Communities unite to find care for kids
PHOENIX — From gathering gift cards, prepping boxed lunches and opening church doors for child care, communities across Arizona are getting ready for a historic teacher walkout that could keep hundreds of thousands of students out of school indefinitely.
Working parents had a week to figure out where to send their children starting Thursday after teachers voted for an unprecedented statewide strike to push for increased education funding. While tens of thousands of educators rally this week, students will be cared for by friends, family or community organizations.
“Everybody is banding together and helping each other,” said Stephanie Barton, an exercise physiologist and Phoenix mom of two.
She will send her kids to a church while she and her husband are at work. Others are leaving their children with stay-at-home parents who offered to help or are taking advantage of day camps that sprung up statewide.
Volunteers also are busy gathering food for students who rely on free meals at school and collecting gift cards for hourly workers who won’t be paid while schools shut down.
The walkout is the climax of a teacher uprising that began weeks ago with the grass-roots #RedforEd movement that spread from West Virginia, Oklahoma and Kentucky. It has moved most recently to Colorado, where widespread teacher walkouts Thursday and Friday will shut down schools.
In Arizona, the action grew from red shirts and protests to costly demands: a 20 percent raise for teachers, about $1 billion to return school funding to pre-Great Recession levels and increased pay for support staff, among other things.
Republican Gov. Doug Ducey offered teachers the pay bump by 2020, but they say his plan didn’t address their other demands and are concerned, along with lawmakers, about where the money might come from.
Ducey doubled down on his plan Wednesday, telling Phoenix new station KSAZ-TV that he’s working with lawmakers and has proposed an additional $100 million for K-12 education that schools can use to address other demands.
“I’m hopeful we will have a vote on this this week, as soon as possible,” he said.
Nearly 80 percent of teachers voted for the first-ever statewide strike, though it could put them at risk in the right-to-work state without many union protections.
Some districts have said they will try to stay open if they have enough staff.
As the strike nears, a growing number of community organizations are offering free child care. Phoenix is opening 24 recreation centers, churches are welcoming students and even the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff has a day camp.