To: John Deasy, Superintendent, Los Angeles Unified School District
Stop the Dismantling of Public Education! Keep LAUSD School Staffs From Being Given Pink Slips!
We urge you to use the funds granted to your district by AB 114 to not only stop the impending layoff of teachers and other school site staff but to fund your school staffing at the levels they were in SY 2009-2010. There is no reason for any teacher, nurse, janitor or other school site staff member to be laid off when there is this money available.
Stop all layoffs and return your district's schools to the funding levels of 2009-2010 that AB 114 provides.
Why is this important?
Although my experience is with the Los Angeles Unified School District, districts all over the country are laying off teachers, nurses, and other school site staff not because there are real budget cuts but because superintendents play footsie with for-profit schools in order to make money off of public education for themselves, which violates the very idea of public education. For-profit schools don't abide by the collective bargaining contracts that public school teachers and other school site staff enjoy, including medical benefits.
Teachers, nurses, janitors provide the environment that educate American youth. No of us living would be able to live life without the education provided by teachers and the environments maintained by other school site staff.
In California, AB 114 was passed to provide additional funding for all California public schools at the 2009-2010 Schoo Year levels, bringing additional funds to reinstate all staff that had been laid off last year but many districts, especially LAUSD, are withholding that money for rehiring laid off staff. This is unconscionable while many new for-profit charter schools are being created by public school districts paying teachers and other staff the minimum salaries possible.