Teachers and students at Esteban Torres High School have more than one reason to strike.

They say insufficient funding from the district is causing an already low income area to struggle even more.

According to English teacher Shelly Aguilar, their demand for more funding, comes from an already desperate need for more support as a region.

“This area isn't the best. I grew up in this area so we’ve always had issues like that, we are low income. Most of the kids here are from Mexican American families or immigrant families,” Aguilar said.

She says many first generation students need more personal support, and the large class sizes prevent them from overcoming the challenges they face. She and other teachers step in to help to provide basic essentials.

“There’s times that I have to buy pencils, paper, necessities like tissue, band-aids, for our kids and it’s unfair, that we have to out of our own pockets, do this for our students when we would want the school district to give them a lot of these things.”

And students like freshman Jonathan Gutierrez appreciate when teachers step in to help. He too knows the toil of hard-work.

“I work with my mom. She cleans houses for a living. So far it’s not much but it’s enough for us to feel safe and secure under our homes,” he said.

Aguilar hopes the strike will help all teachers in Los Angeles, and empower her own students to find their voice.

“We didn’t have enough teachers that were like us, role models like us. A lot of my teachers were Caucasian and I didn’t see a lot of teachers that came from the area I went to and I couldn’t relate to them," she said. 

"So I wanted to show students, especially in my area, that there are teachers that can be successful that looked like them, that they can relate to, and that they can be beyond what society thinks they can.”

And ultimately, she just doesn’t want to see teachers burn out

 “It’s not from 8 to 3; we’re here from whenever our kids need us in the morning, to whenever our kids need us in the afternoon. I work Saturday schools because we need our kids to graduate.”

She and others protesting in East Los Angeles, say they are ready for a change.