Los Angeles school teachers have ended their strike after a deal has been made according to The New York Times. Los Angeles Unified School District has been facing backlash from teachers for quite some time due to the lack of resources their teachers have.

“To do their job well they need to have adequate resources and reasonable expectations for their profession,” English teacher Josh Koop said.

On Wednesday, Jan. 23, teachers returned back to work in their classrooms after being on strike for 6 days. According to The New York Times, with tens of thousands of teachers gone on strike, schools were crumbling. The school district quickly realized they needed to listen to the teachers concerns.

The reason the strike was put into action is due to the fact they felt that the school district was ignoring the variety of problems in the schools such as over sized classes said The New York Times. The class sizes ranged from 40-50 kids per class with only one teacher. Teachers thought it was unfair to the students and themselves because they can not give the needed attention to each kid.

“It hurts the students by limiting the teachers ability to give customized feedback, I think it’s a reasonable demand,” Koop said.

Not to mention the fact that the schools are also lacking librarians, nurses, and other student resources such as counselors. According to The New York Times, many students in Los Angeles public schools have to take care of themselves mentally, emotionally, and physically due to the minimal help available through the schools.

“If [the teachers] are tired, hungry, and not able to take care of their basic need, how can they take care of their students?” said Koop.

Teachers have also been struggling to live off their salary all over the United States, especially in Los Angeles. They are calling on the district for a 6.5% percent salary increase as a way to help make sure teachers can survive off teaching.

After all these problems were made aware through their strike the ULTA leader and Los Angeles Unified School District made a deal to help alleviate these issues. According to CNN, this deal the class sizes will slowly decrease over the next few years. LAUSD will also add 300 more nurses over the next two years.

LAUSD will also add about 77 new counselors over the next three years which will reduce the student to counselor ratio to 500:1 said CNN. They plan on hiring 82 librarians so every secondary school will have one. Finally the deal agreed to raise teachers pay by 6 percent which is .5 percent less than asked for, but is still a step in the right direction.

“Everyone wins especially our nation’s youth,” Koop said.

This is a huge step in improving public education all around the nation because of the exposure of this strike all around the U.S shows people that a better education is possible. These teachers went on strike, voiced their needs, made a deal, and helped the students and teachers become better off.