Garfield CLC students planning walkout Monday over APS cuts to teaching staff

Akron Public Schools students are pushing back on a plan to cut dozens of teachers from their schools.

Garfield Community Learning Center students are planning a walkout for Monday, just before the board is set to vote on the reduction in force.

Five students from the school said Friday they are losing several of their teachers, all of whom are newer to the school and to teaching.

"These teachers aren't just teachers to us," junior Elijah Fleming said. "They’re family. They're friends."

Akron administrators this week announced the planned cuts of 285 jobs across the district, which includes 169 layoffs. The rest of the jobs will be lost through attrition.

The reduction in force is part of $24 million in cuts to the budget that would take effect in next school year's budget. The school board has to vote Monday to approve the layoffs, although preliminary notices went out to employees this week.

Ahead of that, Garfield students say they will walk out of class at 3 p.m. and into their gymnasium for the last 15 minutes of the day. They will tell other students about the cuts, they said, and hope to send a message to the board not to approve them.

"We just want them to know that we love our teachers," Elijah said.

Sophomore Zoie Neibarger said they are inviting board members to the walkout "so we can try and talk to them."

District spokesman Mark Williamson said in a statement: "We ardently support and encourage our scholars in expressing themselves."

Elijah and Zoie, along with sophomores Alliaha Shaffer and Alyssa Feathers, said they were devastated to learn of the cuts. Several of them said they cried when they heard the names of who would be leaving.

One of them, Zoie said, "makes us feel like we're her kids."

Many of the teachers cut are early in their careers, they noted, and the students relate to them. They said the teachers are, in many cases, the only staff teaching certain electives, which are the classes students say they enjoy the most − the ones that motivate them to come to school.

"All of our electives that we have to help us later in life, half of them are getting cut," Alliaha said.

Akron schools has not yet said where the cuts will be across the district, giving only a breakdown of the categories of jobs that will be cut. Included in the 169 layoffs are about 58 teachers, some whom are in classrooms along with instructional coaches and other teaching positions not directly serving students, as well as 10 administrators and 77 non-certified substitute tutors.

Monday's board meeting starts at 5:30 p.m. and will be held at the district's headquarters at 10 N. Main Street. It will also be livestreamed on the district's YouTube page.

Contact education reporter Jennifer Pignolet at jpignolet@thebeaconjournal.com, at 330-996-3216 or on Twitter @JenPignolet.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Garfield CLC students planning walkout to protest APS teacher cuts