Teachers’ Strike Cripples Schools : Students Leave Amid Confusion; Some Leaders See Hope for Accord

A teachers’ strike crippled the Los Angeles Unified School District Monday, with about two-thirds of its 32,000 teachers on picket lines and hundreds of thousands of students deserting campuses in an atmosphere of high emotion and confusion.

However, leaders of both sides in the labor dispute met for several hours Monday and reported some hope for a settlement, possibly within a few days. The teachers’ last strike was for 23 days in 1970.

School board President Roberta Weintraub, emerging shortly before 9 p.m. Monday from a 6 1/2-hour closed-door meeting of the board, announced: “We are working diligently to resolve this crisis.” She said pay remains “the sticking point,” but refused to offer any details of the board meeting or of talks with the union.

The other six board members rushed out of the office of board attorneys on Bunker Hill and did not talk to reporters. Weintraub described the meeting as heated.

‘Positive’ Discussions

In a telephone interview at his house shortly afterward, United Teachers-Los Angeles President Wayne Johnson described his discussions with the district as “positive.” But he also declined to offer specifics.

Others remained more wary because the school board remained divided on making spending cuts in other areas to finance a new pay offer to teachers. They also were uncertain of how much extra state money the district could receive in the revised state budget Gov. George Deukmejian is expected to announce later this week.

The teachers’ union claimed that about 25,000 of the district’s 32,000 teachers, librarians, counselors and nurses refused to work Monday; the district said about 21,000 teachers stayed out. At some schools, as little as 10% of the faculty showed up as administrators and substitutes struggled to keep some educational program going, sometimes reduced to showing videotape cartoon shows starring Daffy Duck.

“Given today’s experience, it would be very difficult to keep the schools going for an extended period of time,” Weintraub conceded.

But she and other officials stressed that schools would be open today. As if to emphasize that point, the board raised the daily pay of substitutes to $165, up from $137, which itself was $39 more than usual.

According to the district, morning taking of attendance found that about 430,000 of the 590,000 students were in school. But, that quickly plummeted during the day as many junior and senior high schoolers simply walked off campus, heading for home, parks, video arcades and beaches. At some high schools, there were rowdy demonstrations by students.

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

Wesley Mitchell, chief of the district police, said he would not try to snag truants in the 700-square-mile school district, which has the second-largest number of students in the nation after New York.

“It’s a problem of such magnitude that it’s beyond our resources,” he said, adding that courts probably would not force parents to send children to the strikebound schools and that police cannot sort out which youngsters are out of school with parental permission and which are not. Besides, attendance counselors who help with truant students were given teaching assignments.

City and school police said there were some verbal confrontations between strikers and teachers who went to work. There were no arrests and no reports of violence directly related to the strike, although the union said a couple of fistfights occurred. Mitchell said he was pleased about the relative lack of trouble, “especially given the numbers of people involved and the strong convictions on the issues.”

Over the weekend, vandals poured glue in door locks at Birmingham High and Nightingale Junior High, but maintenance crews were fixing that, district officials said.

Schedules Cut Back

Most junior and senior high schools cut back on class schedules, 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.

Several hundred seventh- and eighth-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 volunteer supervisors. Only nine regular teachers and five substitutes, compared to a normal staff of 65, were working at Reed, which has a normal enrollment of about 1,500 students. By 10 a.m., at least a third of those students had left the campus and many others followed later.

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

Union spokeswoman Carey said the district needs to cling to its morning enrollment figures because those will be used in state formulas for funding.

Picketing began at 2 a.m. at harbor area warehouses of food and supplies for the schools. At 7 a.m., circling lines of placard-carrying teachers marched in front of many of the 600 school sites in the district. UTLA President Johnson joined the picketers at Hamilton High, where he had taught for many years.

Later in the morning, strikers converged at eight rallies in parks around the district. At South Gate Park, UTLA Vice President Frances Haywood told the gathering: “We’re going to get what we are asking for. We finally sent the message to L.A. Unified that teachers are not tall children.”

Picketing then resumed at schools until about 4 p.m. and is scheduled to start again today at 7 a.m.

On the picket line at Carpenter Avenue Elementary School in Studio City, school psychologist Scott Maiman, who has worked in the district for 10 years, said the strike will be “tough on the kids and tough on the teachers and parents and everybody involved.” But he insisted: “I’ll be out until we get a fair contract. You have to fight for what you believe in.”

