Thursday, May 19, 2011

School wars - Sacramento News & Review

School wars - Beats - Local Stories - May 19, 2011 - Sacramento News & Review

School wars


By Seth Sandronsky and Nick Miller


This article was published on 05.19.11.

A busy week of protests.

It was a busy week of activism at the state Capitol. And it appears, at least according to Gov. Jerry Brown’s May revise, that the protests bore fruit.

Last week, however, teachers, students and parents weren’t optimistic.

Alice Mercer is a computer lab teacher at Oak Ridge Elementary School in theSacramento City Unified School District. “For a number of years, state education funding has been precarious,” said Mercer, an educator going on nine years. “There have been a lot of one-year solutions, and now federal stimulus money to help out education has run out.

“We’re at the end of our rope.”

This past Friday capped off a week of school-funding protests at the Capitol. The California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers coordinated the Sacramento rally, one of six actions statewide, calling for five-year extensions of temporary