Updated with photos of the protest, a link to a KTLA video and a clarification on the number of days the hearings have been going on.
Their exasperation mounting, a group of Belmont Shore and Belmont Heights parents have been meeting and texting for weeks about the state budget impasse and where it leaves their kids.
Long Beach Unified, the state's third largest district, had cut $170 million during the past few years under the last governor. It has said it's now facing another $155 million in cuts this year if the new governor's budget isn't passed. With 86,000 students and 8,000 employees, Long Beach Unified will feel the state's budget choke in daily life. Teachers make up the majority of the city's largest workforce of 8,000 LBUSD employees.
Not necessarily longtime collaborators in the trenches, the parents say they have found themselves joined in fury and frustration with how to voice what they want out of elected leaders. As individuals they have attended school board meetings, their city council forums, and PTA meetings all school year. But still there is the question of how to do anything that matters and reach those who would impact their children’s future.
In their first strike, the group launched an e-mail and Facebook effort early Sunday to rally their anger in a show of support happening right in their neighborhood: the fifth day of teacher layoff hearings. More than 1,200 layoff notices have been sent by LBUSD, which has been forced into devastating cuts that have already added more students per classroom at every grade level.
This letter was sent to Patch.com:
MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD
This is an urgent message for all of you in Long Beach who care about our children, our schools and our teachers. We are at a crossroads. We are going to lose many, many teachers due to budget woes, poor planning, a lack of forethought, and just plain madness!! We are not going to take this sitting down. We are getting up Monday morning April 11th and marching over to Wilson High School to protest the layoffs of some of our most talented and amazing teachers.
We are bringing our children, our frustration, our handmade signs, and our attitude! We want to show the union, the district, California lawmakers, and the teachers that we do not agree with the decisions that are being made. We are not going to let the people who work every day to give our children the education they deserve fight alone for their future in their chosen profession. We stand with them, and we will not stand quietly aside as they are laid off by the hundreds with little more than an unemployment packet as thanks for all of their years of service.
Join us!
- We will meet between 8 am and 8:15 by the Recreation Park Community Center parking lot (near Park and 7th street). Bring signs and wear mourning/black clothes if you like.
- We will march to Wilson where the layoff hearings are being held to show our support to the teachers and our frustration and anger to the powers that be.
- Come with us; let’s show our children that they and their education are worth fighting for!
Families, parents, neighbors, grandparents, the more people, the more power! Please forward to any concerned parents on your email list, thanks.
Questions or comments or to find us Monday morning: Kimberely (714)396-0391 call or text, email kbeeli@verizon.net; or Jacqui (562)212-1852, email vialegirl@charter.net
"Some things high-performing education systems are doing differently than the U.S. 1. The teaching profession in the U.S. does not have the same high status as it once did, nor does it compare with the status teachers enjoy in the world’s best-performing economies. " The rest of the report is accessible and interesting as well. This New York Times article, which is also very good, has a link to view it: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/education/16teachers.html I think much of the education issue has to do with unwise expenditure, not following or keeping track of funds, and not making the link to students that education is not "free," even though they're not always the ones paying for it. Although I believe incentives are not always economic, and education should be available to those who desire it, "free" education is truly a myth and needs to be addressed as such. (con...)
We were demonstrating to show support for our kids' teachers who are losing their jobs and to tell the Teachers' Union and LBUSD that they need to start looking to more forward thinking solutions. We were using our constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech and I think it was a valuable lesson for the adults and kids who participated.
One of the things. ;-) What's something visible on the horizon right now that's particularly encouraging to you?
A few of my friends and I are composing a draft education proposal for reform. And we're small fries, but the ideas sweeping the nation about how to improve upon the system is what is inspiring to me. I'm no economist but I know the first step to improving anything is addressing it first. The cracks have been revealed, and are now being rebuilt. Here are two very good documentaries about the current education crisis: http://www.racetonowhere.com/ http://www.waitingforsuperman.com/action/ Basically, instead of letting the system fail, I think people are becoming more involved in helping it say afloat and with new ideas, ideas that may be emerging mostly because of the sink or swim mentality. And we who take part in the system are being forced to understand it better, be more involved and think more creatively
Valuing teachers highly seems a good start. I saw a documentary recently that tried to demonstrate the advantages of fully embracing technology in the classroom, playing to the tendencies/abilities that the common technologies are already developing in kids in social and recreational settings, working commonly on projects in physical and networked groups, learning by doing/interacting rather than reading, etc. The kids interviewed were digging it, the teachers were excited, but it came off a bit empty and promotional to my eye and ear. If this does work, it must be difficult to demonstrate, easier to understand by participating, maybe. Or maybe it's just me. Or maybe it *doesn't* work. Imagining the value of something very foreign to you requires that you remain open and skeptical simultaneously. A tall order.
