THE LOS ANGELES TEACHERS’ STRIKE : Amid Confusion, Education Is Supplanted by ‘Baby-Sitting’

It was 8 a.m. Monday at Joseph Le Conte Junior High School in Hollywood, and the word was chaos.

On the first day of a districtwide teacher strike, an administrator began his day standing on the playground outside the two-story brick school, doing what he and others would end up doing most of the day--trying to keep students from skipping out. While he stood there quizzing the kids on the names of school administrators to keep them amused, others who had showed up to teach massed nearby, waiting for instructions on what to do once the first bell sounded.

Like a general in a battle issuing orders to his lieutenants, Principal Dave Sowers handed out the day’s hastily prepared directives and assignments to his corps of teachers.

But as teachers and administrators went in all directions to their assigned classrooms, few were pretending that much education was about to take place.

“This isn’t educating; this is baby-sitting,” said Oscar Mesta, 35, one of only about a dozen regular teachers who crossed the picket line that morning. A history teacher, Mesta was assigned to teach English. “We’re doing the best we can.”

Confusion Abates

By 10 a.m., most of the confusion had ended, and the relatively few substitute teachers and administrators had routed students into the school auditorium, a corner of the playground and a few classrooms.

Nearly 200 restless youngsters squirming in their seats and chattering in several languages sat through a nearly two-hour period with little to do but watch cartoons on two television monitors. In a nearby English class, a bilingual student interpreted class instructions for a small group of her Armenian-speaking friends.

About 950 of the school’s 1,500 students--the vast majority of whom speak a language other than English at home--showed up for class, but if they can sway their parents, many said they will stay home today.

“This is totally boring,” said Ana Goryam, 13, sitting with a group of friends on the playground bleachers where a scheduled physical education class turned into informal ballgames on the surrounding blacktop. “We haven’t learned anything today.”

Teachers seemed more concerned with moving students in an orderly fashion from one classroom to the next during the day’s three periods--consolidated from the usual six--and in keeping them on campus than with the regular reading, writing and arithmetic.

“This is crazy,” said teacher’s assistant Sandra Campos, 29, directing student traffic on the playground. “Our job is to make sure the kids don’t escape. But they ask us for permission to go to the bathroom, and some don’t come back.”

Other teachers assistants and security personnel stationed at all doors of the school building repeatedly found themselves turning back youngsters who tried to go home.

“This is a prison, not a school,” said John Oganesyan, 15, who was turned back along with two of his cousins. “I’m not going to just sit here and do nothing all day. Our parents told us we could go home if we didn’t like what happened at school today.”

A Pupil’s Solution

One of the boy’s cousins asked, “Why don’t they just pay the teachers and get it over with? Why should we suffer?”

Even many of those who managed to make it out of the building did not get very far.

Police made at least half a dozen trips to the school to return about 30 students picked up for truancy, school office personnel said. At one point, about a dozen students filed through an open playground gate. A handful of them made it no farther than the corner where a passing police car stopped to pick them up.

Other students sauntered over to a picket line on a sidewalk outside the school for a few minutes to greet one of their teachers.

“Happy vacation! Happy Mother’s Day,” the girls chimed as they surrounded teacher Mirta McKay, a bilingual teacher at the school for three years. “When are you coming back? It’s so boring inside,” one of them added.

Like the dozens of other sign-carrying strikers who showed up at the school Monday morning, McKay said she is prepared to “fight” for as long as it takes. For too long, she said, she and other teachers have gone without adequate salaries, school materials and books for their classes.

“We want more say in the decision-making process,” she added.

Her husband, Bob McKay, the school’s strike coordinator and another Le Conte teacher, said the strike is about more than just salaries. “There is a lot of pent-up frustration over not being allowed to make decisions about the workplace and (teaching) materials,” he said.

Only about 14 out of the school’s roster of 90 teachers reportedly crossed the picket line Monday. Among those who reported for work, several said they did so for financial or personal reasons. Some expressed ambivalence. And a few, like Mesta, the history teacher, simply said they did not agree with the union’s call for a strike.

Most asked that they not be identified. “I don’t need the hassle,” one teacher said.

Saying she was not proud of crossing the picket lines, one substitute teacher said she took the job because she needed to work three more days before the end of the school year to qualify for medical benefits.

“I put on my sunglasses and held my breath when I drove through that picket line this morning,” the substitute said. “I felt really, really bad.”

Striking teachers said they expected little support from their students’ parents, noting that most are recent immigrants and do not involve themselves in school affairs.

Several of the parents interviewed before the strike, however, expressed support for the teachers. Ana Medrano, who has a daughter at the school, admitted she is not clear on the reasons for the strike and worries about the disruption of classes. But, still she believes the strike “is necessary.”

“Teachers salaries are too low for the work they do. Education is the most important work of all,” said Medrano, a native of Nicaragua and one of the few parents who has taken an active role on the school’s advisory council.