The second-biggest school district in the US was closed Tuesday as tens of thousands of employees and teachers went on strike over stalled contract negotiations in Los Angeles.

Thousands of teachers’ aides, special education assistants, bus drivers, custodians, cafeteria workers and other SEIU Local 99 members in LA’s Unified School District joined picket lines Tuesday morning to demand better wages and increased staffing.

The second largest school district in the United States canceled classes on Tuesday for what could be a three-day strike by 30,000 Los Angeles education support staff backed by a teachers' union that refuses to cross their picket line.

Teachers union boss Randi Weingarten lashed out at Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — firing off a tweet riddled with grammatical errors that accused the potential 2024 presidential hopeful of “banning everything he dislikes.”

“DeSantis should be fixated on the cost of living issues in Fla – housing is unaffordable, home insurance even worse, but instead he is exanding gun access, defunding, public schools, & banning everything he dislikes – teachers, journalists & the vulnerable,” Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers, wrote Sunday.

Those who believe there’s hope for reforming the current union-controlled public school system ought to pay close attention to the response by United Teachers Los Angeles to a seemingly unobjectionable recent teaching proposal. The district is offering “Accelerated Days” in October to help students who have lagged far behind in their studies because of the COVID-19 shutdowns.

The Columbus teachers union in Ohio is on strike after a vote on Sunday, just days away from the district's first day of school on Wednesday.

Teachers began picketing outside over a dozen of the district's schools on Monday morning. The union said it will gather outside schools from 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. every day until a deal is reached.

The Columbus Education Association, with 4,000 members, reached a 94% majority on the vote Sunday.

This week, educators across the country observe National Employee Freedom Week, a national effort to inform public-sector employees about their right to choose which type of association membership — if any — is right for them.

But for too many teachers across the country, this freedom is being limited and so there is less to celebrate.

A brand new school year is about to kick off in many parts of America, but one thing is missing in many districts: enough staff.  

Well ahead of the 2022-2023 school year, educators and government officials have issued concerns about the ongoing shortage of teachers and school support staff — a years-long problem that was only exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

However, the ever mutating coronavirus, which tested educators like never before, is far from the only struggle school officials have faced in recent years. 

Education leaders in a small New Mexico city are among a number of school districts turning to a four-day school week as a way to recruit teachers amid a nationwide teacher shortage, hoping three-day weekends will make their district more attractive than others. But it’s unclear if the format will work everywhere.

For years, New Mexico’s Socorro Consolidated Schools struggled to attract teachers, according to Superintendent Ron Hendrix. The district serves a small area nestled between Albuquerque and Las Cruces.

Kindergarten teacher Natalie Tran is excited to be back in her Oakland, California, classroom with her 25 4-year-olds. But she's not surprised that many other teachers across the country didn't return for the upcoming school year. 

"We need higher pay," she told CBS News. "We need more respect for the teaching profession because it's extremely difficult, and we really need to have manageable class sizes."

Nationwide, there are at least 280,000 fewer public school teachers than there were before the pandemic, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.