UTLA VS LAUSD, THE STRIKE, THE SUPPORT

We had plans to support their teachers in front of the school on Friday January 18, marking day 5 of the teacher strike. I was surprised to see such a small turn out from the parents. I’m not passing judgment on anyone either. I had expectations that we’d be a needle in a haystack when compared to the many families that would help rally with the teachers. At my son’s middle school we were actually the only black family that I saw. A teacher walked up to us and insisted he take our photo. I was a bit embarrassed because I had hoped that I wasn’t so out of the loop that I didn’t get the memo about black families not participating. He snapped three photos before I learned that the humidity had had it’s way with my hair, oh well it’s done, photo in his phone and on it’s way.

I eventually gave in to the thought that this was a time to be united and to leave any memos on my desk at home. Not that there were any (there wasn’t), but I had to acknowledge that there was a bigger picture here and unity was needed regardless of race. We proceeded to wave our “We Stand With LA Teachers” signs as cars honked on their drive by. I saw the family that encouraged us to come and they invited us to go to the rally downtown.

I was nervous about going. Rallying was something I’d never done. The crowd was huge, swelling to over 60,000 attendees. Parking was several blocks away and we walked into the rally, just the three of us. Over and over I said to myself to be brave for my boys. They were overwhelmed in the beginning because of the size of the crowd. We got in and it felt great. The energy was strong, peoples spirits were high and we were incredibly humbled by the teacher’s support of one another and the countless thank you’s my son’s received from the teachers for joining them. By the end of the day, we were thankful to have been apart of something bigger than all of us. On this day we stood for something. We stood for education and our public school teachers!

Clashes over pay, class sizes and support-staff levels in the district with 640,000 students led to its first strike in 30 years and prompted the staffing of classrooms with substitute teachers and administrators. Overall attendance fell to 83,900 students on Thursday.

With state funding dependent on attendance, student absences cost the district about $97 million over four days, the district said. At the same time, it doesn’t have to spend about $10 million a day on teacher pay.

source:
KTLA.com