Teachers’ Rally Asks No Cuts in Jobs, Pay : Education: Union mounts protest by 5,000 in budget fight. Marchers call for more state money and reductions in school bureaucracy.

More than 5,000 teachers jammed the courtyard outside the Los Angeles Unified School District’s downtown headquarters Wednesday to decry proposed cuts in school funding that they said will jeopardize essential programs and services.

After a rousing one-hour rally, teachers chanting and carrying protest signs marched along downtown streets in a demonstration aimed at winning public support for more state funding of public schools and deeper cuts in the administrative bureaucracy of the Los Angeles school system.

The turnout was the largest gathering organized by United Teachers-Los Angeles since the union’s successful nine-day strike for higher wages and more decision-making power in 1989. The union shuttled 40 busloads of teachers to the downtown district headquarters.

Acknowledging that the nation’s second largest school district is facing a severe financial crisis, UTLA President Helen Bernstein warned that budget cuts should come “not at the expense of classrooms and not at the expense of students.”

Because of a steep drop in state funding, the school district must slash up to $391 million from its $4-billion 1991-92 budget. The school board will decide next month where to make the cuts.

Among the choices is a one-year 7% pay cut for all employees, which would save the district more than $163 million and force its 36,000 teachers to accept cuts in the higher salary levels they won after the 1989 strike.

Many of the cuts recommended by Supt. Bill Anton would hit teachers hard, not merely cutting pay but also raising class sizes and increasing workloads.

“It is an outrage that his list of No. 1 priorities . . . contains every single gain we made on the (picket) line in ‘89,” Bernstein said. “It is amoral, it is indecent.”

Wednesday’s gathering had the tenor of a strike rally, with teachers singing protest songs and cheering wildly in response to Bernstein’s attacks on Anton and the “fat cats downtown.”

Anton later said, “None of us like to do this. We need to get money from the state so we don’t have to take these actions. As an educator I sure don’t want children to go without nurses and librarians.”

The budget shortfall is expected to result in the elimination of hundreds of teaching positions, as well as the jobs of several hundred nurses, psychologists, counselors and librarians.

Although final decisions will not be made until the budget is compiled in June, the district has notified more than 2,000 veteran teachers and others that they may be laid off or reassigned next year. State law requires such advance notices.

A hearing before an administrative law judge--also required by state law--on whether proper procedure was followed in issuing the notices is in its sixth week. A ruling on whether the district can proceed with layoffs is due by June 7.

Several small student protests over the proposed layoffs have erupted at schools throughout the district in the last few months, but Wednesday’s teacher gathering at district headquarters was the largest rally to date.