Bravo. Any comments the kids made that you can share? It was a "mediated" event. Did it still feel genuine?
Regardless of the numbers, we need to do a better job being creative with resources and teacher contract terms. The budget will go up and down over the years, though there is probably a minimum threshold of viability for an urban school district, so we have to adapt.
Do you want to pay public teachers or not? If you do, and you aren't happy with the education provided by public school teachers, get active! Participate in your child's education. Punishing teachers will not help students. Kids who are in public schools right now will not benefit from parents haranguing public school teachers who are in place right now. It is not the teachers who are to blame. They are subject to a bureaucratic system beyond their control. I believe that many parents don't understand the public education system when they complain. Don't target teachers, who submit their wits and intelligence to federal standards. Creativity and passion are not rewarded by the federal or state systems. Good teachers are passionate and competent. When we use merely test scores to analyze teacher competency, we only reveal little robots, akin to standardized, manufactured brains. Where is America without creativity and innovation? Where is entrepreneurship? Where are the new ideas? Without them, we are dead as a nation. We can regulate and standardize public education, but I find that impulse ironically contrary to the right-leaning impulse for freedom, innovation and prosperity for our nation. Eliminate funding for public education? This is the equivalent to killing creativity and innovation in potential American generations.
Will "Media Literacy" ever be a required class taught universally in the public schools from early on? Is it important enough to be taught year around, as a sub-topic of English, say, K-12? As parents, do you think that your kids are efficient multitaskers? Are they able to shift attention between multiple subjects and focus effectively on each in an ongoing rapid succession? Do they make associations easily, express themselves in simile and metaphor as a matter of course? Does their thinking seem more piecemeal, or holistic? I have no background in any of this, just an intense curiousity about how the generations are (and will be) developing into the future.
2) the parents--yes us! to be continued...
If more of us spend even a little bit of time actively involved in our schools, filling the gaps at home (art, culture, history, etc.), and freeing up our heavy schedules (turning off our computers and cell phones) to spend quality time with our kids--even if it's doing the endless worksheets together--if we model good attitudes and consistency our kids will be alright. Again, I acknowledge the problems are tremendously complex and, as a result, require complex solutions. But it all starts at home and inside of the classrooms.
My answer: I hope NOT, or at least not in elementary school. A kid can become a consumer of computer applications at any time. The real brain work is not in reading sound bites from one window or another, but in writing the code--right? You can't do that without a solid foundation in reading, writing, and mathematics. Someone once joked that her daughter can beat my daughter at a popular video game (a joke because our daughter reads voraciously at 8 and has very little experience with video games since we have none at home). My response: Give her five minutes.
Here's an opportunity to demonstrate what I meant, in a small, imperfect way. Wikipedia is a widely-used reference on the web, often used authoritatively. I'm semi-informed about its nature, its strengths and weaknesses. In responding to you, I could immediately link you to its "media literacy" entry. Or I could wrestle with my own sense of the term's meaning and express that as well as possible. Or both. As it happens, I did the second thing first, and then checked the Wikipedia entry. Look at how they compare. Me: The tactics of influence and persuasion. Misrepresentation for the sake of dramatic effect. False premises. Sophistry. Sounds like self-defense, advanced B.S. detection, eh? Anti-PR/Marketing, maybe. It could be taught objectively, I suppose: these are the tools, just be aware they're double-edged. Wikipedia: Media (or Cine) literacy is a repertoire of competences that enable people to analyze, evaluate, and create messages in a wide variety of media modes, genres, and forms. Education for media literacy often uses an inquiry-based pedagogic model that encourages people to ask questions about what they watch, hear, and read. Media literacy education provides tools to help people critically analyze messages, offers opportunities for learners to broaden their experience of media, and helps them develop creative skills in making their own media messages.[1]... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_literacy
maybe Maybe MAYBE this demonstrates some degree of media literacy on my part, or maybe not. But wouldn't you like to have access to a reporter's notes to compare to their multiply-edited (mediated) final version? I love that kind of privilege. It's hard to come by. Locally, the LBReport.com site does a great service by providing the complete raw video of press conferences and the like. It's fascinating to compare the raw and the cooked - but it takes a lot more time...
What do you think of the quote, “Give me the child until he is seven and I’ll give you the man”?
"The story, 'The Default Major: Skating Through B-School,' is a collaboration between The New York Times and The Chronicle of Higher Education. It reports that business majors spend less time preparing for class than do students in any other broad field. Quoting from a new book, 'Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses,' the article also claims that business majors had the weakest gains during the first two years of college on a national test of writing and reasoning skills..." http://poetsandquants.com/2011/04/17/is-the-mba-the-degree-for-slackers/