The small Little Lake school district, which serves mainly low-income families in southeast Los Angeles County has become the setting for one of the longest teacher strikes in state history — reaching the the 10-day mark on Wednesday — as its 200-member union takes on significant issues straining districts throughout California.
The teachers have walked out over health costs increasing by $14,000 a year for some, crowded special education classes and proposed class size increases in a district grappling with declining enrollment and unsustainable past spending. The teachers aren’t asking for a pay raise — but their high-cost benefits are tantamount to a big pay cut.
While a settlement appeared close with negotiations to resume Wednesday afternoon, the dispute has taken a toll. Although schools are open with substitutes, the strike has consumed about 6% of the academic year. Most parents have kept children home, while scrambling to manage disrupted work and home routines — especially difficult in a school system where about 80% of students qualify for a free or reduced-price lunch because of family poverty. Teachers have typically lost several thousand dollars of pay that they are unlikely to get back.
“We’re trying to stay positive but every day feels like a punch to the gut,” Sabrina Ireland, a 6th grade math and science teacher, said on the picket line Wednesday in front of her campus, Lake Center Middle School. “I’m losing sleep… We have some teachers that both the husband and the wife teach here. They have no income right now.”
It’s hard for Little Lake to be noticed alongside the mammoth L.A. Unified School District, which has about 390,000 students. An L.A. Unified strike was dramatically averted with hours to spare on April 14 in a conflict that commanded local and national attention for weeks.
But this district — with seven elementary and two middle schools — is enduring a crippling strike, affecting about 3,400 students drawn from Santa Fe Springs and parts of Norwalk and Downey.
In terms of lost instructional days Little Lake ranks high. Earlier this school year, teachers went out for 12 days in the sizable Twin Rivers Unified School District in north Sacramento County. Teachers in New Haven Unified in Union City in Alameda County struck for 14 days in 2019. And an Oakland teachers strike in 1996 lasted about a month.
Teacher demands statewide
Numerous shorter walkouts and near strikes have unfolded throughout the state this year, part of a loosely coordinated effort by the California Teachers Assn. to align unions’ contract expiration dates and benefit from collective force. The union dubbed the effort as “We Can’t Wait.”
The issues surfacing in Little Lake echo the dynamic in L.A. Unified and elsewhere.
“Up and down the state, educators have won life-changing healthcare benefits and support for special education and have forced districts to create the safe and stable classrooms our students deserve,” said Gabriella Landeros, a spokesperson for the California Teachers Assn.
In the broad picture, district budgets throughout the state are likely to be a little larger, level or somewhat smaller — and schools could yet receive a big boost by the time the state’s budget is adopted in June.
Martin Gonzalez,13, left, a seventh-grade student at Lake Center Middle School, and Sebastian Escobedo, 11, a sixth-grade student at Lake Center Middle School, join striking Little Lake teachers at Lakeland Elementary School on Wednesday in Norwalk.
(Gary Coronado/For The Times)
But cost pressures have escalated quickly in many regions. In Little Lake, as in L.A. Unified, the cost of services for students with disabilities and percentage of students identified as having disabilities has risen sharply. Healthcare costs also have gone up fast.
Meanwhile, enrollment is declining, offsetting the benefit of state increases in spending per pupil. Inflation hit hard in recent years, while prompting employee groups, especially in urban areas, to fight for wage boosts to keep pace. This comes as one-time pandemic relief aid has expired.
Thousands more for healthcare
In Little Lake, strike supporters say they are fighting over issues that justify the sacrifice. Starting in January, the monthly premiums for the health plan used by many teachers rose from zero to $1,400 a month paid over 10 months each year — an enormous reduction in take-home pay.
To back off from that charge, district officials proposed raising average class sizes in kindergarten through fourth grade from 24-to-1 to 28-to-1, according to the district. Union negotiators want to keep class sizes where they are.
District officials acknowledge their proposals are painful, but said they face an unsustainable financial situation.
“We are at a point fiscally where the district can no longer support 100%,” of healthcare premiums, said Acting Supt. Monica Martinez-Johnson, a career district employee who started as a teacher.
