The district voted Tuesday to turn the control of 30 schools over to outside groups including charter groups and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s nonprofit organization. Coming on the heels of the decision, the lawsuit is in response to budget cuts taken out last year “that disproportionately affected” three schools.
Students from Markham Middle School explain why they don't want substitute teachers anymore.
Students, teachers and administrators from Gompers, Liechty and Markham middle schools gathered in Watts on the campus of Markham to announce their class-action lawsuit. Early on in the press conference at the predominantly black and Latino school, a tone of racial bias was taken.
“By balancing the budget on the backs of low-income black and Latino students while saving other students in other schools, the state and school district turned back the clock to the bad old days when some kids had opportunity and others had none,” said Catherine Lhamon, a director at civil rights law firm Public Counsel
Lhamon continued to contrast yesterday’s LAUSD decision to what happened in Brown v. Board Education, the landmark Supreme Court case disallowing school segregation.
Catherine Lhamon from Los Angeles Public Counsel talks about why education must be protected.
The lawsuit alleges that “57 percent of teachers at Markham” were laid off at the end of the 2008-2009 year. The reductions were due to budget issues and not performances issues, Lhamon said.
This is “compared to some schools at which less than 10 percent of teachers were laid off,” the lawsuit stated.
Nicholas Melvoin was one of the teachers let go. He “began working at Markham in the fall and was laid off in the spring,” he said. He was then rehired in January as a substitute.
Students “have spent months in classrooms with a series of substitutes,” Melvoin said. The students “will be expected to demonstrate proficiency when they were never taught the material. Their unfair test scores will belie their true potential.”
A seventh-grader at Markham, Concepciona Manuel-Flores said she has had as many as seven substitutes in her English class this year. “I’m happy for kids in other schools who don’t lose their teachers because they’re not going through what I am.”
Sharail Reed is another Markham student who spoke in front of reporters and cameras Wednesday. Reed is an eighth-grader at Markham and said her history class “had so many different teachers that it was a blur.”
“There’s nothing wrong with having a sub for a day if a teacher is sick,” she added. “But it’s not OK to have a sub over and over and over again.”
Attorneys for the schools said they are hoping to talk to LAUSD officials as soon as this afternoon.
