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The Board of Education at the Los Angeles Unified School District should cease negotiations with the Los Angeles teachers union. Instead, the board should divert funding to ensure that parents in Los Angeles are able to get their kids into one of the city’s numerous charter schools. Those schools remain in operation and have shown a penchant for impressive educational returns on investment.

As the Los Angeles teachers strike rumbles on this week, some might say that suspending negotiations would be arrogant or even malicious. But math doesn’t allow any other answer.

The Los Angeles teachers union’s demands are totally unaffordable. More than that, by calling on the district to add hundreds of new positions (more positions means more union members and more union dues), the union would actually increase structural costs on the already near-bankrupt school district. City officials have a responsibility to put families first.

Ultimately, that’s what’s most at stake here: the ability of families to send their children to good schools in confidence their children will gain good educations. And that’s simply not the case at present in Los Angeles. With the teachers union having extracted platinum health plans without any co-pays, and with teacher salaries busting inflation, the district is caught between ever-increasing class sizes and ever-increasing deficits. The teachers union says that the solution is simple: dig into the long-term savings account. But it knows full well that doing so would make matters worse. That’s because the savings account is needed to pay the looming retirement costs in pensions and healthcare for those currently employed.

That takes us back to the charter schools. Remaining open as other city schools are shuttered, the charter schools are providing children with what they need: education. And they’re providing parents with what they have paid for via their taxes: a critical public service.

The future of education in Los Angeles depends on the school board’s refusal to blink. Instead, finding inspiration from leaders such as Margaret Thatcher, it should stand firm in the better interest of those it is sworn to serve: LA families.