LOS ANGELES, April 7 —The continuing scandal at Miramonte Elementary School shows the systemic racism within the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). Two teachers were arrested in late January and early February for child sexual abuse, the district reacted by removing the entire faculty and staff from the campus.
The administration of Miramonte had ignored the complaints of parents and students about the abusive teachers for years. Their refusal to listen to immigrant students and their parents exposes the administration’s gutter racist attitude towards the community.
Miramonte is the second largest elementary school in the state and was still on year-round schedule, which the district knows hurts student learning (they changed to regular schedule after the scandal). In recent years, Miramonte has been treated by the district as a temporary holding place for many teachers, as younger teachers get pushed out of positions due to layoffs and seniority reassignment.
It is clear that the removed staff had nothing to do with the scandals at Miramonte, but the district is trying to pretend that it cares.
However, we know better. LAUSD has a racist attitude towards the immigrant and black communities here. PL’ers handed out a flier in the neighborhood. Many parents of Miramonte students responded really well when we said, “From Miramonte to the teacher layoffs resulting in overcrowded classrooms to the custodial layoffs resulting in filthy schools, LAUSD has seen the L.A. working class as its enemy.” Some parents gave us their numbers to try to organize a community meeting in order to fight back.
Comrades took the same flier to the displaced Miramonte staff. While they got a good response, many teachers seemed nervous of speaking out against the District. Unfortunately we missed a small rally some parents had had in support of their teachers and staff the day before. We hope that our contacts will help us stay on top of such events in the future. Staff, parents and students must unite and condemn the racism of LAUSD and the capitalist education system.
The teachers’ union and the staff unions have done little to help these teachers. The teachers’ union had us wear a ribbon to remember the teachers. The District clearly is using this to attack teachers, going through files and using any excuse to remove teachers while they push for furlough days and have laid off 9,500 teachers.
We can see that politicians and bosses especially attack the working class whenever they face an economic crisis. This capitalist economy can’t provide for the safety and education of our students and ensure safe working environments for a full complement of staff. We don’t need it. If our schools were run not by the racist LAUSD but by the working class, who care for their children, then they would be safe and receive a truthful and pro-worker education.
The ruling class, bosses of the biggest banks and oil companies along with their politicians, will never give us that. They need an education system that teaches obedience and minimal skills so that working people will never question their system.
Only a communist society based on the needs of workers, not the profits of bosses, will have the interests of our students at heart. And that requires a communist revolution.