Teachers in two states shut schools over pay
Walkouts part of growing movement
OKLAHOMA CITY — Thousands of teachers in Oklahoma and Kentucky walked off the job Monday morning, shutting down school districts as they protested cuts in pay, benefits and school funding.
The protests are part of a movement that has spread rapidly since igniting in West Virginia earlier this year.
The state Capitol in Kentucky filled with teachers protesting pension changes and demanding increased school funding. In Oklahoma City, thousands of protesting teachers ringed the Capitol, chanting, “No funding, no future!” Katrina Ruff, a local teacher, carried a sign that read, “Thanks to West Virginia.”
“They gave us the guts to stand up for ourselves,” she said.
The wave of strikes in Republican-dominated states, mainly organized by teachers on Facebook, has caught lawmakers and sometimes the teachers’ own labor unions flat-footed. In West Virginia, teachers walked out for nine days earlier this year
and won a 5 percent increase in pay.
The next red state to join the protest movement could be Arizona, where thousands of teachers gathered in Phoenix last week to demand a 20 percent pay raise and more funding for schools.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, said Monday that it would not happen, raising the likelihood of a standoff between the two groups.
Teachers there are considering a strike over their demands, and many wore red clothes to school Monday in solidarity with protests in Oklahoma and Kentucky, said Joe Thomas, president of the Arizona Education Association.
About 200 of Oklahoma’s 500 school districts shut down Monday as teachers walked out, defying calls from some parents and administrators for them to be grateful for what they had already received from the state.
Many districts announced plans to remain shut into today.
Teachers were joined by students who also feel the effects of dwindling financial support for education. Many schools do not have enough textbooks for students. The tomes are often outdated, tattered and missing pages.
Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin signed legislation last week granting teachers pay raises of about $6,100, or 15 percent to 18 percent. But some educators — who haven’t seen a pay increase in 10 years — say that isn’t good enough.
The state’s largest teachers union has demanded a $10,000 pay raise for educators over three years, a $5,000 raise for support personnel and a $75 million increase in funding this year.
“If I didn’t have a second job, I’d be on food stamps,” said Rae Lovelace, a single mom and a third-grade teacher at Leedey Public Schools in northwest Oklahoma who works 30 to 40 hours a week at a second job teaching online courses for a charter school.
Fallin on Monday praised the GOP-led Oklahoma Legislature’s achievement in approving part of what the teachers wanted.
“Significant revenue-raising measures were approved to make this pay raise and additional
school funding possible,” the Republican said in a statement. “We must be responsible not to neglect other areas of need in the state such as corrections and health and human services as we continue to consider additional education funding measures.”
But Democratic state Rep. Collin Walke said teachers should keep up the pressure. Separate bills pending in the Legislature to expand tribal gambling and eliminate the income tax deduction for capital gains could generate more than $100 million in additional funding each year.
“I think the Republican strategy is to wait the teachers out,” Walke said.
Oklahoma ranks 47th among states and the District of Columbia in public school revenue per student while its average teacher salary of $45,276 ranked 49th before the latest raises, according to the most recent statistics from the National Education Association.
KENTUCKY PROTEST
In Frankfort, Ky., teachers and other school employees chanted, “Stop the war on public education.”
“We’re madder than hornets, and the hornets are swarming today,” said Claudette Green, a retired teacher and principal.
Schools across Kentucky were closed, either because of spring break or to allow teachers and other school employees to attend the rally.
Amid a chorus of chants from teachers rallying in the Capitol, Kentucky lawmakers approved a new state budget that includes higher spending for public education.
Budget negotiators unveiled a spending plan Monday that includes increased spending for the main funding formula for K-12 schools and restored money for school buses that the state’s Republican governor had proposed eliminating.
The additional education spending would be paid for by a 6 percent sales tax on a host of services that had previously been tax-free.
Senate President Robert Stivers, a Republican, said some of the teachers at the rally Monday said “some things that were not so nice” to him as he walked into the Senate.
Some people have not recognized what has been done, Stivers said, pointing to increased funding in the budget for education. Reminded that the budget compromise was not released until Monday morning, Stivers said: “There’s something to that, but I also would say on many occasions I reached out to have discussions and never got telephone calls back.”
Language arts teacher Lesley Buckner was reluctant to give lawmakers much credit.
“We’re sending a message,” she said. “If we continue to stay united, they cannot turn away from us, they cannot turn their backs on us.”
The rally happened after hundreds of teachers called in sick Friday to protest last-minute changes to their pension system. Teachers have rallied several times during Kentucky’s legislative session to protest the pension bill, but Monday was by far their biggest event.
Republican lawmakers in Kentucky passed a pension overhaul Thursday that preserves benefits for most workers but cuts them for new teachers. If Gov. Matt Bevin signs it into law, it will phase out defined-benefit pensions for teachers and replace them with hybrid retirement plans that combine features of a traditional pension with features of the 401(k) accounts used in the private sector. Teachers in the state are not eligible for Social Security benefits.
Opponents say the pension changes were inserted into a sewage bill without a chance for public input, and they worry that the changes will discourage young people from joining the profession.
Bevin, a Republican, has not yet signed the bill, but last week he tweeted his support.
“We have no choice but to be here,” said Jeffrey Peeno, a Kenton County art teacher. “We have to represent what we do. When they pass this with the sewage bill, it tells us exactly what we need to know about what they think of us.”
Andrew Beaver, 32, a middle school math teacher in Louisville, Ky., said he was open to changes in teacher retirement programs, such as potentially asking teachers to work to an older age before drawing down benefits. Currently, some Kentucky teachers are eligible for retirement around age 50. But he said he and his colleagues were angry about not having a seat at the negotiation table with Bevin and the Republican majority in the Legislature.
“What I’m seeing in Louisville is teachers are a lot more politically engaged than they were in 2015 or 2016,” he said. “It really is a wildfire.”
During Monday’s rally, some teachers, angry at lawmakers who supported the bill, chanted, “Vote them out.”
Melissa Wash, a first-grade teacher from Gallatin County who has been teaching for 19 years, said she voted for Bevin but now plans to become a Democrat. To the lawmakers who voted for the pension overhaul, she said: “You better not count on another year in office.”
GRASS-ROOTS EFFORT
The growing fervor suggests that labor activism has taken on a new, grass-roots form.
“Our unions have been weakened so much that a lot of teachers don’t have faith” in them, said Noah Karvelis, an elementary school music teacher in Tolleson, Ariz., outside Phoenix, and leader of the movement calling itself #RedforEd, after the red T-shirts that protesting teachers are wearing across the country.
Karvelis said younger teachers have been primed for activism by their anger over the election of President Donald Trump, his appointment of Betsy DeVos as education secretary and even their own students’ participation in anti-gun protests after the February school shooting in Parkland, Fla.
“Teachers for a long time have had a martyr mentality,” Karvelis said. “This is new.”
In Arizona, where the average teacher salary is $47,000, teachers are agitating for more generous pay and more money for schools after watching the state slash funds for public education for years.
“We’re going to continue to escalate our actions,” Karvelis said. “Whether that ultimately ends in a strike? That’s certainly a possibility. We just want to win.”