On January 20, Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) superintendent Alberto Carvalho took to Twitter to celebrate what he felt to be a major accomplishment. The S&P Global Ratings, which investors and brokers used to evaluate financial securities, gave LAUSD an upgrade. Carvalho triumphantly credited “the district’s prudent fiscal management and consensus behind our strategic plan.”

That same day, LAUSD educators in United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), the local teachers’ union, received an update from their bargaining team, who at that point had been negotiating with the district for nine months: the district had countered UTLA’s proposal for a 20 percent raise over two years with a paltry 10 percent. In a year of historic inflation, the counteroffer is essentially a cost-of-living increase, not a real raise. Additionally, in response to UTLA’s proposal to reduce class sizes in every grade by four students by 2024, the district proposed maintaining current caps — and even raising them for cash-strapped teachers in exchange for a one-time $500 bonus.

The district’s counteroffer to the teachers’ union laid bare the cost of Carvalho’s “prudent fiscal management”: run-down, overcrowded, and under-resourced schools for the children of Los Angeles, and teachers quitting left and right because they can’t afford to stay in the profession.