Teachers’ Strike Notebook : A Flair for Creative Writing on the UTLA Picket Line

A sea of picket signs, some of them evidently penned by creative-writing instructors, flooded the park outside the Coliseum on Friday during a teachers’ union mass rally.

A-plus material from the L.A. Graders (not to be confused with the professional football team that plays next door) included: “Supt. Britton has Lost his Faculties,” “Scabs Leave Scars,” “United Mind Workers: The Pay Is the Pits” and “Underpaid, Overworked and Disrespected.”

While negotiators 25 floors above were haggling over details of a new contract, Kennedy High School seniors were dancing the night away Friday in a ballroom of the Westin Bonaventure Hotel downtown.

Strike or no strike, they said, the Granada Hills school had decided to go ahead with its annual prom.

“We were worried about the prom at first,” said Amber Palaroan, garbed in a pink gown. “But then the administration said we were going to have it anyway.”

To take the place of striking teachers, administrators at the school agreed to serve as chaperones, Palaroan said.

T-shirt update.

North Hollywood High School senior Edward Laskaris, who entered the field of entrepreneurship this week by printing up 71 pro-teacher T-shirts that he designed himself, looked forlorn Friday as he stood next to a larger and busier T-shirt stand operated by the UTLA.

Laskaris said he has sold less than half his stock. But on the positive side, he added, “I should break even with the next couple shirts.”

Laskaris’ $7 model featured a picture of district Supt. Leonard Britton bisected with a red slash. One of the union’s official $10 strike shirts sports the slogan, “I’ll Walk the Line in ’89.”

In 1987, a rigorously trained team from John Marshall High School won the National Academic Decathlon. But strikes change everything. On Friday, the students in one English composition class at Marshall looked as if they were rehearsing for a remake of “Welcome Back Kotter.”

Chris Farmer, a substitute teacher who had crossed the picket line, attempted to keep order. Meanwhile, one girl thumbed through Bridal Guide magazine, another youth pored over the paperback “Coma,” and three more played Trivial Pursuit.

Farmer kept some students busy by requesting that they pen 17-syllable Japanese haiku poems.

Wrote one youngster:

“Turmoil in the air

One against the other one

Resolution, come.”

With the site of late-week contract talks an official secret, news crews were left to scurry around town Thursday trying to track down the negotiating teams.

Several TV reporters dialed the usual suspects--such hotels as the Biltmore and the Sheraton Grande.

A frustrated Larry Carroll of Channel 7 joked, “I even called (Motel 6’s) Tom Bodett.”

John Marshall of Channel 4 thought he had scored when he got through to the concierge at the New Otani. But there was apparently a communications problem.

Marshall said he was told the meeting was taking place in the Golden Ballroom, so he and his camera crew rushed to the hotel.

They entered the lobby, cameras rolling, but when they reached the ballroom no one was inside.

The first TV stations to track down the negotiators at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel were Channels 2 and 9, whose camera crews chased teacher’s union President Wayne Johnson down the freeway from a picket line at Canoga Park High School. “I told my crew to follow him wherever he went (Thursday),” said Channel 2’s Managing Editor Michael Singer. “I knew he had to end up” at the negotiations.

Without question, the luckiest media outlet was Channel 13, which stumbled upon the negotiations in a most unusual manner.

Veteran cameraman Bob Quinlan was at the Bonaventure to film an appearance by Mayor Tom Bradley when he entered a restroom. There, he ran into Supt. Britton.

“News photographers don’t always get credit for being good news guys,” said Channel 13 news director Ed Coghlan. “We’re very proud of him.”