At Eagle Rock Junior-Senior High, photography teacher and union chairman Ellis Kaufman said that 90 of the school’s 116 teachers were striking and that they were very angry at the ones who went to work. “There will be hostility, definitely. It may take 10 to 15 years for those wounds to heal,” Kaufman said.

Inside the auditorium, crafts teacher Richard Arpea said he respects what the strikers are doing and believes the school board is wrong on many issues. But he said he feels compelled to work. “I’m here for the kids,” he said.

Peter Osbaldeston, a Hamilton High School art teacher, said he had no trouble crossing the picket line there. “I just drove into the parking lot and walked into the school building,” he said.

Meanwhile, attorneys for the teachers’ union filed a motion for an emergency injunction from the state Court of Appeal, asking that it suspend district Supt. Leonard Britton’s order that teachers must hand in grades by today or face withholding of last month’s pay. The state Appeals Court did not rule on the request Monday. In February, a Superior Court judge ruled on a similar order that the matter should be reviewed by the state Public Employment Relations Board, not the courts.

The union charges that Britton’s order forced it to move its strike date up from May 30 to Monday. But the new date could put the union in legal jeopardy because a state fact-finder’s report on the contract is due on Wednesday and courts in some cases have ruled that strikes should not begin before such reports are finished.

Also, in Los Angeles Monday, Deukmejian, after a speech to the Japan-American Conference of Mayors, refused to comment on how much additional state revenue, if any, will be made available to the Los Angeles district when he releases updated state budget revenue and expenditure figures later this week.

This year, bank and corporate income tax receipts are significantly higher than the estimates Deukmejian used in preparing his initial budget, which he released in January. Although preliminary estimates put tax receipts at least $700 million higher than budget estimates, costs of health, welfare and prison programs are also rising.

Governor’s Preference

The governor said months ago that he would prefer to spend extra revenue for schools to reduce classroom overcrowding rather than give it to local school districts for such things as teacher salaries. Kevin Brett, the governor’s press secretary, said statements by local legislators that the Los Angeles school district could get as much as $34 million of the new money are “premature.”

Currently, Los Angeles district teachers annually earn from $23,440 in beginning salary to $43,319 to those with doctorates, 98 extra course units and 19 years experience.

In debates before the strike, only three of the board’s seven members--Julie Korenstein, Warren Furutani and Jackie Goldberg--supported increasing the district’s salary offer of 21.5% over three years. Another three--Rita Walters, Leticia Quezada and Alan Gershman--do not support the district’s current offer, which would require about $80 million in budget cuts next year and another $40 million in cuts the following year.

But Weintraub said that she would not be willing to make deeper cuts to support an increase over the district’s current offer without final word on the state budget.

The union is pushing for a 10% retroactive raise this year, between 5.5% and 9% in the upcoming year, depending on state surpluses, and 8% the following year.

Other issues include eliminating yard duty for teachers and increasing their membership on governing councils which will decide many policies at individual schools.

Striking teachers, who are not receiving pay for the past month because they refused to hand in student grades, may find their finances pushing them back to work soon, Weintraub said.

As officials huddled, the first day of the strike was an emotional one for teachers, students and parents around the district.

At Castelar Street School in Chinatown, attendance was down by 200 students--about 10 times the normal, Principal William Chun Hoon said. Twenty-three of the school’s 33 teachers honored the strike, although not all walked the picket line. Several parent volunteers helped out.

Outside on Yale Street, some parents stopped to talk to picketing teachers.

“Why can’t teachers get the money they want?” said the mother of a third grader, sounding exasperated. To her daughter she said, “I’m going to send you (to class) but I’m going to come back later.” She said if it looked as though no instruction was going on, she would take her child home.

At Carpenter Avenue Elementary School in Studio City, anxious parents remained on the school grounds with their children until school started, waiting to see how many teachers would show up.

“I’m on the verge of tears,” said Mary Ett Brown, holding her daughter, a Carpenter school first-grader.

Also contributing to coverage of the Los Angeles teachers’ strike were Times staff writers David Ferrell, James M. Gomez, John L. Mitchell, Elizabeth J. Mann, Douglas P. Shuit, S.J. Diamond and researcher Tracy Thomas.