Why California Kids Should Go on Strike
As COVID Collapses Budgets, It’s Up to Children to Save Their Schools
Dear California Kids,
Don’t let us adults destroy your futures! This time of “distance learning” and COVID-19 chaos is the opportunity of a generation—maybe a century—to fix what’s so very wrong with how California treats you. And right now, you have unprecedented power. I am begging you to use it.
Before COVID-19, California wasn’t doing well by its 9.1 million residents under age 18. Now in crisis, the state’s adults are conspiring without your input to make things even worse for you. By June’s end, your governor and legislature will likely pass a budget that cuts a record $15.1 billion from your schools, further hurts the economy, and guts other programs essential to your growth.
You may think that you can do nothing to stop this—after all, you are being ignored as politicians and powerful adult interests make decisions about your future. Even at your own schools, few of you are being asked for your suggestions about how to improve distance learning or how to make your own classrooms safe and productive for your return.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Right now, with schools closed because of the pandemic, California’s children and teens have more leverage than ever before.
This leverage comes from the fact that education can’t restart in California without your consent. If you kids act together, you have the power to keep the schools shut down. This applies to distance learning, which can’t work if you refuse to sign on to the internet, as well as to physical school reopenings, which won’t happen until you agree to walk back onto those campuses.
Your advantage is not just practical. It’s moral. School districts—having thrown you into hastily CONTINUE READING: Why California Kids Should Go on Strike - LA Progressive
