Teachers Launch 'Week of Emergency' to Help Avert Cuts to Education

Public school teachers, school employees and labor unions across California launched a weeklong “State of Emergency” campaign on Monday aimed at raising public awareness about the local effects of the state legislature’s failure to resolve a budget crisis that threatens deeper cuts in public school education.

The California Teachers Association, which consists of some 325,000 teachers, counselors, school librarians, nurses and support staff, launched the drive to pressure legislators to pass the state budget and temporarily extend certain sales, personal income and vehicle taxes that are scheduled to expire by June 30.

The CTA says that an extension would help prevent the authorization of billions of dollars in public expenditure cuts, including to K-12 education, which has already experienced $20 billion in cuts over the past three years and is threatend with larger class sizes and a shorter school year.

The CTA-led demonstration is scheduled to culminate in what organizers say will be the biggest event of the week-long protests—a rally in Pershing Squre in downtown Los Angeles. In Los Angeles on Monday, CTA members staged after-school protest demonstrations in several areas, including Simi Valley, and distributed leaflets in neighborhoods, urging people to support California Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposal to extend taxes or face devastating cuts to public services and education, Frank Wells, a CTA communications representative said.

The CTA is urging the public to use the association’s toll free number (1-888-268-4334) to call or email your local Assembly member and State senator to urge them to pass Brown’s tax extension measure. Brown has called for a special election in June that will enable California voters to decide whether or not to extend taxes to close the state's remaining $15.4 billion budget deficit, which would swell to $28 million during the next fiscal year.

Without a tax extension, the Los Angeles Unified School District would face $497.8 million in state cuts, which would be an average of $764 per student—or $22,920 per 30-student classroom, according to Parents For Great Education, a San Francisco Bay Area volunteer group of parents, teachers, administrators, unions and local businesses that raised $2.5 million in eight weeks last year to help restore 107 teachers’ jobs facing the ax because of budget cuts.

Some 7,300 teachers and classified staff at LAUSD had received layoff notices as of March 15, according to Parents For Great Education. Those layoffs include 38 teachers and staff members at Benjamin Franklin High School, according to Principal Joseph Nacorda. 

Recently, Luther Burbank Middle School Principal Arturo Valdez urged community members to contact their state and local officials and request that they vote to maintain level funding for public education.

"It is a crisis, and it's not just a LAUSD crisis, it's a national crisis. The budget cuts are unbelieveabel and they're impacting each and every school," he said. "What I'm asking is [that parents] stay aware of current events, write to the folks at the district and state level and let them know that we need to continue adequate funding for all schools."

Valdez said Burbank was slated for approximatley $500,000 in cuts in the coming year.

"It's gonna be very challenging, we're losing personnel, but we're going to move forward, because it's the only alternative that we have."

Here is snapshot of the LAUSD as it compared in 2009-10 to some other school districts in the Los Angeles area, according to Ed-Data, the California Department of Education’s website:

LAUSD’s average annual expenditure per pupil is $10,654—much higher than what is spent on students per capita at:

Arcadia Unified ($7,788)
South Pasadena Unified ($7,803)
La Cañada Unified ($8,370)
San Marino Unified ($8,491)
Glendale Unified ($8,572)
Pasadena Unified ($10,435).

The state’s share of funding for LAUSD’s expenditure per pupil is $5,163, which, with the exception of Pasadena Unified, is higher than the rest of the comparable districts:

Arcadia Unified ($5,052)
South Pasadena Unified ($5,183)
La Cañada Unified ($5,046)
San Marino Unified ($5,008)
Glendale Unified ($5,035)
Pasadena Unified ($5,183).

LAUSD teachers who have a bachelors degree, plus two additional years of education, get an average annual salary of $63,553, which compares as follows with other districts:

Arcadia Unified ($76,213)
South Pasadena Unified ($71,968)
Glendale Unified ($65,170)
San Marino Unified ($64,881)
La Cañada Unified ($64,467)
Pasadena Unified (62,150)

Finally, LAUSD (as well as Glendale Unified and Pasadena Unified) can be distinguished from Arcadia Unified, La Cañada Unified, South Pasadena Unified and San Marino Unified, in one other respect: LAUSD has failed to achieve the Average Yearly Progress, which is tied to annual growth in test scores and the state’s “No Child Left Behind” policy.