Education protests — images from the street

Thousands of people, including college, high school and elementary school students — plus parents, teachers and other activists — converged in streams on downtown San Francisco to protest cuts in public education Thursday afternoon.

Organizers said that more than 4,000 people marched down Mission and Valencia streets to Market, and then to the Civic Center Plaza. Many of the protesters were small children — students at San Francisco public schools who were taken by their parents.

Protesters shouted “just because we can’t vote doesn’t mean we don’t count,” “we need our teachers, give Arnold the pink slip!” and “please don’t take our teachers away!”

Some parents took off early from work to join the protest. Several elementary and high schools met after school to converge in neighborhoods and march to the main rally. A few schools even hosted time for sign painting the day before.

Late last week in a memo to school administrators, San Francisco schools Superintendent Carlos Garcia called for schools to conduct a 10 a.m. fire drill to show support for the event. But citing safety concerns, the memo said they could not take “field trips” during school hours to join the protest.

The San Francisco action, organized by United Educators of San Francisco, was part of a statewide coordinated effort to draw attention to cuts from kindergarten through college.

Also on Thursday, federal officials announced that California was not selected for “Race to the Top” federal matching funds, complicating California educators’ budget woes for the coming fiscal year. According to the U.S. Department of Education, key areas for selection of state awards were the improvement of underperforming schools and improved data systems.