Strike: Day 1

Capo picketing continues; classrooms trashed (OC Reg, 2:00 p.m.)

Student attendance at many Capistrano Unified schools was light Thursday as hundreds of teachers picketed outside the district’s 56 schools, and while schools reported that both picketers and students were generally orderly, at least one high school appears to have been vandalized by unsupervised students.

Several classrooms at San Clemente High School were trashed Thursday morning, with desks thrown to the ground and papers scattered around.

Student witnesses said about a dozen students were responsible for the damage and that it was the result of students reporting to classrooms that weren’t staffed by a substitute teacher.
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This is Day 1 of a teacher strike in Orange County’s second-largest school district over the district's failure to make a "clear, unambiguous offer" to settle a bitter, months-long pay cut dispute, the teachers union says.

Hundreds of Capistrano Unified teachers, clustered in groups of 20s and 30s at schools across south Orange County, were walking picket lines, holding up signs that read "Quality public education at stake," "Board of tyrants," "I'd rather be teaching" and "Willing to fight for our kids.”
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Many students at Aliso Viejo’s Aliso Niguel High School were reportedly heading home by midday “because there was little instruction,” the teachers union said in a statement released Thursday morning. Some Aliso Niguel students were reportedly watching episodes of “The Office,” according to a KTLA posting on Twitter.

"There's no point in going to school,” said Alia Bonetti, a senior at Aliso Niguel High School, who arrived at 6 a.m. and was planning to picket all day with the teachers. “The subs are not qualified. We're not going to learn. These people are our teachers. The subs just want money. Our teachers care."
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At district offices, about 70 parents and their children – mostly elementary and younger – stood outside for about a half hour, waving signs and chanting "We support our teachers," "Be fair with teachers," and "End the strike now."

Similar protests were reported along the 5 Freeway overpass at Ortega Highway in San Juan Capistrano and near the Avenida Calafia exit in San Clemente.

Many of the district's 2,200 educators began lining the sidewalks outside their campuses at least 30 minutes before classes began.
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It is unknown how long the strike will last. The teachers union has offered to meet with the district at 2 p.m. Thursday, although union leaders are stressing they are not making a commitment to negotiate, but rather to seek out additional information.
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"I have to go with the majority," said Dan Grassman, a seventh-grade teacher at San Juan Capistrano’s Marco Forster Middle School. "Eighty-seven percent of the union voted to strike. The union feels it needs to make a stand. I wish that I wasn't out here striking, and that I was inside the classroom teaching kids."
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Capistrano Unified's school board said in a statement Wednesday that it was "saddened" to learn teachers in the district will begin striking on Thursday, but added that trustees "remain hopeful" for a speedy, mutually acceptable resolution to settle teachers' bitter pay cut dispute.

Capistrano Unified's school board unilaterally imposed a 10.1 percent pay cut on teachers in March, after nearly a year of unsuccessful negotiations.
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Capistrano's teacher strike is the first in Orange County in a decade, and the only one in California this year, at least so far.

The California Teachers Association says about 17 school districts in a five-county region – Orange, Riverside,San Bernardino, San Diego and Imperial – are at impasse in contract negotiations….