About the editor: Schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District are closed as teachers strike in solidarity with lower-paid workers asking for pay raises. The teachers’ strike is sheer folly, a terrible waste of taxpayers’ money and an irreparable loss of study time for all students.

Teachers should be in the classroom teaching children, not marching in front of schools with placards. They must continue to teach while negotiations between the LAUSD and the Service Employees International Union Local 99 continue. What is happening now is obscene.

The union is using this strike as a bargaining tool and I think it’s just wrong, wrong, wrong.

The teachers need to make the classrooms buzz and the SEIU and LAUSD need to agree on a new contract. Performance increases and realized performance improvements can be implemented retroactively to the start of the negotiations.

What’s wrong with this mindset?

Doug Tennant, DanaPoint

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About the editor: I am a LAUSD food service worker and would like to advise how long this strike has been going on. We are treated disrespectfully by our managers and divisional supervisors.

Management should be responsible for his unprofessionalism. We deserve respect and pay raises, along with working eight hours a day full time.

Jo Ann Hurtado, Canoga Park