Dear Governor : Students Citywide Write Letters to Speak Out on State Budget Cuts

For 33 Chatsworth sixth-graders, writing letters about proposed budget cuts was a combination civics and English lesson that taught them how to write a business letter and avoid sentence fragments.

But the letters, written to Gov. Pete Wilson, also had a far broader purpose than a mark in the teacher’s grade book.

They were part of a citywide campaign, orchestrated by the Los Angeles Unified School District’s teachers union, United Teachers-Los Angeles, to protest the state budget approved early Wednesday.

Since last week, union officials have gathered thousands of the letters from numerous Los Angeles schools.

“There’s a civics lesson in expressing yourself to your elected official,” union President Helen Bernstein said. “All we’re asking is that students tell the governor what they want for their education.”

But others are calling the campaign a naked attempt to use children to further political agendas.

“I think it’s absolutely outrageous,” said former Los Angeles school board member and Congresswoman Bobbi Fiedler. “To use children to lobby on behalf of teachers’ goals is very dangerous.”

Teachers from Huntington Park to Chatsworth defended the campaign, saying the children were free to express any opinions, whether in favor or against the governor’s spending plan.

The letters received so far, however, will be sealed Monday in a coffin that will be carried through the city in a mock funeral cortege before being delivered to the state Capitol in Sacramento.

The symbolic death of education is intended to send a message to the public and the Los Angeles school board about what is happening to public schools, Bernstein said. The budget will force financially strapped schools to pay back millions of dollars in coming years.

It is a time of extreme financial insecurity for teachers, who face a potential pay cut of 17% in the latest round of budget-slashing by the district. This year, L.A. Unified--the nation’s second-largest public school system--was forced to deal with a $400-million budget shortfall, mostly by digging into the salaries of its employees.

To protest the cuts, the teachers’ union has threatened a number of hardball tactics, including posting billboards that describe “35,000 unhappy teachers” and discouraging companies from moving to Los Angeles. The letter-writing campaign is another part of a strategy developed during the summer to combat the budget proposals.

But many education experts questioned whether using children in the protest is appropriate.

Cecelia Mansfield, a vice president of the Valley-based 31st District Parent Teacher Student Assn., expressed concern that a letter-writing campaign be conducted in a way that would justify the use of classroom time.

Even Lenore Ellis, the union’s chapter president at Germain Street Elementary School in Chatsworth, said doubts about the letter writing dissuaded her from assigning the task to her sixth-grade students.

“I was unsure what the implications would be of asking the students to write letters on class time about an issue like this,” she said.

A district spokesman said it was difficult to determine whether the campaign complies with the system’s general rule that “there must be balanced presentation of subject matter, in whatever way the teacher feels is appropriate.”

But many teachers said they believed it was a valuable lesson and assigned it for regular or extra credit to their elementary and high school students. Superior Street Elementary School in Chatsworth contributed 240 letters toward the coffin, said Karen Friedman, a sixth-grade teacher and union representative for the school.

One first-grader drew a picture of students crowded around a table, tears streaming from their eyes. A sixth-grade student drew a political cartoon showing the Capitol building throwing “education” in a trash basket. His classmates wrote page after page on the budget crisis.

“I don’t think you should cut our teacher’s salaries,” one sixth-grader wrote. “I think you should not cut the teacher’s salary and school supplies,” another said.

Teacher Betty Pearl said the letters were written after a brainstorming session during which children’s views were posted on the board. Some of the children said they had discussed the issue with their parents. Others said they picked up most of their information from the classroom.

“In class we talked about how we were going to write if we think it’s good he’s going to lower salaries or if we think it’s bad,” said Shannon Christensen, 11, of Chatsworth.

At Kennedy High School in Granada Hills, health instructor Dave Ptashne said about 800 letters written by students were collected late last week and handed over to the teachers’ union for delivery to the governor. Ptashne insisted that the opinions were the students’ own and not directed by adults.

“We just asked students to write a letter to Pete Wilson asking them to show how education has changed during the last year. Whatever they said we turned it in,” he said.

The letters also played a part in government lessons at Huntington Park High School, where students received extra credit for the effort, social studies teacher Harry Sauberman said.

He said students were free to write to other elected representatives or to request that their letters not be placed in the coffin.

Since May, he said, students at the school have written about 2,000 letters on the subject to a variety of representatives. It was a way, he said, to channel their anger over shortages of books and desks.

“Many cannot vote,” Sauberman said. “This was an outlet for them to express their opinions.”

Excerpts From Letters “This is my first year out of private school and I can’t say I’m enjoying it much. The first day of school, I entered the classroom and found an incomplete stack of books by most chairs.”

--DANIELLE MEYERSTEIN

“Do you want stupid adults for your future of tomorrow? If you do, cut my teacher’s salary so she will quit.”

--TIMMY LAPNIRAMAI

“If you don’t help us many kids will grow up to be dummies.”

--KARINA MARTINEZ

“We are losing books and we don’t have enough for the teachers and children. All the food in the cafeteria is so horrible that when the kids go home, they get sick and don’t come to school the next day.”

--JENAT KING

“When you were in school, there was no cuts, and you had all the supplies you needed in order to learn. That’s why you’re so smart today.”

--BERGE APARDIAN

“Who’s going to be the president if everybody’s stupid?”

--DAVID LURTH

“Now I want rezalts (did I spell that the rong way? I don’t know; I don’t have a spelling book!)”

--FROM SOMEONE ANGRY!