Marchers Protest District Pink Slips

Pink slip protesters paraded through the Third Street Promenade on Saturday. They chanted “save our schools,” and denounced state budget cuts to education, which resulted in 207 Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District employees receiving layoff notices last month.

Police and protest organizers estimated between 400 and 500 marchers took part.

“The cuts proposed by the state of California are unacceptable. They will hurt this community,” said Harry Keiley, president of the Santa Monica-Malibu Classroom Teachers Assn. “It means the loss of jobs, teachers, larger class sizes and the elimination of programs.”

As many as 30,000 teachers and administrators across the state received similar layoff notices from their districts last month, although not all will lose their jobs. The final number of layoffs is expected to be smaller as budgets are finalized.

Parents and employees who participated in Saturday’s parade are hoping to gain support for a $6.2-million parcel tax called Measure S, which residents will vote on in June, to help fill a $13-million budget gap in Santa Monica-Malibu Unified. If the measure passes, it may save most employees’ jobs, district officials said.

Humanities instructor Ron Vieira, 34, a fully credentialed teacher at Lincoln Middle School, received his layoff notice on March 15, the same day he closed escrow on a West Los Angeles home. He said he thought his move from Canada to Los Angeles a year ago would be permanent.

“Obviously, I had no idea this was going to happen,” he said. “Am I valued? Or am I not?”

A Lincoln Middle School student, Matt Wizan, 11, attended Saturday’s parade because he wanted to show support for the teachers who may not be around next year.

He said Vieria is “a really good teacher. He’s cool. I don’t want him to leave.”

Some protesters wore pink sweaters or armbands, while others wore T-shirts with the titles teacher, custodian, principal or administrator printed on the front, to represent the assortment of staff members who may be laid off. Some held pink balloons with “books not bombs” scribbled on them. An 8-year-old girl held a cardboard sign that read “Save Coach Carlos” in Spanish.

About 15 police officers, some holding latte cups, monitored the orderly Westside crowd, which included bankers, management consultants, actors and lawyers whose children are enrolled in the district. The protesters marched for nearly five blocks and convened at the Promenade in front of the Urban Outfitters and Bebe clothing stores, where speakers including Santa Monica-Malibu Supt. John Deasy addressed the crowd.

“It takes a village to raise a child. Clearly, it took one state to abandon every child and to put us in this situation,” Deasy told the crowd. “Your children and my children will become forgotten, and that is unacceptable.”

Deasy suggested that the state cut more funding from prisons instead of education.

Cheri Orgel, a spokeswoman for the Santa Monica-Malibu PTA, said, “We are fortunate in Santa Monica that our teachers are well-prepared and experienced. Many have master’s degrees.”

Those are the kind of highly qualified educators that the district will lose, she said, before urging the public to support Measure S “to mitigate the devastation to our schools.”

Anthony Fuller, 37, a teacher at Olympic High School who also received a layoff notice, said finances will be particularly tight if he loses his job because his wife was laid off from her job with the Walt Disney Co. But he’s more concerned about the priorities of the federal government.

“Getting a pink slip was a horrible, terrible experience,” he said. “It brings up in me ... a terrible, horrible feeling about what is going on in this country.”

He said his students recently asked him why the United States is going to spend billions on war and rebuilding Iraq “when we could not even afford to pay our employees, here in our own backyard.”