Q: How Do You Celebrate Education Week? A: Protest!

Um, not so fast. As part of the California Teachers Association's "Stand Up for Schools" campaign, instructors statewise are choosing to commemorate Education Week by warning of the harm being done to students by massive state budget cuts.

That harm includes the elimination of 20,000 teaching jobs.

The cuts have caused classroom sizes to soar, campuses to close and art, music and vocational programs to disappear, notes the 325,000-member CTA. "It's not business as usual in our classrooms any more," says union president David A. Sanchez. "American Education Week is a time to stand up for our public schools and to draw the line against additional cuts."

That time is noon today in front of the Newport-Mesa Unified School District Adult Education Center, 2045 Meyer Place, Costa Mesa, where Vicki Soderberg, president of the Capistrano United Educators Association, and Michael Stone and Jim Rodgers, members of the CTA Board of Directors, lead Orange County's protest against the cuts.