Students from Hamilton High School music and humanities magnets will be staging a walk out and rally Friday morning to protest the 22 teachers, including two administrators, that have been cut from the high-achieving magnets that together serve around 1200 LAUSD high school students.
The walkout and rally is planned to go from 9 am until 1 pm.
Students have been advised to meet at the campus quad at 8:55.
Sophie Truaberman, a senior in the Hamilton music academy, is one of the event’s organizers.
I spoke with her on the phone Thursday night about the cuts— and what the students hope to do about them.
Trauberman told me that the loss of 22 instructors would have a devastating affect on the highly regarded programs. And no one is sure what the axing of the two magnet directors can portend for the magnet programs as a whole. It is assumed Nothing good.
“Two of those who got pink slips are award winning teachers,” Sophie said. She explained that popular teacher Jim Foscia is in charge of instrumental jazz class, while John Hamilton coaches vocal music. The loss of the two well-liked teachers alone could wipe out the two programs they teach—leaving competition-winning student jazz ensembles, and the school’s skillful choral groups, suddenly in limbo.
“But because these teachers don’t have seniority, they’re the ones being given pink slips,” Sophie said.
However she and her fellow organizers have a strategy.
More than directing their protest at LAUSD, Sophie and company hope to help help persuade California state legislators to allow the proposed tax cut extension onto the ballot, as Governor Jerry Brown has requested. If passed, the extra tax revenue will save the state’s public schools from drastic cuts, the two Hamilton magnets will benefit along with the rest.
There is only one problem: as Steve Lopez pointed out in a column earlier this week, the chances of a school full of bright, impassioned, activist students having any affect on the recalcitrant and very partisan state lawmakers are…well…not good.
But whatever happens with the tax vote, Sophie said, the Hamilton students will keep going until they are able to save their pair of outstanding magnet schools.
“Friday is just the first step.”
(photo of Hamilton’s jazz ensemble and its pink slipped instructor, Jim Foschia, by Lawrence K. Ho for the LA Times.)