Students, Teachers Protest Conditions

Hours after the Los Angeles Board of Education received a stinging report on the Belmont Learning Complex Tuesday, students and teachers added to an afternoon of discontent with two rallies protesting poor conditions in the nation’s second-largest school district.

Shortly before 3 p.m., approximately 200 teenagers from the current Belmont High School marched from the campus to the Los Angeles Unified School District’s headquarters demanding that school board members approve building the new Belmont center. The school sits half-completed near downtown Los Angeles, plagued with environmental problems.

Amid waving signs that read “Save Belmont” and “Real Board Members Don’t Close Schools,” Sandy Lopez, 19, a senior, described a campus so packed, students jam into one another, sometimes causing fights and tardiness to classes.

“We need the new school,” Lopez said. “The way it is now, it makes learning hard.”

About an hour later, hundreds of teachers from South Los Angeles shouted in bullhorns and rallied outside of the board meeting demanding a pay raise to attract and retain teachers in one of the district’s most densely populated areas.

In a campaign to increase support before the union’s three-year contract expires June 30, members of United Teachers-Los Angeles complained of overcrowded classrooms, dirty campuses and a lack of textbooks and supplies.

“They need to pay us more,” said Andy Griggs, a fourth-grade teacher at Grape Street School, who estimated he pays $1,000 a year out of his pocket for classroom supplies. “It’s very frustrating for teachers when they don’t feel like they have support” from the district.

Union officials said they want an immediate 6% pay raise for the union’s estimated 41,000 members, who include teachers, nurses, psychologists, librarians and counselors. They argue that teachers deserve a raise because of improvements on standardized tests and the district’s healthy budget, among other reasons.

Vice president John Perez said the union plans to seek a 15% pay raise next year. If Los Angeles Unified teachers received that sum on top of the proposed 6% raise this year, they would be the highest paid teachers in Los Angeles County.

Facing a severe teacher shortage, in which a quarter of the district’s teachers are working on emergency waivers because they lack permanent credentials, union officials warned that the district cannot afford to skimp on salaries.

Compared with teachers in 47 unified school districts in the county, the L.A. district’s beginning teachers, who earn about $32,500 annually, are ranked 20th in salary, according to union estimates.

“We deserve to be paid what we’re worth,” Perez said.

School board member Caprice Young said she would not vote in favor of an immediate pay raise, and does not believe the majority of the board would.

“We have to address all of the district’s needs,” Young said. “All of the teachers who have spoken before the board mentioned improving facilities and resources. We are looking at that” as well as ways to hire and retain teachers.

But Young called raising teacher salaries “a high priority.”