They drive buses, clean bathrooms and care for children who are disabled. They are the fearless lunch ladies and the entry gate supervisors. These 'essential workers' of LAUSD are about to go on strike for higher salaries and respect.
If a lightbulb burns out at the preschool where she works, Bernice Young climbs a ladder to change it. If playground trees shed their leaves, she comes out with the leaf-blower. She mops the restroom stalls and shampoos the classroom carpets. For generations of 2-to-5-year-olds who call her Miss Bernice, she has brought the blankets for nap time and Cheez-Its for snack time.
At Los Angeles Unified, the nation’s second-largest school district, she’s part of a legion of employees — from bus drivers to teacher’s aides, food servers to janitors — who serve schools in the background and are in many ways the essential workers of campus operations.
Young, who serves as a union strike captain, works full time and has health benefits. But she regularly stays beyond her eight-hour shift to finish the chores of the day and is determined to do what it takes to improve working conditions.“You do get taken advantage of,” she said. She is always on her feet. “All day long, honey, every day. I sit down when it’s my lunch time, my break time. Other than that, all day long.”“We don’t want to keep living in poverty all our lives,” she said.
Until this year she had worked for 19 years as a community and parent representative at Bradley Elementary school, making about $16 an hour. Both jobs have involved a little of everything — a common theme among Local 99 workers who are used to filling the gaps for what’s needed. “I have outreach with the parents. I talk to the children,” she said. “We also provide clothing or whatever the children need, if they may not have shoes, or jackets or something like that.” There’s no budget for this, but people will donate money or she’ll buy items out of her own pocket.
Arguelles, who has worked as a special education assistant at LAUSD for 24 years, said she considers herself blessed and “loves her job and her students.” She does not have a teaching credential but serves as a teacher’s right hand, working with children who have disabilities and special learning needs.
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