Dressed in red from head to toe and drenched by rain, the top negotiator for United Teachers Los Angeles chanted “Austin Beutner’s got to go” at a downtown rally.

While UTLA leadership has not explicitly called for the superintendent of Los Angeles Unified School District to resign, they’ve made it clear the two sides have reached a stalemate in negotiations for a new contract.

In the meantime, about 30,000 teachers have walked off the job and hundreds of thousands of students are now out of class. 

“I’m on strike,’ said Arlene Inouye, UTLA’s bargaining chair Monday morning as she drove to UTLA’s downtown headquarters. It was perhaps the biggest day of her career. Inouye has spent countless hours preparing for the strike. But once it was happening, she had no idea how it would end. 

“It’s to save public education and make it better,” Inouye said as she drove. “We can’t keep going in the direction we’ve been going.”

For Inouye, the strike is both professional and personal. She spent 18 years working in LAUSD schools. Three generations of her family attended them. 

While she met with LAUSD officials three times last week in an attempt to hammer out a deal, she says the two sides are still far apart on many issues.

On Friday, Beutner made what he called his “last, best and final” offer.

The deal included $130 million to add almost 1,200 more educators in schools. It also reduced class sizes by two students in all middle and high schools. 

UTLA rejected the deal, calling it “woefully inadequate.”

The union’s latest offer to the district is 59 pages. Beutner says it would bankrupt LAUSD. The Superintendent says the district is running a deficit, and needs to keep $1.9 billion in reserves to stay solvent in the future. 

UTLA says those numbers are not credible, and that the district has repeatedly predicted deficits only to end up with surpluses.

“We have different facts and you can’t negotiate from that place,” Inouye said. 

As she rode in the car to the rally at Grand Park, Inouye said she hoped a third party – such as another city or state leader – would step in to break the stalemate. While UTLA has spoken to Mayor Eric Garcetti, he has yet to get in the negotiating room. 

Beutner has asked for Governor Gavin Newsom to step in. Garcetti and Newsom have both urged both sides to get back to negotiating. So far, no talks are planned for this week. 

But at the rally, Inouye felt anything but disheartened. She felt invigorated. She looked out at all the rain-soaked teachers, parents and students marching in the rain and knew she had their support. 

Now, she wants to get them a contract as historic as the strike.