Olga Ochoa, Ender Betelcourt.
news spot on the conflict, produced for kpcc:
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The students who turned their back on LA Unified School Board President Monica Garcia last week, while she spoke at their 8th grade culmination ceremony, were not slackers or troublemakers, but students-of-the-month, honors kids, kids who very much took to heart the lessons they’d learned in their Social Justice small learning community at school. And so they were unprepared for the backlash, the school’s response, summarized in a statement from Principal Jeanette Stevens, dated Monday, June 22 –
During any school event, Liechty Middle School expects students to demonstrate respectful behavior. We have postponed distribution of approximately 15 eighth grade certificates until we are able to discuss the culmination events with those students and their parents.
Originally 65 students were denied their diploma; 50 of them later refuted any involvement in the head-turning and picked up their certificates the Monday after culmination. The final 15 did not deny turning their heads and they did not apologize for doing so. In fact, they — and many of their parents, also there Tuesday morning for the protest — wanted an apology from Ms. Stevens for the apparent humiliation she caused in withholding their diplomas. All over their signs were demands, “Respect our children” and (roughly, in translation from Spanish) “Apologize for Violating Our Rights.” Some of the signs also revealed assumptions not totally justified; conclusions prematurely reached. Ms. Stevens was not fired from Berendo, for example, but, a district official said, “appointed by Mr. Alonzo (Local District 4 Superintendent) based on her leadership abilities.” When I asked Ender (pictured above) how he knew Ms. Stevens had been fired, he said, totally confidently, “I used to be at Berendo and so did she.” I asked another 8th grader who Monica Garcia was, what her role was with the pink-slips and the threats of larger class sizes. I was expecting a job title. Instead he said, “She’s not a very nice person.”
John Liechty Middle School is new, open in 2007, and so is its staff. More than half of them have been pink-slipped in the last couple of months to make room for displaced teachers and bureaucrats from Beaudry who have the right-of-return to the classroom. It’s an issue in many ways outside of Monica Garcia’s hands, and hardly one she had time to deal with on Tuesday. The School Board was meeting to approve the final budget for the 2009-2010 school year, and all the budget cuts that go with it.
