What to Know
- Parents blasted a plan to bring in volunteers without background checks if a strike happens at the LAUSD.
- The decision was abandoned after parents cried foul.
- One parent called the board's decision a disaster waiting to happen.
Angry parents converged at Los Angeles Unified headquarters Tuesday morning after the school board voted to nix the idea of inviting volunteers into classrooms without background checks, then changed its position two days before a potential teachers' strike.
"Now there's a strike happening, we're going to just bring in everybody so they can watch our children with no oversight?" said Wendi Hauser, a mother of a first-grader within LAUSD. "It is phenomenally irresponsible to me."
She said her daughter will not be at school if teachers strike.
"I will not send her into a school that has random volunteers that no one even knows about," she said.
Carl Petersen who has two special-needs daughters within the LAUSD, addressed the board over the issue.
"I would've thought the district would have learned its lessons from Miramonte and the millions of dollars you paid out in claims," he said, referring to a former LAUSD elementary school teacher convicted of sexually abusing students. "This is one of the reasons we have financial problems."
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"They look for short-term results. And right now the only thing they have on their minds is how to staff those schools and keep them open."
He calls the board's decision a disaster waiting to happen.
"Unfortunately some kid is going to pay the price," Petersen said.
It's another hiccup in the tumultuous battle between the district and the teachers who work for it. Both claim they side with students, but both have been unwilling to bow down.
"The total lack of leadership today is infurating," Hauser said.
Negotiations are scheduled to resume at LAUSD Headquarters Wednesday at 9am.