A fact-finding report endorsed that account, but also noted that the district suddenly ended health subsidies on January 1, when a previous agreement expired. Employees were immediately forced to pay about 40% of the cost of their monthly premiums.
“This decision … has soured the relationship and [affects] all aspects of this reopened negotiations,” said Donald S. Raczka, who prepared a fact-finding report, issued April 12, as chair of a panel that included district and union representatives.
Jennifer Conforti, center, a teacher at Lake Center Elementary, pickets at Lake Center Middle School in Santa Fe Springs on Wednesday.
(Gary Coronado/For The Times)
Dollars and sensitivities
The financial implications of the strike are difficult to calculate at this juncture, but the district doesn’t necessarily lose money. Subs are making $500 a day, but there are fewer subs than teachers and striking teachers forfeit pay.
In-person student attendance has ranged from 18% to 31%, which will mean lost funding linked to student attendance. The annual operating budget of the district is $73 million, of which salaries and benefits are $53 million, according to the district.
Many parents and students have joined teachers on picket lines.
“We’ve stuck it out this long, we wouldn’t want them to fold on an agreement that doesn’t benefit them,” said Melissa Maggard, who has two daughters at Lakeland Elementary.
Therapist Sherry Gonzalez has kept her fourth-grade son at home, rescheduling work hours, hiring babysitters. Her son receives special services for a disability at Lake Center Elementary, and home routines are harder without this support.
“I don’t feel comfortable taking him in during a strike with subs who do not know my son’s needs,” Gonzalez said. “As a parent it’s just been hard. It’s been so frustrating. We feel worn down, tired, and we feel like we’re being ignored and unheard.
“To see this drive a wedge between the community, it feels hurtful,” she added. When asked how she’s been trying to cope, she responded: “Crying.”
What’s next?
The turmoil has included the sudden resignation of then-Supt. Jonathan Vasquez a week into the strike. After a 10-hour negotiating session on Monday, an altercation or a feared altercation — accounts vary — resulted in the district calling police.
A potential deal in the works includes employees paying zero to $630 a month in healthcare premiums — depending on their choice of health plan. Class size would not rise. Budget cuts would be necessary. On the chopping block are six intervention teachers serving students who need intensive academic help.
The union this week was pushing for a one-time $4,000 bonus for its members, but not a permanent increase. The pay scale for teachers ranges from $58,752 to $118,363.
Negotiations resumed Wednesday afternoon at a location considered more secure than district headquarters.
Owalai, Uganda – Martha Apolot navigates a dusty path through fields of cassava and millet under the searing hot sun. She carries a hoe on one shoulder, the blade carefully balanced, and over the other, her eight-year-old son, Aaron.
Every day, the 21-year-old mother takes Aaron to the fields where she works.
“Aaron is so weak, so I have to carry him from the house and lay him somewhere so I can work,” Martha says quietly, holding Aaron on her lap as she sits on the bare earth inside their tiny, single-room hut in Owalai, a rural hamlet in eastern Uganda.
They return home when it’s time to feed Aaron or when he has soiled himself, not when the tilling is done.
Aaron has an undiagnosed disability. He cannot walk, talk, eat solid foods or hold up his head without support. The back of his head is balding from lying down and prone to sores. He needs constant care, but Martha has no one else to look after him while she works.
Martha was 13 when a man lured her from her schoolyard and raped her. She did not know the man and never saw him again, she says. Her memories of that day are traumatic, and she goes quiet, breathing deeply and looking skyward.
Her pregnancy created an immediate rift within her family.
“My dad did not want me to come home, but my mother pleaded with my father to [let me] stay,” she explains after a long pause.
The seventh of eight children, Martha ran away, spending months at friends’ homes. Eventually, her older brother Paul, with whom she is close, tracked her down and told her their parents had accepted the situation and she could return home.
Aaron’s birth was long and complicated. After 15 hours of labour, doctors at the hospital in the city of Soroti admitted the teenager for an emergency caesarean section
Martha remembers the love she felt when she first saw her baby. “I felt so good, receiving my child. He was so handsome,” she recalls.
But Aaron was placed on oxygen shortly after birth. When he was taken away, she thought he had died. As he spent the first week of his life on oxygen, doctors warned Martha of future complications.
