L.A. teachers join U.S. movement against underfunded schools
"What you’re seeing is a national phenomenon, and it’s been building for decades," said National Education Assn. president Lily Eskelsen García.
Jennifer Villaryo looked at the young woman through smudged spectacles and gave her this advice: "Don't get bogged down in the party scene."
The student, taking the 42-year-old’s "student success" night course at an adult school in Santa Monica this week, promised her those days are in her past, and Villaryo nodded approvingly.
The gig is Villaryo’s third job. She teaches second grade and coaches volleyball for the Los Angeles Unified School District. The paycheck trifecta allows her to live in what she describes as a "super crappy" one-bedroom apartment in Gardena, a city that's often an hour’s drive south of her main job at Grand View Elementary School in L.A.’s Mar Vista community.
"I’m not married," she said. "I don’t have kids."
That’s a teacher's life in California, which has the fifth-largest economy in the world but also the highest poverty rate in the nation. Los Angeles Unified teachers have authorized a strike that is expected to begin Monday if talks between their union, United Teachers Los Angeles, and the district continue to be unfruitful.
A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ruled Thursday that the strike could go on after the district challenged the UTLA over the amount of notice it provided.
Despite exorbitant housing costs that cut everyone down a notch — about one in five Californians is poor, according to the U.S. Census Bureau‘s Supplemental Poverty Measure — the teachers’ dispute isn’t just about teachers’ pay.
Educators in the second-largest school district in the nation say they’re making a last stand against more than two generations of state defunding of public schools, understaffing of nurses and janitors and an onslaught of what they call the privatization of public education — charter schools.
"Here we are with a public education system in the richest state in CONTINUE READING: L.A. teachers join U.S. movement against underfunded schools
