State of Emergency Declared for Public School Funding (tags)
California community members, parents, and students joined teachers statewide declaring a State of Emergency caused by years of merciless budget cuts gutting public schools and social services.
Proposed California budget slashes education (tags)
Amid looming budget deficits, school districts across California are preparing to fire teachers, close schools, cut programs, and increase class sizes, to cover reduced state funding. Like Democratic and Republican governors across the country, Democratic Governor Jerry Brown is trying to force workers to pay for the economic crisis, while corporations make record profits. Within the state the richest Californian, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, has a net worth of $27 billion, more than the entire state deficit.
Los Angeles School District works with ACLU to deny teachers’ seniority rights (tags)
On January 21, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William Highberger stripped teachers employed by the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) of certain seniority rights, allegedly to stanch the loss of young, quality teachers at inner-city schools. If the order is upheld on appeal, the LAUSD can lay off higher paid veteran teachers without regard to their years of service, in violation of collective bargaining provisions that have been in effect for decades. At the same time, there are more than a dozen billionaires living in Los Angeles, and dozens more who measure their wealth by the hundreds of millions.
ERRATA Summary of Value-Added Forum at 89.3 KPCC (tags)
I made one factual error about the Times database, which does not change the injustice of how they treated Rigo.
Summary of KPCC Forum on "Value-Added" Evaluation of Teachers (tags)
This summary of a Public Radio forum takes on special relevance because of the recent tragic death of Rigoberto Ruelas, an excellent teacher who was rated "less effective" by the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Teachers Stage Civil Disobedience at Downtown Headquarters (tags)
Educators Suffer Arrest and Possible Censure in Civil Disobedience
L. A. Teachers Fight Cuts in Education Budget (tags)
A UTLA Member Reports from the Picket Line Over 40,000 teachers, United Teachers Los Angeles, (UTLA), sacrificed an hour of their pay to protest the proposed state budget cuts on Friday, June 6, 2008. LA, CA
“ THEY SAY CUT BACK, WE SAY FIGHT BACK! They Say Our Way, We Say No Way! “ Thousands of teachers, parents,students and their supporters In a one-hour demonstration at the beginning of the day,picket outside schools in Los Angeles. Converging at the Los Angeles High, Belmont High School. Fairfax High School, Miguel Contreras Learning Complex and Gratts Elementary School in Central Los Angeles held an hour long demonstration this morning to protest proposed budget cuts. Banging pots, waving signs, shouting slogans to passersby and delaying the start of the school day as students in the nation's second-largest school district waited in gymnasiums and auditoriums and on athletic fields. Motorist hoked their horns in supports of the rallyist. By 9 a.m. most protests had wound down.
LA School District Not Paying Salaries (tags)
For 11 months now, some 48,000 to 78,000 employees of the Los Angeles School District have not been paid due to computer problems. This is sufficient grounds for a strike, despite the lies of the school district. The school district has breached the labor contract with the teachers and all other school employees and thus all the labor contracts have ended, making a strike legal.