Budget cuts: Students, where are you?

Oliver Brown, a student in the music academy at Hamilton High School, writes:

Last Friday morning, teachers crowded Robertson Boulevard with picket signs and banners in an attempt to slow the flood of budget cuts forcing their way into our education system.

Hoping to confront California's growing deficit, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's new plan promises to cut millions from public schools and student programs, an extraordinary turn from his campaign ideals and ethics. A cabinet that assured that it would inspire and invest in the development of this generation, the governor's office has unflinchingly curtailed the funding of state education, an ironic hypocrisy from the beloved protagonist of "Kindergarten Cop."

So, marching across the pavement in the cool morning air, Hamilton teachers and sympathetic parents drearily protested the further injustices in our local schools. Threatening to enlarge class size and cut pay, this new plan suggests disastrous effects for these professors.

However, as I surveyed the rally, I noticed an enigmatic abnormality in the attendance of Friday's protest. In a school of nearly 4,000 students, maybe 50 had decided to show solidarity alongside their teachers. Instead, wave after wave of grinning and chatting kids chose to sit in the quad with the extra hour of freedom granted to them before the beginning of the revised bell schedule. Regardless of how these new budget changes might affect them and their companions, students remained apathetic to this crucial cause.

So I ask my peers: How can we remain so indifferent to the demise of our public schools? As, day after day, we complain of the faults and bureaucracy of the LAUSD, why do we waste our opportunities to change it?

Photo: Los Angeles High School biology teacher Burificacion Ibot by Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[GS]

In defense on my high school students. I believe that the official position was that students need not be out there with teachers. Most of the teachers respected that, at least at my location. However, I have no doubt that if I need my students and has asked them to walk out there with my, many of them would have.