers' status, according to the Associated Press. 'I think the only way for changes in their visas is if some of these bigger religious organizations were to lobby and show Congress how much they are being affected by losing their religious leaders,' Kalam said. On a warm summer evening on the grounds of St. Nicholas Church, one of the two churches that make up St. John XXIII parish, attorney William Quiceno volunteers his time to give immigrants free legal consultations every other month. He has been doing so for the past 10 to 12 years. On this particular July evening, he had eight new clients. Of those, he really only had a path forward for three, he said. 'People have more fear, for sure,' Quiceno said. 'They're worried more about their future, their kids, the lives they've established here. They're looking for any kind of way they can fix their status.' 'A lot of them have known they haven't had any options, but they're hoping that one day, there would be an option. Now that kind of hope disappears.' 'Their hope kind of disappears,' he repeated to himself. Inside the makeshift waiting room, Teresa Infante and Mireya Terrazaz take names on a sign-up sheet and usher clients into the lawyer's temporary office. In the wake of promises from the Trump administration to crack down on immigration enforcement in Chicago, Infante and Terrazaz confirmed the renewed tensions felt in the immigrant community. In the months since Trump's return to the Oval Office, as many as 22 people signed up for free consultations one evening, creating the need for the lawyer to stay one hour later than he usually volunteers. What the two didn't count on, after decades of volunteer work for the parish, is that their own priests would be in danger of not being allowed to stay in the country. 'It was very sad,' Infante said of Ortiz's situation. A group of parishioners had met over the weeks to pray for Ortiz to stay in the country. 'Please, don't take our priests away,' Terrazas said. Now they wait to see whether Lokpo's visa will be extended past October. 'We have to pray,' said Infante. 'A lot.'
CBS News
a day ago
- CBS News
LAUSD students are back to school Thursday as district focuses on immigration enforcement concerns
Over 540,000 students are back to school on Thursday as the Los Angeles Unified School District officially kicks off the 2025/2026 school year. In response to continuing immigration enforcement operations in the district, LAUSD, the second largest school district in the country, has been working to provide families with information and resources to deal with the impact. The State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tony Thurmond, visited Los Angeles on Thursday morning and said that school campuses are not the place for United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations. "We provided information for our districts on what their rights are. For starters, they don't have to work with ICE unless the person from ICE is bringing a judicial warrant," Thurmond said. LAUSD's superintendent, Alberto M. Carvalho, kicked off the first day of school, greeting bus drivers before they rolled out. He said the district would continue to focus on core issues such as academic achievement and graduation rates, but was also seeking to address heightened concerns about federal immigration enforcement among district families. "I want to assure every single parent, listen to this immigrant once undocumented, I believe in the power of education, it made me, it saved me – it will make and save your child. Trust us," Carvalho said. Outside Hollywood High School, a group of teachers gathered to welcome students, holding signs reading "Immigrants are Welcome Here," and "Hollywood Stands With Immigrants." The district has launched several initiatives to inform families about their rights in regard to immigration enforcement operations, including a 43-page "Informational Resource Guide for Students and Families" for every student. Earlier in the week, Carvalho sought to assure families that getting students to and from school safely is a priority. Measures are in place with "safe zones" at and around schools, he said, with volunteers serving as "eyes and ears on the street." He also noted that the district has added new bus routes, rerouted others, and is working to fulfill bus transportation requests, which can be on the district website. Carvalho's own background motivates him, he explained in the family resource guides that have been going out. "I am personally committed to this effort," he wrote, "because, like many of you, I am an immigrant to this country." CBS News Los Angeles reached out to ICE for comment on immigration enforcement operations near schools, but has not heard back yet.
