UPDATED WITH CORRECTED INTERSECTION!
The signs Orange County motorists will see teachers waving in Tustin this afternoon will not say “Hire Me!”–although they probably should given the California budget mess and the layoff notices 27,000 educators have received statewide.
Instead, teachers organized by the Tustin Educators Association will be spending what is–no shit–the state-proclaimed “Day of the Teacher” urging their fellow citizens to support Props. 1A and 1B on the May 19 special election ballot. If those measures do not pass, billions in education funding will be lost, according to the 340,000-member strong California Teachers Association (CTA).
The CTA and the
Association of Mexican American Educators co-sponsored state Sen. Joseph Montoya's (D-El
Monte) SB 1546, which upon its adoption in 1982 proclaimed May 13 as the “Day
of the Teacher,” being patterned after the traditional “El Dia
del Maestro” festivities observed in Mexico and other Latin American
countries.
However, the theme for the 2009 “Day of the Teacher” celebration–“California Teachers: Standing Up for a Better Tomorrow”–is reflective of their very survival. “This theme was selected to emphasize the need to stand up
for schools, teachers and students in the face of severe budget cuts,” says a CTA statement.
“. . . The problem will only get worse if funds are cut further.”
The Tustin Educators Association members plan to be out standing up for a better tomorrow from 3:30 to 5 p.m. at the intersections of Irvine Boulevard and Newport Avenue, Irvine
Boulevard and Jamboree Road and Newport and Walnut Mitchell Street and Red Hill Avenue.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.