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Friday, March 19, 2010

Vulnerable school district’s paraprofessionals demonstrate, plead case at board meeting Elk Grove Citizen : News

Elk Grove Citizen : News

Vulnerable school district’s paraprofessionals demonstrate, plead case at board meeting



Carlyn Terry held up her sign of declaring the small cost to be a paraprofessional at Eddy Middle School.

Over 1,000 school employees received ‘pink slips’:

By Citizen staff
Published: Friday, March 19, 2010 10:08 AM PDT
“I work with 130 students a day; the school district pays me 62 cents per student, yet they want to lay me off, I care more than 62 cents for the student’s success,” read the sign of Carlyn Terry.

She was one of more than 80 paraprofessional demonstrators on the streets in front of the Elk Grove Unified District’s offices on Tuesday prior to the school board meeting.

Terry is from Harriet Eddy Middle School where she provides teacher instructional support for disadvantaged learning students. Also after school, on her free time at no charge to the district, she works with the honor society.

The paraprofessionals dominated the Tuesday evening board meeting with the demonstration, speakers before the school board, and a plea from Nancy Clifford, business agent for the AFSCME union representing the paraprofessionals.

In Terry’s paraprofessional class of 123 full time-positions, 46 full time-positions received pink slips.

This week more than 1,000 schoo