THE LOS ANGELES TEACHERS’ STRIKE : Continuation Students Hit Hard by Strike

Tina Sisneros suspected that many of her classmates would not be at Avalon High School in Wilmington on Thursday morning, but she packed up her books and headed there anyway.

Sisneros, 18, said she was compelled by concern for her 8-month-old daughter, Melissa.

“I’ve got a daughter, and I’ve got to support her in the future,” said Sisneros, a junior. “I need my education. I need my credits.”

Avalon High is a continuation school, one of 43 in the Los Angeles Unified School District that teach students with special needs. Some have children; others have had run-ins with police, or simply have had trouble adjusting to life at regular high schools. At Avalon, about a third of the students have children and about 20% work after school and on weekends.

Principal Doris Kennedy said that although the strike has been “devastating” on the school, some students face more urgent problems. For example, there is the 16-year-old junior who has no financial help from her family, is living on her own and looking for a job.

Kennedy said she is worried that students with truancy problems before the teachers’ walkout will not return after the strike is settled.

“We try hard to keep our students in school anyway, because many have a habit of staying out,” Kennedy said. “It’s going to be even harder to get them back in after the strike’s over.”

About a quarter of Avalon’s students were in class Thursday--19 out of 78. One of the school’s three regular teachers, plus a substitute, were on duty; a second regular teacher was out sick while the other joined the strike, picketing briefly early in the day outside the two painted wooden bungalows that house the school’s classrooms.

During a nutrition break in the school’s four-hour day, some students spread out their schoolwork on picnic tables in Avalon’s fenced-in, asphalt courtyard to study, while others played basketball nearby.

“I’m here because I’m behind on requirements and I need to make up, even if there is a strike, “ said senior Desarie Arroyo, 17, who works part time as a sales clerk at Del Amo Fashion Center.

“It’s difficult, because we don’t have that many students anyway,” said junior Tony Quintero, 17, who works part time at a fast-food restaurant. Quintero admitted that not all the students are there to study.

“Some just come to kick back, play basketball and leave early,” Quintero said.

Work Independently

Substitute teacher Shermont King said most students who are attending during the strike are able to keep up with their schoolwork because continuation schools allow students to work on lessons independently, at their own pace.

The school’s lone full-time teacher asked not to be identified and said she entered the school grounds Thursday through a back alley to avoid a confrontation with picketing teachers out front.

Students at Avalon expressed sympathy for teachers, particularly those at continuation schools who they said deserve higher salaries and better security because they face more physical risks.

Pointing to a wire fence separating the schoolyard from the street, Junior Yvette Alfaro, 18, described how gang members drive by the campus and throw rocks and bottles at rivals, endangering other students and teachers. Last year, she said, a student was shot in the leg with a pellet gun.

“Teachers and students at continuation schools risk their lives coming here,” Alfaro said. “We have drug dealers and gang-bangers going here, and the teachers need security.”