Teachers union holds protest outside Broad museum on opening day
Before art aficionados could get their first look inside Eli Broad’s new museum Sunday morning, they got an angry earful on the outside from teachers who have long battled the billionaire philanthropist over charter schools.
Seizing on the opportunity to steal some of the limelight surrounding the opening of the Broad, which will house Broad’s renowned collection of modern art, a few hundred instructors from the L.A. Unified School District endured a blazing sun and took to the sidewalk in front of the museum.
“You want art for the masses?” one person shouted into a bullhorn.
“Then fund more classes!” others shouted in reply as they paraded back and forth under the museum’s much-discussed honeycomb façade.
Clad in the red shirts of United Teachers Los Angeles, the union that represents teachers, the protesters were sounding off against Broad’s involvement in a nascent plan to dramatically expand the number of charter schools operating in the district.
Charters are independently run, publicly financed schools that are exempt from many rules that govern traditional schools; the teaching staff at most are not unionized. For years they have been a major flash point in the debate over how to improve public education as supporters argue that they offer an alternative to poor-performing district-run schools and opponents say they drain resources and are selective about the students they admit.
While officials from the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation said last month that the current plans for a charter expansion are still being formed, charter school representatives involved in the talks said the ideas being discussed are Teachers union holds protest outside Broad museum on opening day - LA Times:
