This school year, my three-year old son and I attended a school program called Family Literacy. The program is scheduled for half a day and is designed for 2-to-5 year-old children to learn phonemic awareness and social skills while the parents are receiving English instruction in another classroom. Not only are the children learning but they also have the opportunity to interact with their parents at certain times during the day.
Three weeks before the school year ended, teachers and staff got the news: we had one week to pack up all our belongings and school material and turn it in to the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). These racist district officials told the school staff that no school funds are available for the program serving immigrant families, which was a operating on a grant from First Five LA.
Fighting this massive cut and not giving up, teachers, staff, parents, and children have led rallies in front of LAUSD headquarters, inside the Board of Education meetings and last week in front of one of the four schools involved. Reporters from a local radio station and major TV channel interviewed parents and children at these rallies. Mothers, students, and staff shouted their anger at the abrupt termination of a program that has been recognized nationally for its approach to cooperative learning and job skill effectiveness.
The racist LAUSD does not want to provide funding for this program ($750,000 out of a $6 billion budget!) because it benefits immigrant families and working-class parents who are learning English as a second language and completing their GED, parents who cannot afford childcare or private schools. Because the program is for children and adults, it is funded under the Adult Education budget, which the racist LAUSD continues to cut. Teachers and staff will lose their jobs.
What do they want to fund? School superintendent John Deasy and the Board of Ed want to implement the use of IPADS in the classroom. This will only benefit Deasy’s ruling class friends, who have invested their capital in selling their software to the district. Cutting programs for working-class families — whether in education, jobs, or healthcare — continues as corporations like Apple and banks struggle to gain more profit.
This is a good example of how capitalism imposes limits on the working class’s ability to meet its basic needs for work, housing, food, education, and healthcare. With communism, the working class can change education so that it won’t be based on profits. Having participated in this rally and attended the program I understand the need to organize those close to me and win them to fight for a communist future.