Recall that the United Teachers Los Angeles union threatened to strike this week if they didn’t get their way.  Now they’ve gone ahead and done it, putting the education (such as it is in this district’s public—NTLA-manned—schools) of 500,000 children at risk.  For instance, at the Third Street Elementary School

[a] notice plastered on the school gate said that students will be gathered in the auditorium and the outdoor lunch pavilion area, instead of classrooms, during the strike, and overseen by administrators and teacher assistants.

No education allowed here, per the NTLA.

Recall the issue central to the union’s demands—the end of competition from charter schools that operate in the same district, sometimes in the same school buildings, and that attract students, who then do much better in school and get much better educations.

The union…cast the strike as a broader referendum on the growth of charter schools, which don’t have to follow some public-school regulations and whose teachers are largely nonunionized. Charter schools aren’t part of the contract bargaining….

In other words, charter school teachers have much greater flexibility in how they teach their students, and they aren’t bound by union demands regarding employment and employment parameters.  Charter school teachers also are regulated by the State rather than the union local jurisdictions.