78% of L.A. Teachers Join 1-Day Boycott

Los Angeles school district teachers staged a one-day walkout Thursday to protest stalled pay negotiations, leaving most students in the hands of skeleton crews of administrators and aides whose job for the day, in the words of one administrator, consisted mainly of “baby-sitting.”

Students watched movies and cartoons in crowded auditoriums, listened to music or were corralled into study halls. Many, especially older students, left early out of boredom, even though district officials tried to keep schools operating for the full day. Students at two high schools in northeast Los Angeles staged their own demonstrations in support of the teachers’ action. Thousands of students did not go to school at all.

78% Stay Away

According to a district tally, 78% of the 24,000 regular classroom teachers did not show up for work Thursday, higher than in 1983 when about 53% of teachers joined in a similar one-day walkout.

Among all students, the absentee rate was 38%--or 198,058 students. The rate for a normal day is about 10%, district officials said. For high school students, the district said, the absentee rate was 61%.

Teachers staged the walkout to demonstrate their opposition to the district’s wage offer. Saying that salaries must be substantially improved if the district wants to attract and retain good instructors, union officials have been pressing for a 10% to 14% raise. The district’s last formal offer was 7%, although district officials said that informally they have proposed a somewhat higher amount by giving teachers a one-time bonus.

Union negotiators have refused bonus offers, however, preferring a permanent raise. Although the teachers are working under a contract that runs to 1988, their agreement with the district allows renegotiation each year for pay and other issues. Negotiations began last June, broke off in December and resumed two weeks ago under the supervision of a state-appointed mediator.

At a late-morning rally at Griffith Park attended by about 2,500 teachers and students, United Teachers-Los Angeles President Wayne Johnson declared the walkout a resounding success, saying it demonstrated teachers’ “solidarity and unity for a double-digit raise.”

The teachers also heard from Assemblywoman Teresa Hughes (D-Los Angeles). Hughes, a former teacher who is chairwoman of the Assembly Education Committee, criticized the board for withholding money that is available for teacher salaries and said she would be a less vigorous advocate in Sacramento for the school district if it continues to pay its teachers “slave wages.”

About 200 students from Marshall and Franklin high schools in the northeast part of the district also attended the rally to show support for the teachers.

“We’re fighting for our teachers,” said Elsa Reyes, 18, a Franklin senior at the rally. “If teachers are better paid, we’ll get better teachers . . . and we’ll get a better education.”

Ricky Bertz, 16, a Marshall junior, said that about 100 Marshall students marched from campus to Griffith Park for the rally after administrators forced them to leave school. “We were going to have a rally on campus but the principal kicked us out. . . . We wanted to show the administration and the people downtown that students could not be controlled without the teachers. We have excellent teachers, some of the best in L.A., and we wanted to help them.”

District officials said the schools operated fairly smoothly, although they admitted that normal instruction was not occurring.

School board President Rita Walters said she did not regard the walkout as “a win or a loss for anybody. (The teachers) were trying to make a point that they are concerned. We certainly recognize that. We recognized that before they went out.”

Walters added, however, that teachers did lose one day’s pay for participating in the walkout. The district lost $14.20 in state aid for each absent student, or $2.8 million. But Rivera said the district probably will break even after figuring in the wages lost by teachers who fail to produce a valid excuse for their absence.

At Palisades High School in Pacific Palisades, Principal Douglas M. Beamish had only 14 regular teachers on hand to supervise about 700 students, or less than half of the normal student body of 1,850. The majority of students who showed up were sent to three multipurpose halls to watch educational TV programs and videocassettes of movies that students were allowed to bring from home. “You can’t expect them to watch educational programs all day. They’d get bored,” Beamish said. “We are not showing R-rated or X-rated films.”

Despite the efforts of administrators to keep the students occupied, however, many students were bored.

“It wasn’t good here today,” said Leon Carter, 14, a freshman at Carver Junior High School in South-Central Los Angeles. He stood inside a cool hallway, while other students lounged outside in the lunch yard. He had spent the morning in the gym watching the movie “The Karate Kid” on a videocassette player. That apparently was not enough to hold everyone’s attention, however. “Some kids hopped on the fence and left,” Leon said.

A few blocks away at Jefferson High School, Principal Francis Nakano decided to excuse his pupils after lunch. “I told them, due to the fact that you’ve been so good--and they were good--and I cannot provide any more instruction, I’m going to let you go home. I told them to go directly home.”

But Jefferson sophomore LaTonya Williams, 15, said the school was “just chaos. There were no teachers. So students are just walking out.”

At Belmont High School near downtown, Principal John Howard said he had 13 teachers and 21 administrators to supervise the 2,000 students who showed up. Aides greeted the students at the main door, directing seniors to the cafeteria and others to the auditorium. The 13 teachers who reported for work would hold classes, but Howard said the majority of students would be shown movies with anti-drug themes and other educational films.

“It’s a baby-sitting operation,” he said.

Picketing Teachers

A festive atmosphere reigned outside the school in the early morning hours, however. With samba music from a portable stereo as background, about 60 teachers walked a picket line, carrying signs that read “Scrooge Lives at the Board of Education” and “The Door of Education is Opened by Teachers, Not Locksmiths.”

The latter sign was a reference to a recent article in a district newsletter about a district locksmith who earned $31,000 a year. A district official said the salary is the prevailing wage in the local market and is based on a full year’s employment, not nine months, which is the length of the school year for most teachers. Nonetheless, the article incensed teachers, who earn from $20,600 to $37,500.

At Walter Reed Junior High School in North Hollywood, eight of 68 teachers showed up only to find that fewer than a third of the normal enrollment of 1,700 students had arrived at school. Principal Patricia Joyce said that many of the students who arrived by bus got off the bus and went somewhere else.

Shopping Mall

One of the places that attracted a good number of students who decided to play hooky was the Sherman Oaks Galleria. Students from Granada Hills and North Hollywood highs, Sepulveda Junior High and even Wilbur Avenue Elementary School in Tarzana passed the time in the popular teen-age hangout.

Others decided to take advantage of the summer-like weather and headed for the beach, where lifeguards and other beach employees reported seeing an unusually large number of young people.

Cherie Holton took her daughter and eight other ninth-graders from Reed Junior High School to Santa Monica Beach because, she said, “There’s a lot more to be gained here than sitting in a half-empty auditorium.”

Contributing to this article were Times staff writers Pamela Moreland, Leonard Greenwood and Anne C. Roark