Harvey Hind from Lancashire stars in EastEnders playing Arlo, a preschool boy who is registered blind, as his mum says she hopes it shows disabled children they can achieve anything
Paige Ingram and Casey Cooper-Fiske Press Association Senior Entertainment Reporter
00:29, 19 Mar 2026
Harvey Hind, from Clitheroe, Lancashire, who has made his acting debut on BBC One’s EastEnders(Image: Copyright remains with handout provider)
A mother has expressed her hope that her five year old deafblind son will “break down barriers” for disabled children following his appearance in an episode of EastEnders.
Harvey Hind, from Clitheroe, Lancashire, made his acting debut during Wednesday’s episode of the BBC One soap, portraying Arlo, a preschool boy who is registered blind.
His mother Kimberly said: “I hope Harvey featuring in EastEnders shows other disabled children, especially those who are deafblind, that they can achieve anything.” She added: “Harvey loves being in the spotlight but for us the most important thing will always be raising awareness and breaking down barriers so every disabled child gets the same opportunities as anyone else.
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“Harvey did amazingly at the filming, I’m so proud of him. There were four cameras on him but he took it all in his stride.”
During the episode, Arlo and his mother visit Lauren Branning and Peter Beale’s home, where Arlo plays with her son Jimmy, who was revealed to be blind in a storyline last year, with Arlo’s mother offering Lauren guidance on raising a blind child.
At around four weeks old, Harvey failed his newborn screening hearing test, and his mother spotted a flicker in his eye around the same time. The family arranged a private consultation and he was diagnosed as blind at three months old.
He navigates using a red-and-white striped cane, which is used by deafblind people, and communicates through BSL. He also wears cochlear implants which provide him with access to sound. Kimberly revealed she found his first two years challenging as she battled to connect with her son, and was forced to quit work to look after him as he grew increasingly distressed whilst attending a mainstream nursery.
Disability charity Sense ultimately provided the family with a specialist in supporting deafblind children, which Kimberly described as “lifesaving” for her. She added: “I was so anxious when I found out Harvey was deafblind, so his character’s storyline resonated with me a lot. I didn’t have any experience with disability and I kept imagining the worst-case scenarios.
“Luckily, with the support of organisations like Sense, Harvey is now a really happy child who is eager to learn, loves exploring and has a cheeky personality.”
Harvey has featured in the charity’s 2025 Christmas appeal and in TV news segments highlighting the difficulties encountered by disabled children within education.
The EastEnders episode featuring Harvey will broadcast on BBC One at 7.30pm on Wednesday.
WASHINGTON — President Trump has once again mocked Gov. Gavin Newsom’s dyslexia as “disqualifying” for leadership, marking at least the fourth time in a week that the president has targeted the California Democrat for being open about his diagnosis.
In remarks Monday in the Oval Office, Trump said Newsom was “dumb” and should never be allowed to be president because he has “admitted that he has learning disabilities, dyslexia.”
“That’s how crazy it’s gotten with a low-IQ person,” Trump said. “Honestly, I’m all for people with learning disabilities but not for my president. … And I know it’s highly controversial to say such a horrible thing.”
But in the course of his needling, Trump mistakenly elevated his political rival to the rank of commander in chief — repeatedly referring to Newsom as “the president of the United States.” Newsom took the opportunity to turn the tables on the president.
“I, GAVIN C. NEWSOM, AM OFFICIALLY PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (THANK YOU DONALD!)” he wrote on X Monday.
The clash is the latest in a storied contest of chest-beating between Trump and Newsom, who have made sport of bad-mouthing one another across campaign rallies, interviews and social media.
A model stealth bomber sits in front of President Trump during an executive order signing in the Oval Office Monday.
(Aaron Schwartz / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The president has frequently cast Newsom as a symbol of the liberal governance he opposes, while the governor has leaned into the confrontations, often using them to elevate his national profile and position himself as a leading Democratic counterweight. His sparring with the president appears to be part of an aggressive strategy to amplify his own messaging as he weighs a potential run for president in 2028. This time, Newsom used the spotlight to support young people with dyslexia.
