CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / PROPOSITION 187 : Some Question Wisdom of Nov. 2 Student Walkout

A student walkout across Los Angeles County planned for Nov. 2 touched off debate Tuesday among Proposition 187 opponents about whether cutting class is the best way to protest the possibility of diminished access to public education.

Latino activists who staged a march through Downtown Los Angeles earlier this month against the ballot measure--which would bar illegal immigrants from public services including education--are coordinating the walkout at the behest, they say, of parents and students.

“I’m concerned about all this frustrated energy welling up and exploding after Nov. 8 (Election Day),” said Juan Jose Gutierrez, executive director of the One Stop Immigration and Educational Center in Los Angeles and a key walkout organizer. “I think it’s in everybody’s best interest that we defuse some of it now.”

Although hundreds of students from individual schools have marched out of class during the past two weeks, the planned Nov. 2 protest would be the first countywide walkout.

But some parents identified as walkout proponents are having second thoughts, partly because they fear their children could be kicked out of school for joining in the action.

“It’s very dangerous, a walkout of the kids,” said Maurica Miranda, president of United Neighbors of Temple-Beaudry, a neighborhood near Downtown, and mother of three Los Angeles Unified School District students.

“They’ll suspend them like they did in Pomona,” she said. “The kids are losing their education because of this and that is not good.”

Los Angeles Unified has vowed not to punish protesting students as long as they remain orderly, but other school districts--including Pomona Unified--have taken action against marching students in recent weeks.

Ric Loya, an anti-187 teacher at Huntington Park High School and mayor of that city, said the student walkouts are backfiring by negatively influencing undecided voters: “When people see these kids out there marching, they get scared and we just lose votes like crazy.”

Although it is bracing for the possibility of a widespread Nov. 2 walkout, Los Angeles Unified also is sending a letter to principals today encouraging them to ask student leaders to instead stage forums, assemblies or on-campus demonstrations that day.

Late Tuesday, walkout organizer Gutierrez said that if forums are scheduled at every school in the district, he will call off the Nov. 2 walkout.

Times special correspondents Simon Romero and Scott Collins contributed to this story.