Students protest on National Tax Day of Action
Sharis Delgadillo | 4-16-2010 | Comments |
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While wearing orange life preservers around their necks, dozens of African American and Latino students from struggling public high schools in South and East Los Angeles marched in front of a post office across the street from the University of Southern California. As they held up signs of sinking ships, they asked adults to help them send a message to Congress by stamping a donut-sized sticker of a life preserver on their income tax forms, which read, “Invest my taxes in public education.”
This was the National Tax Day of Action campaign called “SOS, Save our Schools." The Alliance for Educational Justice (AEJ) joined forces with several organizations in 13 cities across the U.S., including Wichita, Kansas and Philadelphia.
“Low income community schools are the ones failing, and we are wondering why do we not get equitable funding,” said Jesus Garcia, 17, a senior from Dorsey High School and a member of AEJ. “We need more than the rest and we’re not getting that.”
This state’s largest public school crisis in recent history is the direct result of California’s $20 billion deficit that has led to major budget slashes to education carried out by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
In an April 14 open letter to the public, the Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Ramon Cortines said that his school district has its own deficit of $640 million dollars and another projected $263 million for 2010-2011.
Last year, 2,000 L.A. Unified teachers were laid off, and last month, another 5,200 employees received reduction in force notices. Teacher and employee unions negotiated, however, to shorten the school year by five days this coming June in order to save money and prevent lay-offs.
In total, 22,000 teachers across the state have received notices of potential layoffs.
Ulysses Garcia, 16, a 6-foot-tall sophomore at Dorsey High School and member of AEJ said, “Our current educational system is tragically flawed and aren’t preparing us to go to these types of universities,” he said, pointing to the university behind him.
“The public schools have not been able to purchase any new books. So if any book gets misused or if any accident happens, we don’t have enough money to buy a new book, so we have to use that very same book that was ruined.”
Ulysses Garcia also said that the technology doesn’t keep him up to date.
“Our computers are Windows 95 when they should be like Windows 7 or at least Window’s Vista,” he said.
Kenyon Davis, a senior at Polytechnic High School in Long Beach and a member of AEJ said, “We need equitable resources in order to graduate. And so if this is a school where you have students that are potentially ready to drop out, then they do need all the funding that there is.”
Davis described that after he came back from spring break last week, he found that two of his teachers had been laid off and replaced by substitutes. One of those teachers had been working in the Long Beach district for more than eight years.
“Not only did she have her credential but she sat down with the students and taught them, and I learned so much in creative writing. It just hurts me how she’s gone now,” Davis said.
After he graduates, Davis plans on entering a 4-year university after finishing an Associates Degree from a community college to eventually become a firefighter.
But getting through college has also become more difficult, said Johnny Ramirez, an adjunct professor at Cal State Northridge in Chicano/a Studies, who attended the afternoon demonstration.
“I’m finding that my students are having difficulty paying the increased fees, paying their increasing book prices. So they are forced to take full time jobs, or take part time jobs. And in the process of juggling that I see their grades suffer,” said Ramirez.
This national action reverberates last March’s National Day of Action to Defend Public Education, in which the majority of the demonstrators were college students protesting tuition increases, including California’s 32 percent fee hike approved by the University of California regents in November of 2009.
“This madness needs to stop,” said Davis.
Tags: alliance for educational justice national tax day of action sharis delgadillo south los angeles university of southern california