Rally Urges District Not to Move Teachers

About 150 parents, students and teachers representing at least 18 schools staged a rally Tuesday in front of quake-ravaged apartment complexes to urge school officials not to transfer teachers because of low enrollment.

The empty “ghost town” apartments in Granada Hills provided an appropriate setting for the rally, organizers said, because the enrollment decrease in San Fernando Valley schools this fall is blamed chiefly on the Jan. 17 Northridge earthquake. Many families whose homes were damaged or destroyed in the temblor are expected to return within six months, once their homes are repaired, they said.

“Since Jan. 17, we have apartments that were downed or destroyed. . . . A lot of those people were displaced . . . and since we came back (to school) enrollment’s been down. Surprise! Surprise!” said Mandy Ritzmann, co-chairwoman of the Calahan Street Elementary School PTSA in Northridge and organizer of the rally.

As the year goes on and more apartments and houses are repaired, families will return with their kids and then overpopulate the schools, Ritzmann and other parents argued.

They fear teachers will be transferred because, when too few students are enrolled at a school, the Los Angeles Unified School District traditionally transfers teachers out of that school to one that has too many students. The main reason for moving the teachers, said school board member Julie Korenstein, is that teachers’ salaries come from the money that is given to a school for each child enrolled there.

The district will take a final enrollment count Friday, four weeks after the first day of school.

Korenstein announced at the rally that schools enrolling students who have been transferred from overcrowded schools will probably not lose their teachers. In addition, Korenstein said district Supt. Sid Thompson will be looking at each school’s enrollment to assess whether quake displacement actually figures in that school’s situation.

Korenstein also reported that schools that are short by about seven students or fewer will be able to keep all of their teachers.

However, where the money to keep teachers will come from has not been determined, according to Korenstein. The school board is looking into applying for more federal disaster assistance or using the $1 million that Thompson set aside to develop a leadership training course for school officials and staff.

Teacher Carroll Gelberg of El Oro Way Elementary School in Granada Hills said she may be transferred out of her fourth- and fifth-grade class after Friday because the school is six children short of its designated enrollment level.

“I know I’m the one with the lowest priority,” said Gelberg, the newest teacher at El Oro.

“I have 29 students in my class and we’re still ‘short,’ ” she added.

One of her students, Jessica Westerbrook, 9, said she feels sad that she may lose her teacher. “She’s special and nice and funny,” said Jessica, who urged community members to consider sending their children to El Oro instead of to private schools so that the school can keep all of its teachers.