Fed up with district mismanagement and a lack of focus on supplying the tools and environment needed to help students learn, more than 100 Centinela Valley Union High School District teachers and students marched on a board of education meeting in Lawndale Sept. 23 and demanded that the board endorse the Centinela Valley Educators Bill of Rights.
The document emphasizes basic rights to which teachers and students feel they should be entitled -- safe schools, a more supportive attitude on the part of adminstration and leadership, and priority status for the classroom in budget considerations.
"This board has absolutely no sense of priorities," says Shane Ellis, president of the Centinela Valley Secondary Teachers Association. "It builds multimillion dollar district offices while students are crammed into portables without enough desks. This bill of rights represents the minimum our students need in order to learn and the minimum our teachers need to teach."
"The fact that we don't already have these rights demonstrates how poorly run our district is," says Ellis. "We need leaders who know our schools, know their problems, and care enough to solve them. We don't have that now, and the students are suffering because of it."
CVSTA has presented bargaining proposals in an effort to improve the situation in the district. However, after months of district stalling and failure by management and the board to even respond to the proposals, the chapter has filed an unfair labor practice charge against the district.
Frank Wells