Public Employee Press

Members rally for schools and transit

By ALFREDO ALVARADO

March 4 was a day of protest for many DC 37 members who joined students and other workers at militant rallies against cuts in the city school and transit systems. The New York City education demonstrations were among dozens of rallies and protests throughout the country in what was called a National Day of Action to Defend Public Education.

In California, students staged walkouts, strikes and marches as they battled against increased tuition and fees at the state’s universities and a $17 billion budget cut to the state’s education fund. Close to 20,000 students rallied in front of the San Francisco Civic Center, while in Oakland and Sacramento hundreds of students confronted police after taking their protests onto freeways.

In New York City, students and unionists joined elected officials and labor leaders on the steps of City Hall to protest what they called the failed leadership of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein.

“Our school system is in dire need of a course correction,” said DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts. “They need to stop laying off school support personnel and closing schools and focus on preparing our kids to compete in the globalized economy.”

Students join labor

Launched by the citywide Coalition for Public Education, the protests in the city came on the heels of proposed budget cuts, the increase of charter schools that take money away from the public schools and the controversial January vote of the Panel for Education Policy to close down 19 public schools. The coalition maintains that the education panel is an illegitimate body controlled by Bloomberg and Klein that only pretends to hear the public’s concerns, questions and criticisms.

“This mayor has many of his friends from the private sector working in the Department of Education,” said Veronica Montgomery-Costa, president of Local 372 and of DC 37, on the steps of City Hall. “But what we need in the DOE is real educators, not business people who are only concerned with making a profit.”

Union activists joined more than 100 students earlier in the day at the House of the Lord Church in Brooklyn for a teach-in on the devastating budget cuts currently hitting public schools and colleges nationwide.

Later that afternoon, activists from DC 37 joined students and members of Transport Workers Union Local 100 in a rally protesting the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s plan to lay off workers, cut back subway and bus service and eliminate free Student MetroCards.

DC 37 Associate Director Oliver Gray addressed the demonstrators in front of the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan.

“How are our students, who already are falling behind and failing to graduate on time, going to get to school?” he asked at the rally. “The way to resolve these issues is not to lay off more transit workers or eliminate Metro Cards, but to invest in the future of this city — and that starts with the students.”