Students at 2 Schools Protest Budget Cuts : Education: The rallies in Van Nuys and Granada Hills come in the wake of others across the district. Some demonstrations have administrators’ blessings.

More than 200 students skipped class Tuesday and congregated in Grant High School’s quad, chanting, cheering and jeering to protest diminished education spending as campus officials looked on approvingly.

Another rally at Porter Junior High School drew 100 student protesters.

“The natives are getting restless,” warned Alison Atikian, Grant’s student body president, as a chorus of adolescent voices behind her yelled, “No more cuts!”

It was a scene that has become increasingly common throughout the Los Angeles Unified School District in the wake of last week’s approval of a new state budget that digs into California’s education coffers. As the magnitude of the district’s financial crisis sinks in, more and more students--some encouraged by administrators and teachers--have begun venting their anger in demonstrations across the city.

On Tuesday, Grant High in Van Nuys and Porter Junior High in Granada Hills held organized campus protests, even as scores of their counterparts downtown marched on City Hall. At Grant, Principal Bob Collins lauded his students’ efforts, although nearly all the 200 participants stayed past the midmorning break and missed their third-period classes entirely.

“Sometimes, the use of 50 minutes to express an opinion is worthwhile,” he said. “Students need an opportunity to express their feelings. And if it takes a Period 3 to do it, then I think that’s healthy.”

“This is one day. But these budget cuts can affect the rest of our lives,” said Silvia Vega, 17, a senior who helped coordinate the rally.

She and other students said they were spurred to action after flyers from another high school were circulated at Grant listing a number of extracurricular activities that would supposedly fall victim to the budget ax--mostly because unhappy teachers, threatened with double-digit pay cuts, would refuse to sponsor them.

Silvia said the flyer came from Eagle Rock High School, which witnessed a large student demonstration last week. The flyer explained how activities such as athletics and the campus yearbook may be curtailed by teachers unwilling to volunteer their time.

But Collins, to cheers from the crowd, assured the students that such activities at Grant would continue, although he reminded them that public education was still in dire straits.

“Don’t be fooled that if we have a football team and a basketball team . . . that that makes everything OK,” he told the students. “It doesn’t.”

Students waved signs that proclaimed, “Wilson Vetos Education!”, with a deliberate misspelling of vetoes --or so the teen-agers said--to demonstrate the consequences of diminished public education funding.

Some students also held aloft placards and flags used in a Labor Day protest by thousands of L.A. Unified teachers, describing Los Angeles as the “home of 35,000 unhappy teachers” and decrying a proposed 17.5% pay cut.

But the youths at both Grant and Porter on Tuesday insisted that their rallies were of their own devising and not at the prodding of their instructors. The week before, several San Fernando Valley parents had expressed concerns over a classroom letter-writing campaign that they felt turned their youngsters into political tools of teachers.

“The principle here is what’s happening to the students, not the teachers. That’s why the students are here, not teachers,” said Atikian. “I’d like to have an active voice in government. We don’t have any representation.”

At Porter, however, the issue of teacher pay was prominent perhaps because several of the 100 youngsters who turned out at lunchtime are children of teachers, according to officials.

“If they don’t get their money, they’re not going to be able to buy things, they’re not going to be able to keep their homes,” said Amy Messigian, 12, one of the rally’s organizers, whose father teaches in North Hills.

“The political people--they make a lot. Why can’t they take it out of their salaries?” asked Noah Bishoff, also 12. “The teachers don’t make a lot to begin with.”

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