Dennis Kelly (left), president of the United Educators of San Francisco, co-hosted the Education Town Hall meeting in San Francisco. Similar events were held in half a dozen locations to demonstrate the impact of budget cuts and help move public understanding toward reform of the state budget process and tax policies. Matthew Hardy photo

November 20—Educators in Sacramento, San Francisco, Costa Mesa, San Diego, San Jose and Watsonville held rallies, press conferences, and a town hall to draw attention to the impact of the worst budget cuts to education since the Great Depression, and to call for reform of the state budget process and tax policies in order to restore the programs that have been slashed.

Town Hall
Bay Area educators gathered Monday, November 16th at John O'Connell High School for an Education Town Hall meeting, hosted by United Educators San Francisco, the California Federation of Teachers, and the California Teachers Association.

Bay Area CFT members and friends heard testimony from faculty and staff from school districts and community colleges on what two years of extreme budget cuts have done to their schools and their classrooms. In attendance were parents, classroom teachers, classified employees, school board members, and union activists from Berkeley, Oakland, Daly City, and Marin, along with the bulk of the crowd of sixty or so participants from San Francisco.  They learned about how students are trying to cope with soaring class sizes, teacher and staff layoffs, school closures, and tuition hikes (higher ed).

Recurring themes during discussion of how to best reform the system to prevent further cuts and to restore California's full support for education were taxing the rich and corporations at more appropriate and fair rates than their current record low levels.  The participants also called for reducing the state's destructive two-thirds requirements for passing a new tax and state budget in the Legislature to simple democratic majorities.

Gus Goldstein (left), president of the San Francisco Community College Federation of Teachers, co-hosted the Education Town Hall meeting.  She is explaining the "missing student statues" produced by community college art students and faculty to draw attention to the impact of student fee hikes on enrollment. Ken Tray of United Educators connected the cuts to political solutions.  Matthew Hardy photos

Press Conferences
In Watsonville and San Diego, CFT leaders joined with members of other unions and elected school officials to inform reporters of the number of jobs cut in their schools and colleges, and what effects that has had on their ability to deliver a quality education. Francisco Rodriguez, president of Pajaro Valley Federation of Teachers, unveiled a resolution he was bringing to the school board that called for the governor and Legislature to reduce the unworkable two thirds majorities needed to pass budgets and raise taxes to simple majorities.  In San Diego a school board member promised to bring such a resolution before his board.

Educators and social service union activists join in Watsonville news conference to support fair tax policies on the wealthy and corporations to fund education and other necessary public programs.

In Costa Mesa, Kimberly Claytor (in red shirt below), president of the Newport Mesa Federation of Teachers, led a press conference with teachers and classified employees from nearby school districts and colleges, as well as a lecturer from UC Irvine, who described the damage to her students' ability to get the classes they needed to pursue their studies and graduate on time.

Similar themes were sounded at a San Jose press conference, where CFT members from San Jose Evergreen Community College joined with K-12 teachers, administrators and classified employees from other unions and districts to stress the extraordinary difficulties they face as a result of the cuts.