Missing Teacher : Kids Make Do With Substitutes in Beverly Hills

Less than two miles from the chaos at Beverly Hills High School, a tranquil scene prevailed Tuesday in what usually is Valli Ford’s third-grade class at Horace Mann school.

Some of the 21 students chatted quietly. Two boys were glued to a computer. Others worked on number puzzles, or cut and pasted ghosts and bats in preparation for Halloween.

“It’s easy, a piece of cake,” said Win Spurrell, their substitute teacher, on the second day of the Beverly Hills teachers’ strike, the first ever against the prestigious district.

“I haven’t had any problems,” Spurrell said. “It’s real organized. There are good subs.”

Despite the outward calm, some youngsters clearly missed Ford. Several were busy writing notes to their regular teacher, whom they had seen picketing outside campus.

“Dear Miss Ford. How are you doing?” wrote 8-year-old Tara Paravar. She decorated the message with bats and ghosts. She also included some jokes, such as, “How do you keep a skunk from smelling? Hold his nose.”

Spencer Villasenor, also 8, said, “Everyone wants Miss Ford back.” When he saw his teacher marching outside, Spencer said, “I just felt weird because I really like her.”

Besides missing their teacher, students--surprisingly, perhaps--said they also craved homework. Usually they are assigned reading, English, math and spelling, said Dorit Ahoubin, 9, proudly displaying her assignment log.

On Monday, only spelling was assigned as homework, Spurrell said.

Spurrell, who lives in Westchester, said she substituted when Los Angeles teachers struck in May. Spurrell said she avoided problems with the Beverly Hills picketers by riding the district bus from the high school, where substitutes assembled, to Horace Mann, which includes kindergarten through eighth grade.

“It’s childish,” Spurrell said. “They laugh in your face, say ‘scab.’ . . . Don’t they know I’m trying to make a living, too? They act just like the children.”

However, Los Angeles strikers were meaner, she added.

“It doesn’t bother me at all. I’m used to a lot worse stress,” she said

A former administrative secretary at TRW, Spurrell said she is helping her daughter through college and took the $185-a-day job in Beverly Hills “to pay the bills. It’s a very pleasant way to earn money,” she said, adding that it is the most she has ever earned as a substitute.

“It’s hard to have loyalties any more when the cost of living is so high,” Spurrell said.

She said Beverly Hills teachers, like teachers everywhere, “deserve a good salary,” but “you can’t disrupt the routine” of the children. “I do not believe in shutting school down for any reason. . . . When the air traffic controllers go on strike, you can’t just stop the airliners--you hire new (controllers).”

Eight-year-old Tara said that Ford appeared “happy-sad” as she walked the picket line. “She was happy that she was fighting for what she wants, but sad that she couldn’t be with us.”

Said Dorit of her striking teacher: “She should get more money; she teaches good, really good.”

On a sheet of paper, Tara drew more bats and ghosts, and wrote, “Keep up the good work.” This time the picture was for Spurrell. “She’s trying to be good, like our normal teacher, so I thought it would be nice,” Tara said.