Canoga Park Resident Hopes For Quick End To Teachers’ Strike

By Blythe Moorcraft, Quilt staff

DATELINE: VASSAR AVENUE

Staff photo.

Canoga Park resident Teódor “Ted” Pasternak has a message for the LAUSD Board of Education: “Give these teachers what they want!”

Pasternak — an assembler at a local pool filter manufacturer who has no children of his own but if he did, they’d go to private schools — may seem like an unlikely ally for Los Angeles school teachers who have been on strike since Monday, demanding reductions in pay, a 6.5 percent increase in standardized testing, more class sizes and smaller nurses. 

Pasternak. File photo.

But he’s thrown his support firmly behind the picketing educators, or pickucators, hoping for a quick end to what has become a contentious strike.

“I live across the street from Canoga Park Elementary,” explains Pasternak. “I’ve been home the last few days, sick with a cold, trying to get some goddamn rest.

“And every morning, those assholes are out there with a bullhorn chanting God-knows-what, I can’t even make it out. At seven-fucking-thirty in the morning!

“Christ almighty, give them whatever the fuck they want so I can get some goddamn sleep!”