Thursday saw a press conference in front of the LAUSD headquarters where the hunger strike being waged in response to the 2500 pink slips being issued by the LAUSD for the 2009 to 2010 year was officially stopped.

UTLA president, AJ Duffy started off the conference by stating that negotiations are still going on and that their fight will continue.

Hunger strikers Sean Leys and Martin Terrones ended their fast publicly with statements that emphasized that their actions were essentially focused on the civil rights of children and what class overcrowding will do to those students futures.

Terrones made his statement in spanish while Leys ate an apple on camera to end his fast.

The press conference was ended by a statement from Marco Flores who reiterated the civil rights aspects of the protest and the UTLA's next moves, which along with other strategies may include school board recall campaigns aimed at those members who have little teaching experience or show a lack of empathy for the students in the poorer parts of Los Angeles.

Marco Flores statement to Indymedia

http://la.indymedia.org/news/2009/06/228467.php

All of the speakers claimed victory in the hunger strike action. They cited that public awareness of the problem had gone up dramatically and this is what was needed to win all 2500 jobs back.

The LAUSD rescinded 500 pink slips on June 12th.


However, the UTLA maintains that all 2500 jobs need to be restored to avoid a scholastic jim crow disaster.

Class sizes in individual attention fueled subjects such as biology, math and english are expected to climb into the mid 40's and 50's this fall.

It seems to be universally agreed upon that classes sizes of 20 to 30 students are optimal.

According to state figures the dropout rate for Los Angeles high school students in 2009 has been reported at 34.7 % or over a third of the student population.

However, It has also been estimated in some recent years to be as much 50 percent.

Alarmingly, the African American and Latino rates are much higher.



According to the California Dropout Research Project http://cdrp.ucsb.edu/ which is a U.C Santa Barabara research wing of the Gevirtz Graduate School http://education.ucsb.edu/ the graduation rates for Blacks in California is only at 59.94 % while Hispanics have a rate of 60.3 %.



This means that every 4 out of 10 kids of color drop out of high school in Los Angeles.




There's also a consensus that the Californian dropout emergency, is concentrated in about 100 of the state's 2,000-plus high schools. The California Dropout Researchers say most of them are in Los Angeles and other California urban centers, accounting for 40 percent of the dropout rate.

If the 2500 layoffs are not rescinded, some schools which are located in the these same neighborhoods and are also often the schools in question themselves may lose as many as 35 to 50 percent or more of their teaching staffs.




Robert S. Lowden
Los Angeles, 2009