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Democrats Are United on Teacher Strikes. But They’re in a ‘Gladiator Fight’ Over Education.

Arielle Miller Cohen outside Virgil Middle School in Los Angeles. Public school teachers in the district have been on strike since Monday.Credit...Andrew Cullen for The New York Times

When 30,000 Los Angeles teachers went on strike on Monday, prominent Democrats — and potential presidential candidates — lined up to give their blessings.

Senator Kamala Harris of California said she was “standing in solidarity” with teachers, who are demanding higher pay, smaller classes and more support staff.

“I’m with teachers all the way,” Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said on Twitter.

Senators Cory Booker, Sherrod Brown, Kirsten Gillibrand and Bernie Sanders all shared similar sentiments about a strike that has drawn broad public support but disrupted the routines of half a million, mostly low-income children.

In 2019, after a year of teacher walkouts across the country, it is practically impossible for a national Democrat to profess anything short of full-throated support for picketing educators. But many of them this week steered clear of the most contentious underlying cause of the strike: the teacher union’s opposition to the growth of charter schools, and the union’s claim that district officials — who are largely Democrats — favor charter schools over traditional ones.

The unified cheers from Democrats belie deep and long-running rifts in the party over what public education should look like, at a time when the party is debating its direction. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, likened the Los Angeles strike to “a gladiator fight” between two factions.

On one side are those who have hewed to President Barack Obama’s centrist position on schools: supporting high-performing charters, which are publicly funded but privately managed, while putting pressure on teachers’ unions to raise student achievement and give up some of their traditional seniority protections.

On the other side is organized labor, which has resisted the growth of the mostly nonunion charter sector. Union leaders say charters take students and public dollars from traditional neighborhood schools.

But as democratic socialism, and sympathy for unions, is on the rise among young Democrats, the Obama-era view that charters create more competition and better choices for families no longer rules the party.

Over the past year, teacher walkouts, including six in conservative and swing states, have captured the public’s attention. The movement has “reshaped the discussion within the Democratic Party nationally,” said Alex Caputo-Pearl, the firebrand president of United Teachers Los Angeles, the union that is currently on strike. “Do we need to back away from what corporate Democrats have been promoting for a long time, which is charter schools and privatization?”

The debate between school-choice supporters and teachers’ unions goes back more than a decade. During the 2008 presidential primary between Mr. Obama and Hillary Clinton, Mr. Obama was the candidate of charters and teacher accountability, while Mrs. Clinton was more aligned with the unions. On one occasion, Mr. Obama was even booed by an audience of union educators, because he spoke in support of performance pay.

As recently as last month, as talk of a strike in Los Angeles intensified, Mr. Obama’s first secretary of education, Arne Duncan, argued in an op-ed that a walkout would be misguided.

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Senators Cory Booker, left, and Kamala Harris, both came out in support of the teachers. Despite Democrats’ unified cheers for picketing educators, there are deep divisions in the party over public education.Credit...Erin Schaff for The New York Times

But other Democrats who have championed school choice sided with the striking teachers this week, focusing on the two issues that have been a constant chorus in a year of protests: school funding and teacher pay.

“Teachers play an extraordinary role in the lives of our children, and for too long our country has not given them the respect & support they deserve,” Senator Booker, the Democrat from New Jersey, said on Twitter on Wednesday. “I stand with our teachers — our country must increase investment in our schools & educators.”

As mayor of Newark, Mr. Booker worked to expand charter networks, building relationships with philanthropists, like Mark Zuckerberg, who fund charters.

“Ten years ago when I talked about school choice, I was literally tarred and feathered,” Mr. Booker said at the Democratic National Convention in 2008. “I was literally brought into a broom closet by a union and told I would never win office if I kept talking about charters.”

Jeff Giertz, a spokesman for Mr. Booker, declined to address the senator’s record on charter schools or teachers’ unions, but said the senator had long supported efforts to increase pay and support for educators.

More than a quarter of public school students in Los Angeles attend the city’s charter schools, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. School choice advocates expressed frustration that charters — which are outside the scope of the Los Angeles teachers’ contract — had become central to the strike, calling the subject a distraction from issues like rising pension and health care costs.

Nick Melvoin, vice president of the Los Angeles Board of Education and a Democratic ally of the charter movement, said about a third of every dollar spent in the district was devoted to health care and pensions. Requiring teachers to pay a premium for insurance, or asking future educators to work longer before earning certain retirement benefits, could help free up money for higher salaries, smaller classes and other union demands, he argued.

The union has resisted efforts to change how benefits are structured or paid for, he said.

Both sides agree that it will most likely take the intervention of the California governor, Gavin Newsom, or Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles, both union allies, to end the strike, perhaps by ponying up more funds for union priorities or the district’s budget.

Negotiations between the district and the union came to a complete halt late last week. Mr. Garcetti persuaded the two sides to meet at City Hall on Thursday and “stay at the table” until an agreement could be reached. With the mayor’s office acting as a mediator, the negotiations went from noon until midnight Thursday and continued Friday.

A deal between them won’t settle the long-simmering debate in the Democratic Party, either in California or nationally, about school choice — or change the reality that at the moment, teachers’ unions are ascendant, while charter school supporters seem to be losing ground.

In the meantime, district and union leaders in Los Angeles continue to use the strike’s spotlight to pitch competing visions for schools.

Though Mr. Melvoin believes the union’s leadership has been “particularly recalcitrant,” he said he was encouraged to see the excitement on the picket lines from teachers and community members who support public education — even if he disagrees with them on the details.

“It has been inspiring,” he said.

Jennifer Medina contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 9 of the New York edition with the headline: Unified Behind Teachers, Democrats Are Split on Charters. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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