On Thursday, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell and former Assembly member John Laird of Santa Cruz will join students, faculty, staff, cheerleaders, athletes, parents and workers at Colton Hall in Monterey to demand that education in California be funded.
Colton Hall is the site of the first publicly funded school in California and where the California constitution
was written.
Other speakers will include Cesar Lara, executive director of the Monterey Bay Central Labor Council, county schools Superintendent Nancy Kotowski, and students and faculty from Hartnell College, Seaside High School, Monterey High School, Monterey Peninsula College, and California State University, Monterey Bay.
Entertainment will be supplied by the Seaside High drumline, the Monterey High Schoolband/cheerleaders and slam poets from the high schools and CSUMB.
Students, staff and faculty all across the state and nation are joining together Thursday to protest the recent massive cuts in education. This day of action is one of the first times in recent history that parents, students, teachers and staff from all segments of the educational sector - from pre-school to post-graduate - are uniting to make a joint stand on behalf of the precarious future of public education.
In the past few years, organizers say education in California has been underfunded and under attack.
They say California spends $2,400 less per student than the national average and ranks 46th in per-pupil funding. Community colleges have increased enrollment by 3 percent over last fall but have been forced to decrease the number of classes that they offer. At CSUMB, more than 1,000 students have been turned away for next year, and organizers say tuition has gone up by 182 percent since 2002.