At home, Amanda Hutchings teaches her toddler sign language. At school, she teaches deaf and hard of hearing high school students English and history. 

Hutchings is a teacher at Ramón C. Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts in Downtown Los Angeles and plans to strike next week if an agreement isn’t reached between the Los Angeles Unified School District and the teachers union. 

“It’s reached a point where enough is enough,” she says.

But joining the picket line will have an effect on her family and it’s already having an effect on her. 

“I’ve been having trouble sleeping,” she admits. “It’s because I’m stressed because of the fact that I’m the main breadwinner.”

Car payments, credit card bills, the rent on their Burbank apartment. Her income pays for all of it. A strike will mean missed paychecks so she and her wife Holly Bandy have been squirreling away what they can for a while now.  

“We’ve been saving quite a bit,” Bandy explains, “just trying to put away any extra that we may have.”

“We have enough to handle a week of missing pay, and we could probably handle two weeks I think,” Hutchings adds. “But anything longer than that would put us in a pretty bad spot.”  

She’s also concerned about the spot a strike would put her students in. They’ll still have classroom aids and sign language interpreters – that’s a different union – but if they don’t get a substitute who can sign, she fears it could be a big setback.

“It’s different between being in a classroom with a teacher that speaks your language and being in a classroom with a teacher that doesn’t, using an interpreter to communicate,” she says. 

“It’s a different experience for them and I don’t like that for them at all.”

All of this is adding to the stress that is keeping her up at night. She and Bandy talk about it a lot.  

They’ve also talked to their bank and even talked to Bandy’s dad about getting some help if they need it. And there’s always PostMates and UberEats, something Hutchings has done in the past to earn some extra cash.  

“So if it came down to it, I could do that,” she says.

That’s a back-up plan. For now, she’s preparing for class on Monday and making sure her family is as prepared as possible for whatever the end of the week will bring.