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Half of Students in L.A. District Stay Home as 21,000 Teachers Walk Out : Talks Held as Schools Struggle

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Times Education Writer

A teachers’ strike crippled the Los Angeles Unified School District this morning, with about two-thirds of its 32,000 teachers and half of its 594,000 students staying away from school in an atmosphere of high emotion and confusion.

Leaders of both sides were holding informal talks today, however, and held out some hope for a settlement of the labor dispute, possibly within a few days. Teachers walked out for 23 days in 1970.

“We are still talking, and that’s a very positive thing,” said Catherine Carey, spokeswoman for United Teachers-Los Angeles.

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School Board Meeting

School board President Roberta Weintraub said that the board was to meet in closed-door sessions this afternoon at the Bunker Hill offices of its attorneys and that she is hopeful of a settlement if the union makes some concessions.

The union said about 25,000 of the district’s 32,000 teachers, librarians, counselors and nurses refused to work today. According to the district, about 21,000 teachers stayed out. At some schools, as few as 10% of the faculty showed up as administrators and substitutes struggled to keep some educational program going.

“Given today’s experience, it would be very difficult to keep the schools going for an extended period of time,” Weintraub conceded this morning. But she added that striking teachers, who are not receiving pay for the past month because they refused to hand in student grades today, may find the financial situation pushing them back to work soon.

Most junior and senior high schools cut back on the class schedule, usually sending large groups of students to cafeterias and auditoriums to watch educational films and videos. At elementary schools, parents pitched in to supervise the youngsters in crafts and games.

Scattered Vandalism

At 7 a.m., circling lines of placard-carrying teachers marched in front of many of the 600 school sites in the district. There were reports of some scattered vandalism and exchanges of angry words.

At Crenshaw High School, about 13 teachers and substitutes were on hand to teach about 600 students who remained out of a usual enrollment of about 1,600.

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Kelly Freeman, a 16-year-old Crenshaw junior, said, “Everybody is leaving. All we are doing is sitting in the classroom and doing nothing.”

Several hundred 7th- and 8th-grade students at Reed Junior High School in North Hollywood ran from a school auditorium where they had been gathered after they started chanting and throwing paper at the handful of volunteers who were watching the students.

“I won’t come back if it’s going to be like this,” Jake Campbell, a 7th-grader, said outside the Reed auditorium where about 75 students remained to watch Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck cartoons on a video setup.

The disputed issues include governance of the schools as well as pay. The situation is complicated by political division on the school board. Three of its seven members favor quickly raising the last offer of 21.5% over three years based on assurances by state legislators that the district will probably receive about $34 million in extra state money. The union is pushing for a 10% retroactive raise this year, between 5.5% and 9% in the upcoming year and 8% the following year.

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