PARIS — Police sprayed tear gas at demonstrators who threw rocks and scuffled Thursday with riot officers on the edges of a protest that organizers say drew tens of thousands of high school students worried about teacher job cuts.
Students have been marching in solidarity with their teachers amid fears that job cuts will lead to overcrowded classes and limit the number of subjects taught. President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government plans to cut 11,200 jobs in the national education system in the next school year, with 8,800 of them in junior high schools and high schools.
Police said about 19,000 students marched from Luxembourg Gardens down the Boulevard de Montparnasse on the Left Bank, while organizers put the figure at 30,000. It was the fifth such protest in two weeks, and the largest by far. Smaller demonstrations were organized in the provinces.
The vast majority of students were calm, dancing to pop music that blasted from trucks, but a few hundred at the front of the march charged at police, waved batons, threw rocks or set off firecrackers.
Plainclothes officers with clubs grabbed a student who was throwing rocks and tackled him to the ground and on several occasions used tear gas to subdue some of the protesters.
The number of people taken into custody was not immediately clear.
