SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO – The Capistrano Unified School District and its teachers union resumed contract talks Saturday afternoon on Day 3 of a strike standoff, with teachers and their supporters kicking off the bargaining with a rally outside the district office.
Roughly 250 teachers, parents and students gathered outside the district office in San Juan Capistrano at 12:30 p.m. Students carried signs with slogans such as “I want my teacher back,” and others carried signs emblazoned with “Board forces strike.”
More from Education
- 53 minutes ago
- 1 hour & 19 minutes ago
Capistrano’s teachers have been walking picket lines Thursday and Friday in a strike that has crippled programs and activities across the 52,000-student district and pushed classroom attendance rates down to about 30 percent.
Jessie Klinger, 16, a sophomore at Mission Viejo’s Capistrano Valley High School, said at the rally that she wanted to get back to school because she needed to prepare for important standardized tests.
“If the teachers stay on strike, we won’t be able to take the STAR test and the AP tests,” she said.
Sherree O’Brien, a stay-at-home mom from Aliso Viejo, said that she kept her second-grade son Conor home from school Thursday and Friday. She said she wouldn’t send Conor across picket lines.
“Honestly, I don’t think they’re learning anything there,” she said of the substitute-staffed schools. “Some of the classes have 45 kids in there. We have the luxury of keeping him home – some people have to work.”
THIRD DAY OF TALKS
District and union bargaining teams have already met for the past two days – nearly nine hours in all.
At the conclusion of negotiations Friday, school board President Anna Bryson said there hadn’t been “any great progress,” though she expressed optimism that talks were continuing. Saturday’s closed-door bargaining session began at 1 p.m.
If an agreement can’t be hashed out this weekend, th