TEACHER strikes and massive demonstrations of teachers, parents and students are spreading across the United States ‘like wildfire’. In Oklahoma City, at the state Capitol on Tuesday, thousands of people gathered, chanting and carrying signs with slogans including: ‘Don’t make me use my TEACHER voice’ and ‘STRAIGHT OUTTA SUPPLIES’.
Over 30,000 teachers in Oklahoma marched for the second time to demand higher wages, better benefits, and an increase in school funding. The protest is one of several, which started in West Virginia in March and have spread across the United States ‘like wildfire’.‘No funding, no future!’ read the sign carried by Katrina Ruff, a local teacher. ‘Thanks to West Virginia. They gave us the guts to stand up for ourselves,’ she said.
Schools in nearly 27 districts in Oklahoma including three in Oklahoma City, Tulsa, and Edmond, remained shuttered on Tuesday, and 500,000 of the state’s 700,000 public school students saw their classes cancelled on Monday, union officials said. ‘I’m fed up,’ said Rusty Bradley, a high school technology teacher whose classroom computers are more than a decade old. Oklahoma teachers are some of the lowest paid in the country.
A 2017 University of Oklahoma study pointed out that teachers who leave the state make an average of $19,000 more per year, reaffirming the dismal state of education in the country. According to the Centre on Budget and Policy Priorities, adjustments to inflation in the state have led to the state spending per student at nearly 30 per cent less over the course of the past decade. Some of the demands by the teachers’ union in the state include an increase in school funding by US$200 million over the course of three years and raise teachers’ wages by US$10,000.
Art teacher Laurissa Kovacs at the Puterbaugh Middle School said: ‘The students aren’t getting necessary facilities. ‘The chairs are in awful condition. They’re broken, and they literally hurt the kids to sit down. ‘If you look through the stacks, you can just see how many of the broken areas and cracks that will pinch you and jagged tops.’
Rae Lovelace, a single mother and a third-grade teacher at Leedey Public Schools in northwest Oklahoma, said: ‘If I didn’t have a second job, I’d be on food stamps.’ She works 30 to 40 hours a week at a second job where she teaches online courses for a charter school. Another teacher said she’s been buying textbooks for her students: ‘I’m funding my classroom, which is great, but I need them to now step up in order to do that.’
Nearly 200 of the state’s 550 school districts were closed as 30,000 teachers rallied at the Capitol along with other public employees. Teachers are demanding that state legislators come up with $3.3 billion over the next three years for school funding, benefits, and pay raises for all public employees. On Monday, lawmakers didn’t give an inch. That made teachers even angrier…
Oklahoma’s teachers are rebelling against a decade of state tax cuts that triggered deep cuts in education spending, forcing about 20 per cent of public schools to switch to a four-day-week schedule and pushing average teacher salaries to rank 49th in the country. Teachers haven’t gotten a raise in 10 years.
Oklahoma is still dealing with a budget crisis after lawmakers have slashed business taxes and top income tax rates year after year. A round went into effect in 2009; then taxes were lowered further in 2012 and 2014. The tax cuts were supposed to lead to an economic boom, but instead, they triggered a massive budget gap of about $1.5 billion each year. To deal with the shortfall, the government cut spending everywhere.
The cuts to education were so deep that 20 per cent of the state’s public schools had to switch to a four-day school week. Oklahoma teachers made an average salary of $45,276 in 2016, according to the National Education Association. The last time teachers got a raise from the state was in 2008.
Frustrated and desperate, Arizona teachers are demanding 20 per cent pay rises to address the state’s teacher crisis and have threatened to take escalated action if state leaders don’t respond with urgency.
About 2,500 teachers and their supporters – clad in a sea of red – cheered organisers of the Arizona Educators United grassroots group as they announced their list of demands. The educators said Ducey and state legislators have failed Arizona’s students and teachers by not adequately funding public education.
The organisers said they will give the governor and state lawmakers until the end of this legislative session to act on their demands, and said they would go on strike if they did not. ‘Governor Ducey, Legislature, the last thing that any of us want to do is go on strike, but if we have to, we will,’ said Dylan Wegela, an organiser and teacher in the Cartwright School District. ‘Arizona Educators United is prepared to do whatever it takes to reach our demands,’ Wegela said. ‘However, we will do everything in our power to avoid a strike. As educators, we’re willing to put kids first, even when the state won’t.’
Noah Karvelis and Dylan Wegela, both teachers and leaders in Arizona Educators United, listed their demands during a #REDForED rally at the Arizona state Capitol. The rally, marked by thousands of educators who wielded creative signs and loudly chanted their frustrations, put on display the mobilisation efforts of the grassroots Arizona Educators United group.
The movement began spontaneously in early March when a group of teachers banded together on social media and has since grown to include 38,000 members on its private Facebook page. The rallygoers chanted, ‘We will win! We will win!’ after the organisers listed their demands.
Besides the 20 per cent teacher pay rises, educators’ demands are: • Restoring state education funding to 2008 levels. Arizona spends $924 less per student in inflation-adjusted dollars today than it did in 2008, according to the Joint Legislative Budget Committee. Restoring education funding to that level would cost the state about $1 billion. • Competitive pay for all education support professionals, such as teachers’ aides and paraprofessionals. Dollar figures for this weren’t specified Wednesday.
• A ‘permanent’ step-and-lane salary structure in which teachers are guaranteed annual raises and steady advancement in wages. • No new tax cuts until the state’s per-pupil funding reaches the national average. According to the US Census Bureau’s 2015 figures, the most recent available, Arizona spent $7,489 per pupil compared with the national average of $11,392.