“To every kid with a learning disability: don’t let anyone — not even the President of the United States — bully you,” Newsom wrote on X. “Dyslexia isn’t a weakness. It’s your strength.”
The insults first materialized when a video went viral of Newsom speaking at a book tour appearance with Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens during which he discussed his lifelong struggle with the learning disability. Since then, the president has repeatedly poked at the vulnerability.
Trump has brought up the governor’s dyslexia at least four times in the last week. He mentioned it at a political rally in Kentucky last week, where he equated dyslexia with a “mental lack of ability,” and again during a Fox News Radio interview on Friday, in which he reiterated that “presidents can’t have a learning disability.” In a post on Truth Social, Trump labeled Newsom’s admission a “politically suicidal act,” calling him “dumb” and “A Cognitive Mess!”
After the Kentucky rally, Newsom responded to Trump.
“I spoke about my dyslexia, I know that’s hard for a brain-dead moron who bombs children and protects pedophiles to understand,” he said.
Dyslexia affects as much as 20% of the population, according to the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity. Despite affecting a such a wide portion of the population, the condition is widely misunderstood, according to dyslexia researcher Dr. Helen Taylor of the University of Cambridge.
“In some ways, Trump’s awful comments are just a cruder version of assumptions that already run through our culture,” she said. “If anything, [it’s] the opposite. There is evidence of an overrepresentation of people with dyslexia in business leadership roles.”
According to Taylor, there is a link between dyslexia and “enhanced abilities” in areas such as discovery, invention and creativity.
“The same cognitive trade-offs that can make routine tasks like reading more difficult support strengths in navigating complexity and guiding groups toward better future outcomes,” she said.
Newsom often describes his early experiences with dyslexia as a source of insecurity when he was growing up. In his memoir, the governor writes about his mother, Tessa Newsom, attempting to help him with homework. The lessons ended with him “running out of the room screaming that I didn’t know what was wrong with my brain.”
Back when Newsom was a boy in the 1970s, dyslexia was recognized but still not fully understood. He recalls a day when his mother grew so concerned that she took a deep breath and told him, “It’s OK to be average, Gavin.”
“I understood even back then that this, too, came from her deep reservoir of love for me,” Newsom writes in his book “Young Man in a Hurry.” “But I don’t recall crueler words ever said about me.”
The challenges from his learning disorder persist in his work at the state Capitol. Newsom finds reading off a teleprompter challenging. His aides describe days of painstaking preparation before major addresses to live audiences. Late edits to a speech, and the resulting changes to the words on the screen, threaten to throw off his delivery.
All memos in the governor’s office are written in 12 point Century Gothic font with specific spacing between lines, formatting that his aides say helps him with his disability.
The governor reads his daily briefings a few times in the morning, underlines sentences and writes down notes to retain the information on yellow cards he keeps in his suit pockets.
The ritual, he has said, helps him compensate for his dyslexia and feel confident communicating. But it also adds to the public perception of Newsom as a smooth-talking, and at times rehearsed, politician. His excessive preparation has become a trait he considers a “super power.”
His effort to thoroughly absorb reading material and desire to understand issues before he speaks about them means he’s often well-prepared. In his perception, the learning disorder has brought out his grit and resilience, and helped him hone other skills, such as quickly reading a crowd.
Without missing a beat, Newsom directed the journalist to the exact page in his 246-page budget that touched on the issue.
“While people with dyslexia are slow readers, they often, paradoxically, are very fast and creative thinkers with strong reasoning abilities,” according to the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity.
The governor’s wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, discussed the president’s attacks Tuesday in a video on X in which she emphasized that “learning differences do not determine someone’s potential.” She listed a number of qualities she considered disqualifying for the presidency, including being a convicted felon, bankrupting businesses, having numerous associations with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and sending “masked extremists to terrorize Black and brown communities and rip kids away from their families.”
“Everything that Donald Trump represents is frankly beyond disqualifying,” she said. “Day in and day out, Trump says things that make him unfit for office. He degrades our vulnerable communities, our institutions, even the Constitution itself.”
Two of the Newsoms’ four children have also been diagnosed with dyslexia.
Quinton reported from Washington, D.C., and Luna from Sacramento.
