Poll: Hunger Striking Students End Seven Day Fast

Three hunger strikers from San Leandro High ended their seven-day fast Tuesday night after winning symbolic concessions from the San Leandro Unified School District’s Board of Trustees.

Seniors Veronica Mandujano, Kayla Ely and Anai Rosales began their fast after a meeting last week at which board members voted to issue 52 layoff notices.

The layoffs were a contingency in case Californians fail to pass new taxes in November, creating another $2.54 million hole in San Leandro's public school budget.

The fasting students wanted district to dip into its reserve fund instead to cover any possible budget gap.

But board officials have insisted that the reserves alone were insufficient and that they also needed concessions from the teachers' union to avert job losses.

Tuesday night the students decided they had accomplished as much as they could and had to end the fast.

“I found out yesterday when I went to the hospital that I had acid reflux,” Rosales told the board Tuesday night. “I had to start eating because I was getting really ill.”

Afterwards Rosales told Patch that she and the other hunger strikers had acted for the young people coming up behind them.

"We need to be their voice and speak out for them," she said.

Emotions ran high

The small meeting room at the district’s offices on Juniper Street was packed as school board president Morgan Mack-Rose said officials would consider students' requests to dip deeper into the reserves.

But Mack-Rose has said that some of its reserve funds have already been used to avert the need for even more drastic cuts. This has shrunk the district's cushion from $9.8 million in October to about $4 million now, she told Patch. That works out to about 5.8 percent of the district's roughly $68 million budget.

“We have told teachers that we are willing to spend a significant portion of that 5.8 percent to preserve programs and jobs but that is a process that takes time," Mack-Rose said Tuesday night. "Having something in writing takes time and isn’t  something we can do tonight.”

Statewide oil extraction tax also an issue

The hunger strikers and their community supporters also wanted the school board to support a statewide ballot initiative, Proposition 1522, that would impose a 15 percent tax on oil that is pumped out of wells in California.

The initiative is currently being circulated and must get nearly 505,000 signatures by April 19 in order to qualify for the ballot, according the the California Secretary of State's office.

“We are the only state in the U.S. that does not tax an extraction fee for taking out our national resources," said Erica Viray-Santos, an instructor in San Leandro High's Social Justice Academy, a special program taken by all three of the hunger-striking students.

"Alaska and Texas even charge extraction taxes," she added.

Mandujano said she and her fellow students were working to gather signatures for Proposition 1522, which is about 80 percent of the way toward its goal.

Mack-Rose said the board would discuss the initiative and a possible resolution in support of it.

Fast ends, activism continues

In addition to keeping up pressure on the board when it comes to job cuts and working to get Proposition 1522 qualified for the statewide ballot, the students say their fast has energized them to get more involved in education reform.

Among other things Mandujano said she will work to pass a parcel tax that the board has proposed in San Leandro, but deferred after polling suggested it didn't have the .

“It is far from over,” Mandujano said.

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