Teachers Leave Classrooms for Picket Lines

This week, parents who are committed to keeping the schools open and orderly have learned a lot about the schools and the strategies and tactics of United Teachers-Los Angeles.

What is particularly troublesome is that in most strikes workers are up against the company. In this week’s teachers’ strike, the innocent students are the ones who are suffering, with chaos, lost opportunities for learning, the fear of losing admission to college, and some newly learned UTLA teacher-taught messages about disrespecting temporary authority.

Many parent/taxpayers understand that we (and our children) are the ones being struck against, and while we have respect for education and for most teachers, allowing a school to close strikes us as the community’s failure.

Crossing the line this week, parents have had their pictures taken, been screamed at, told they were stealing the teachers’ chance at a fair shake. I was even told by the union representative at our child’s school that the teachers would long remember who dared to volunteer at the school, and that I should think twice about my child’s future after helping to keep the strike going. The parents aren’t harboring the same kind of deep resentment towards the teachers despite the fact that in most of the classrooms textbooks have been removed, supplies are gone, and playground balls were deflated before the strike just to raise the hassle factor. Kids were told by union teachers to call the substitutes scabs, chew gum, scream and shout, walk out.

I want to tell union members who have used these tactics in dealing with children and with volunteers that no matter how and when the strike ends, we’re still, like it or not, all in this together. If it is truly the future of education and the attraction of good teachers that has taken the teachers to the picket lines, then stop trying to scare people into agreement. Don’t teach the kids to disrespect a school system unless you’ve successfully taught them to think critically on their own and voice their views, not yours. And work with the parents, even the volunteers, just as the parents will have to work with those who’ve been on strike.

BARBARA BRONSON GRAY

Van Nuys