Fighting state budget cuts

Maria Garcia hardly slept on the bus that left Los Angeles at midnight and brought her and more than 150 LAUSD employees to the state Capitol on Tuesday morning. Justine Agulia in the Daily News.

But once there, the Los Angeles Unified School District security monitor made sure her voice was heard, urging legislators to avoid deep slashes to the district's budget, which could mean the loss of her job.

As a mother of three with a husband who's found very little work in the construction business lately, she doesn't know how she'd survive if her job were cut.

"If I don't work, I can't feed my family," said Garcia, 46, an employee at Richard E. Byrd Middle School in Sun Valley. "I've been on the job for eight years and without my steady job, I really don't know what I'd do."