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Maria Nichols, leader of the principals union for the Los Angeles Unified School District, likes to show up for contract negotiations well-prepared. 

Less than a year into her role as president of the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, the former community schools administrator in December moved to officially affiliate her union with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. 

Nichols said the move was aimed at strengthening the AALA’s bargaining power ahead of its contract negotiations with LAUSD this spring. 

AALA is the official bargaining unit for middle-level administrators in LAUSD, including the district’s elementary and secondary principals. 

Nichols said each day her members face rising workloads, budget cuts, and threats to their safety. As a four-decade veteran of LAUSD, she knows those issues firsthand. 

“For me, it’s about changing a system,” Nichols said of working with the district. “Because the people are not the problem.”

Perhaps it’s respect for the system that’s led Nichols to join the AALA with the Teamsters. She said the district has already made concessions to the AALA since the change. 

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

Can you tell me more about the issues facing principals and administrators’ workload in LAUSD?

We represent the ability to bargain the effects of district action, whether it is positive or negative for the membership.

We’re now in the third year of superintendent Alberto Carvalho’s strategic plan, and many initiatives have been pushed out, especially at the school site or with directors and operations coordinators who supervise school sites. 

However, now, when a new initiative is introduced, the district has the responsibility to meet and bargain with us. In previous cases, that was not the case.

For example, the district required five classroom observations and formal visits per week with written feedback for every administrator at each school site. 

If you had a principal, an assistant principal, or an assistant principal for special education—and in the bigger high schools, two or three principals—everybody had to participate in five classroom observations and then input their informal observations.

When you add 40 minutes times five, that’s an additional 200 minutes to your workload.

It wasn’t until we affiliated with Teamsters in December and submitted a demand-to-bargain letter that we basically agreed that the intent wasn’t about quotas, and that there was a lack of cohesion in implementation. Therefore, the quotas have been lifted, which is a huge win for us right now.

Why Teamsters, and why now?

When I first took on the role, I proceeded to run on three pillars.

One of them being a transformational leader. I was very aware of the conditions out there because I was in the field. I proceeded to try to build communication systems and collaborative structures with our district. But two months in, I was getting nowhere with the district.

So, in early September,  I shared my concerns and urgency with my staff because this year is a negotiating year for us. We have an urgency to try to get the best contract, and I knew that the language of the contract mattered.

I brought up the possibility of meeting with other unions to see if we could affiliate and become bigger. I knew that unions were about solidarity and power, and power means numbers and strength. Teamsters came, and they brought their whole team. All of a sudden, we had this team that could support our work, especially the legal part. We continue to have the AALA model, which is one vision and one voice together, but since affiliating, we’ve begun to bring immediate relief at the hands of our brothers and sisters.

How has budgeting played out as an issue for members of your union?

Budget development is happening right now. For example, I’m hearing from my members that they are reporting getting less psychiatric social work time, less school psychology time, less allocation for assistant principals–positions that support programs and special education. Last year, the district did away with 400 assistant principal positions. That was another area that really created urgency, that the district was doing this to us. That could have also been an area to bargain because the effects of not having an assistant principal could have been bargained. 

If the positions are being cut in half or more, that’s a great concern. In LAUSD, we rely on human capital to do the human work, and those positions right now are being slashed in addition to having less money.

Campus safety is a crucial responsibility for principals, particularly in collaboration with law enforcement partners. How does that play into the upcoming bargaining period?

Since 2020, school police have almost been completely taken out of the district, leaving very few coming back from COVID. Crimes have increased tremendously, including physical fights, guns at schools, etcetera. Safety is a huge concern.

The district talks a lot about keeping students safe, keeping employees safe, but the resources that we currently have are limited. The district implements a positive behavior support system. The district implements it for students’ progressive discipline, which is good, but for the more difficult cases, the district has these diversion tickets that kids get, and they don’t have any weight or teeth.

We want to be mindful of the students we serve and the populations and demographics they belong to, but the current systems are not enough.

This article is part of a collaboration between The 74 and the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

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