Like most parents in the nation’s second-largest school district , Marianne Webster was shocked to learn of the massive strike set to shutter public schools across Los Angeles for three days next week.

She was even more shocked to learn about it from her third-grader.

“When I picked him up he said, ‘The teachers are going on strike,’” said the mother of four, whose two eldest children attend 186th Street Elementary School in Gardena, where 70% of students take the bus to campus and 100% get free lunch. “I said, ‘What?!’”