L.A. teachers end hunger strike, vow to stop cuts
Sunday, June 28, 2009
By: David Feldman
School board recall campaign will be next
The writer is a middle school teacher and member of United Teachers Los Angeles. A delegation of Party for Socialism and Liberation members visited the strikers and participated in a rally against proposed budget cuts and layoffs.
A hunger strike launched by a group of militant Los Angeles teachers has come to an end after three and a half weeks. The action brought much attention to the plight of Los Angeles teachers and students.
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Teachers protest proposed budget cuts.
Photo: Corazon Esguerra
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The Los Angeles Unified School District serves more than 650,000 students; at least 72 percent are Latino. It is the second biggest school district in the United States. Earlier this year, LAUSD proposed laying off 5,500 teachers and other district personnel such as janitors and cafeteria staff. But through various job actions and tactics, such as a January march that drew 15,000 angry teachers and their supporters to the streets, the teachers have averted more than half of the layoffs.
LAUSD announced recently that 500 of the layoff notices will be rescinded, reducing the number of proposed layoffs to 2,500. If the teachers and their union, United Teachers Los Angeles, relied solely on the ballot box to achieve change, the progress made thus far would have not been achieved.
The hunger strike started May 27 to protest the teacher layoffs. Nine teachers committed to the strike, and over the 23-day-long strike, over 100 teachers and district personnel participated in some way. During the hunger strike, dozens of teachers and students set up a tent city, moving to various locations around the city to expose the problems faced by public schools in Los Angeles.
Labor leaders like Delores Huerta visited the strikers in a show of support. The roving tent city was named "Cortinesville" after the much-despised superintendent of schools, Ramon Cortines. Hunger strikers even picketed outside of Cortines's home. Cortines was handpicked by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to "change the direction" of LAUSD. Now we know what "direction" he meant.
"Cortinesville" spent its last days in front of the 29-story symbol of bureaucratic ineptitude hated by all Los Angeles teachers—the posh Beaudry building housing LAUSD in downtown Los Angeles.
The most oppressed neighborhoods in the city will bear the brunt of the layoffs. According to an analysis by the Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access at University of California, Los Angeles, some middle schools and high schools in poor Los Angeles neighborhoods could lose 40 percent of their teachers. This is because many teachers who teach in troubled urban neighborhoods are new and lack union protection. Many of these new teachers are young and from oppressed backgrounds themselves. They are often able to relate well to the student population they teach.
At Liechty Middle School in Central Los Angeles, which opened in 2007, 47 of its 65 teachers received pink slips. This will inevitably result in bigger classroom sizes and the lowering of the quality of education for working-class students at Liechty and across the city.
The UCLA analysis also found that more affluent areas of the city, like the West San Fernando Valley and West Los Angeles, will be less affected by the layoffs since only 10 percent of the teachers who work there are new educators. The disparity is clear.
More cuts on the horizon
In an escalation of LAUSD's anti-worker attacks, Cortines just announced a new set of draconian education cuts. The cuts include plans to eliminate all-day kindergarten, to lay off half of all elementary music and art teachers, and also to cut half of all nurses working in elementary schools. LAUSD currently faces a budget deficit of $700 million.
UTLA and the hunger strikers demand that the school district use the nearly $1 billion it received from the federal government's economic stimulus package to save the jobs of all teachers. The layoffs can be averted if this money is properly spent.
Although the hunger strike is now over, the struggle for quality education in Los Angeles continues. Just last week, dozens of students in South Central Los Angeles's Santee Education Complex walked out of class to protest the budget cuts. They marched to other high schools nearby to urge more students to join their protest. The protest later continued at a school board meeting where students were kicked out for shouting at the school board members: "Shame on you! Shame on you!" Cortines chastised the students for exercising their rights. The activist students later participated in the press conference that ended the hunger strike.
Participants in the hunger strike have now shifted strategies. They are calling for a recall campaign of school board members who favored the cuts. The most likely targets are school board President Monica Garcia and Vice President Yolie Flores Aguilar. These two members represent largely immigrant areas of Los Angeles, yet have championed the cuts that hurt oppressed people the most. The hunger strikers, who formed a group called Hungry for a Better Education, will formally announce the campaign to recall board members Sept. 1.
Campaigns like this, along with street actions and more, can make a difference. Now, the struggle must intensify and UTLA must keep fighting. Only a people's movement of educators, school personnel, labor unions and their supporters can win justice for the students and workers.
Under capitalism, providing necessary services like quality public education is not a top priority, since these services do not immediately reap profits for the big corporations that fund politicians' campaigns. Fighting to stem the cutbacks and achieve justice now is imperative, but we must also fight to defeat the whole for-profit system, which will always favor tax cuts for the rich. Defeating capitalism is the only true way to win what teachers, students and parents all deserve.
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