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Occupy LAUSD Marches On East LA

Gracie Zheng |
October 25, 2011 | 8:19 p.m. PDT

Staff Reporter
A small group of teachers, parents, students and community members from east Los Angeles joined Occupy L.A. Monday afternoon, rallying against school layoffs and banks they say shortchange education.

The demonstration organized by the teachers union is now an offshoot called Occupy LAUSD.

The demonstrators chanted on the sidewalk at a busy intersection while holding pickets and posters, "Hey hey, ho ho, budget cuts have got to go," and “Banks got paid off, teachers got laid off.”

Participants blew mini-vuvuzelas toward the flow of traffic. Cars echoed back with horning.

The demonstrators marched westward to a Chase bank.

"Hey banks, you can't hide. We can see your greedy side,” they shouted in front of the bank.

They blamed the banks and large corporations for accumulating the 1 percent of wealth and not reinvesting in society.


Occupy LAUSD demonstrators protested Saturday against the school district for laying off more than 900 teachers while the district acknowledged a $55 million year-end surplus from 2010-11.

"We want the district to change their priorities,” said Randy Childs, a math teacher from Roosevelt Senior High School. “The LAUSD is wasting too much money on bureaucracy, on administrators and on people who don’t really help with kids or teach kids at all.”

He said his school used to have 20 custodians and now they have five. The school has 4,000 students. Childs said the campus is getting dirtier because the school doesn’t have the money to hire cleaning staff.

Jose Lara, a history teacher from Santee Education Complex, said there are too many students in his class, and students don’t have enough resources.

"I often have to pay money out of my own pocket for supplies because I love the kids,” he said.

Lara said it is unjust for the richest 1 percent to receive bailouts and money while the schools get cuts. He called for the school district to fully fund classrooms.

John Deasy called Occupy LAUSD "misinformed" in an interview at KPCC last Wednesday and said, "it's contrary to the spirit of what’s been taking place in this country and other countries, in terms of Occupy Wall Street."

According to the district's communications office, it instituted 832 layoffs, 1,424 reassignments and bumped 1,150 employees to positions in a lower classification or with fewer hours in late September.

 

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Reach staff reporter Gracie Zheng here.

 

 

 

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