A FORUM FOR COMMUNITY ISSUES : Platform : L.A. Teachers: ‘I Don’t Want Them to Strike’

JEANNINE MENDOZA, She is a teacher at Hobart Boulevard Elementary School in Los Angeles.

Everyone is of a consensus that strikes are really hard on parents, teachers and kids. But it’s really necessary because what the district proposes is just too much for us (teachers) to bear. It’s a lot of money that they’re trying to take away from us. The Times has quoted it as 9%, but really it’s 9% plus the 3% from last year that they were supposedly going to give us back. Well, no one ever believed that would happen, but we never thought they’d come back and try to take an additional 9%. And then it’s even worse than that, because after all, they would take out money retroactively--back to July--which figures out to be more than 16%.

It was never an easy job to teach, but these days it’s worse. So many of us work in unsafe areas. At the school I work at, and other schools, there have been shots fired--which means everyone just ducks for cover, or flattens out on the ground.