Last Friday, May 15, a planned teacher strike in LA was put to a halt. A judge imposed an injunction on the strike. The teachers were told that if they continued with their plans to strike and not report to first period, they would face serious consequences.
But, that court order didn't stop everybody. The same day, numerous rallies were held at various high schools. Some teachers even marched to the offices of the LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District) board. It has been reported that 30 to 40 teachers were arrested there, including three teachers from my high school, Roosevelt High. Gillian Russom was one of the teachers arrested. Here she tells us about the events leading up to these arrests:

"Last Tuesday, a judge issued an injunction banning our planned one-day strike against these layoffs. The judge's injunction threatened us with $1000 fines each, $20 to $30 million for our union, and even threatened to take away teachers' credentials for participating in the strike. What we decided to do is to have a civil disobedience action where any teachers who were willing to be arrested would do so in order to make sure our issue stayed in the public eye. The 39 of us who had decided to be in the civil disobedience, we gathered in front of the school board building."

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The main issues at stake, according to Ms. Russom, include:
"We're facing a school board and a superintendent who have decided to lay off nearly 2900 teachers next year, and they have already approved a budget that raises class size in every single grade level. So for example, kindergarten to third grade classes are gonna go up from 20 to 24 students, and these are the grades where students need to learn to read. By the 11th and 12th grade, class size is going up 43 students in a class. And so, first and foremost, this is just going to be a devastating decrease in the quality of education that students in L.A. will be able to receive. There's plenty of money to prevent actually all of these layoffs."
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This is what Ms. Russom had to say in response to the question, "Will these budget cuts hurt high schools across the board in the same way?":
"No, it's absolutely schools that serve the poorest students, the most students of color, that are facing the largest number of layoffs. For example, Central Area in L.A. -- the schools in south central L.A. -- and then east area is the 2nd most layoff notices. And the reason is that at the most underprivileged schools there's a higher turnover rate, because it's such a challenging environment to teach in, and so you have the most teachers coming in with less seniority. "
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One of my teachers, Mario Hurtado, has been trying to organize students as well as faculty. Here, he explains why it has been so hard to organize teachers and students:

"I do believe that it's been hard to organize students and fellow teachers. One, becuase I think that we haven't had quite enough media coverage. I think there is a lot of misinformation. And also I believe the little information that people do have... see these budget cuts as a teacher lay off problem, when in reality it is an educational cut problem. Meaning, that the overall quality of education is actually being lowered."

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I also asked Mr. Hurtado what kind of activities they had been organizing to attract the attention of Mayor Villaraigosa:

"What we've been doing is we;ve been having town hall meetings. There was a towbn hall nmeeting at the church of our lady "De Talpa" where Mayor Villaraigosa was present and discussed the budget for Los Angeles, but failed to property address the budget for education. The Mayor, he agrees the fact that personnel and teachers and faculty shouldn't be laid hoof. Howve,r Mayor Villaraigosa is taking litttle action."

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On Friday, some teachers seemed disillusioned and returned to class. But some stayed true to their views, faced the injustice, and still marched. The number of people who showed up at various high schools was strong.

Other students, including me, simply wore t-shirts with big bold letters saying, “Our school is run by the mayor. All I got was this t-shirt”. Wearing these t-shirts was definitely a statement and many people asked us what they meant and what was going on. This was a good thing for us, and we wore them over our shirts even on a hot day.
Future protests, strikes, and sit-ins are still in progress. Stay tuned for more information.