by Gail Boyle, President of SDEA-Retired
This is Part 2 of our SDEA History Series. See Part 1 here!
San Diego’s first strike wasn’t teachers, it was San Diego High School students.
Think of the requirements for dismissal today: Just cause, with significant documentation and a right to representation. That is because we have a contract and a union. Not so in 1918. On June 4, 1918, a list was issued of 18 teachers at San Diego High who were being dropped from employment. No reason was given, just a notice that their services would not be required next year.
This was big news in San Diego! It attracted much furor. For 18 consecutive days, the three newspapers dedicated a total of 125 columns to a discussion of the situation and demanded a reason. The Board of Education sent the papers a shocking and libelous statement that the teachers were disloyal to their country. The students of San Diego High, through their elected ASB, demanded a better explanation.
The San Diego High ASB Executive Committee subsequently notified the student bodies of the high school and the junior college that there would be a meeting in the stadium during lunch on June 6th. The meeting of 1800 students was orderly and lasted 1 hour, forty-five minutes. They passed a resolution: “Resolved that the student bodies of the San Diego High School and Junior College leave, and not return to school until the Board of Education has given satisfactory reasons, other than political, for the dismissal of several teachers, and furthermore, that they offer to reinstate all who are not proven inefficient.”
Photo from San Diego History Center
The School Board called the police headquarters to report a riot. Police rushed to the school, but finding neither a riot, nor anyone trying to produce one, left. One newspaper headline says how many students were attending school: “EXTRA! FIVE PEOPLE GOING TO HIGH SCHOOL!” The District was losing $600-$700 daily from ADA funds, as nearly all students refused to attend.
The San Diego Chamber of Commerce and the Rotary Club started a recall petition of the “Solid Three” board members. Other civic organizations, including the PTA, joined the recall effort in support of the students. The students boldly called for a mass meeting of the community at Balboa Stadium, inviting the School Board to join them. The Board sent a message back saying that they had “executive business” and respectfully declined, but the community attended.
The School Board decided it would withhold diplomas to all the seniors, an action blocked by the District Attorney because the teachers and principal had already passed the students. A motion that the School Board reinstate the dismissed teachers was greeted by a response from one board member that she was “too busy with other things…”
Finally, the Board responded with a reason: “Again, the question of whether we should have in our schools teachers who are absolutely and unqualifiedly loyal to our government and our institutions and 100% American is not a debatable question…several among those dropped were under surveillance by the authorities for pro-Germanism and these teachers were dropped for that reason.” Except, the San Diego Union editor was told by the Bureau of Investigation, Department of Justice, that no teachers on the list had ever been investigated. The dismissed teachers sued the School Board for libel. Ultimately, the teachers were offered reinstatement. Some returned, one a familiar name: Elizabeth Freese, who a San Diego school is now named after. Many of the teachers decided there were better places to work.
A group of teachers met at a home, 4277 Jackdaw Street, to discuss the formation of a permanent professional organization. Teachers were backed by the president of the Normal School, E.L. Hardy, who issued a public statement that the interests of teachers would never be protected until they had a professional organization. Today the Normal School is known as San Diego State University, Hardy Elementary is named after E.L. Hardy, and through an amazing coincidence, that same home on Jackdaw was later the home of Hugh Boyle, the President of SDTA during the first teacher strike in 1977.
The new professional organization was put into place for the 1918-1919 school year, modeled after the Los Angeles Teachers Club and Minneapolis Teachers Association, set its goal: “to form a teachers association which shall have for its aims the development of the teaching profession in San Diego, and eventually throughout the State of California, on the basis of professionality and legal status that shall clearly define and establish the relations of teachers to one another, to superior officers and governing boards and to the community.”
Starting a union was an important first step, but it certainly wasn’t the last. Learn more in our next History Corner!
