Parents Demand End to School Turmoil

Parents, particularly of Latino and black students who make up the majority of the enrollment in the Los Angeles Unified School District, are beginning to raise their voices and demand an end to the turmoil over grades and pay in their schools that has set off dozens of student demonstrations.

“I’m just tired of it,” said Barbara Charles, a Washington High School parent who is organizing a press conference today followed by a public rally Friday evening for parents from several South Los Angeles high schools. “We have enough problems with gangs and everything. Kids trying to do something to better themselves” should not have to deal with “the anxiety (teachers and school officials) are putting on them.”

Parents are one constituency that has been relatively silent over the last two weeks, while a run-of-the-mill labor dispute has suddenly exploded into a full-blown crisis for the nation’s second-largest school system.

Strike Action

The union’s board of directors met Wednesday night and voted to set in motion a procedure that could lead to a strike authorization vote by the teachers within the next several weeks.

The students are protesting teacher threats, as part of a boycott of certain non-teaching duties, to withhold midyear grades from school offices, in addition to expressing support for teacher pay raises. Students will be given their grades directly on unofficial, union-issued report cards. Union officials insist that students will not be harmed because college counselors will be able to forward the grades to universities. But many students are not satisfied and do not want to risk being put at a competitive disadvantage.

As the dispute has escalated--demonstrations involving more than 2,500 students occurred on about a dozen campuses again Wednesday--more parents are saying that enough is enough. “It’s having a very, very negative impact,” said Francisco Gonzalez, president of a districtwide parent advisory commission on bilingual education. “We the parents are against the (teachers union) not producing the proper (grade) reports. . . . They are using our kids to produce pressure on the school board.”

Gonzalez’s commission, which includes locally elected parent representatives from 600 district schools with bilingual programs, last week called for the United Teachers-Los Angeles to release the grades.

Monday night, a Latino parents coalition submitted petitions--which they said included 1,000 parent signatures--to the school board calling for an end to the turmoil. Horacio Quinones, who heads the coalition and submitted the petitions, has been chiefly critical of the teachers union, but also has chided both sides for not reaching out with information to limited- and non-English-speaking parents. “They are confused,” he said.

Charles, the Washington High parent and a community activist, hopes to bring out several hundred parents to a rally at Jesse Owens Park on Friday evening. While she agrees that teachers need a raise, Charles said the message she hopes to convey is: “You cannot use my child.”

If grades, which are due Friday, are not filed in the official manner, Charles said, parents will consider suing the teachers, the school district--or both parties--as early as Monday. The Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles is researching the matter for the parents.

Parent concerns are not confined to Latinos and blacks. With teachers now threatening a strike as a result of Supt. Leonard Britton’s new no-grades, no-pay policy, many parents are beginning to speak out. “I think both sides have been irresponsible in letting things get to this point,” said Bill Bruns, one of the founders of a newly formed public education support group involving parents from several schools in the Pacific Palisades area.

Issuing an appeal to the combatants, he said, “Compromise and settle this issue now before you do further destruction.”

Wednesday’s student demonstrations were concentrated at junior high schools. Although mostly peaceful, about 250 students became rowdy at Stephen White Junior High in Carson and scattered into the community. District officials said some rocks were thrown. A couple of dozen demonstrators at San Fernando Junior High descended on a nearby 7-Eleven store, causing a disturbance.

Meanwhile, in the first major disciplinary action against student protesters by district officials, 30 to 40 students were suspended at the Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies for having joined a demonstration Tuesday. The one-day suspensions were ordered by Principal Eli Brent because students created an unsafe situation, defied authority and left school without parental permission.

Donna Thorne, a parent of a suspended student, said, “It’s not fair.” But Brent said, “Parents send their children to school for education and (a) safe environment. (It) would be dereliction of duty if I didn’t” act. Fearful of inflaming the protests, the district has not been rigidly enforcing discipline procedures.

Britton said he was unware of the suspensions and said they did not represent a new get-tough policy with students.

The underlying labor dispute is over wage increases and other issues. Teachers want a 12% one-year increase. The district’s latest public offer is for a 17.4% increase spread over three years. Another in a series of state-mediated bargaining sessions is scheduled for today.