(CTA President David A. Sanchez urged an estimated 3,000 participants at a Friday afternoon Capitol rally to keep the pressure on Republican lawmakers to provide the votes needed to extend the state’s temporary taxes and approve a budget that will block another $4.1 billion in cuts to education.

The CTA leader spoke to the crowd for the first time after spending a night in jail with 26 colleagues. All were arrested Thursday night for refusing to leave the Capitol until two Republican leaders – Sen. Bob Dutton and Assembly Member Connie Conway – agreed to provide the GOP votes needed for the temporary tax extension and the budget.

The crowd roared its response as the CTA president declared, “Si puede, si puede.”  He told participants that this week’s intense activities would continue in legislators’ districts until those goals are achieved.  In the long term, CTA efforts will continue until education secures an adequate and stable source of funding.

Supt. of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson and representatives of education groups and labor  garnered cheers from the crowd as they pledged to work together to win the battle for public schools.  “We are one, we are one” was the theme each one sounded.

The rally, which began shortly after 4:00 p.m. and adjourned at about 6:42 p.m., brought together an estimated 5,000 Capitol Insiders, other CTA members, members of unions including Service Employees International Union Local 1000 and the California Federation of Teachers, and the State Parent Teachers Association, representing more than one million Californians. It was the last scheduled activity for the 300 CTA members who had volunteered to spend a week in Sacramento fighting for funding for schools.

Local legislators also turned out to show their support, including Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento)  and Assembly Member Mariko Yamada (D-Yolo).

During the rally, speakers read from the completed “exam books” turned in by lawmakers in response to a “homework” assignment given them by CTA that asked them to solve the state’s fiscal crisis.  Among the answers held up as exemplars was the one from Senate President pro Tem Steinberg.  In his answer, the leader of the Senate pledged to hold all state Senators in a locked meeting room until they vote to approve the tax extension and the budget that the educators are calling for.