Teachers take to ballots
Unprecedented runs for office sparked by protest
Frustrated teachers with minimal political experience are running for office in unprecedented numbers and finding other ways to become involved.
For decades, said Craig Hoxie, there’s been a joke in education that goes something like this:
Those who can, teach. And those who can’t, legislate.
Hoxie, who teaches physics and sports science at Booker T. Washington High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, laughed when he repeated the line. But it’s not actually that funny, he said, because of the sobering truth behind it.
In the spring, when Hoxie and other teachers across the state walked out of Oklahoma classrooms demanding better pay, he thought of that joke. He thought of it again on the 110-mile march from Tulsa to Oklahoma City, as teachers rallied at the capitol for more money for education. That’s when he realized: If he wanted things to be different, he had to get involved.
“I’m always telling my students that to change things, they’ve gotta join the revolution,” said Hoxie, now in his 19th year of teaching. “And then I was like, ‘Well, I guess I’ve gotta lead it.’ ”
That’s how Hoxie, a 49-year-old Democrat with no previous political experience, found himself running for Oklahoma state representative. After beating another educator in the June primary, Hoxie has juggled lesson planning and knocking doors, balanced grading papers with making lawn signs, all in an effort to unseat Republican incumbent Terry O’Donnell.
And he’s far from the only educator
getting involved.
Teachers have been in the news for months, as a profession in crisis gains public support after a wave of cuts to education. Lately, educators have been fighting back.
First, they protested. Earlier this year teachers staged statewide strikes in West Virginia, Arizona and Oklahoma, and they rallied in Kentucky, North Carolina and Colorado, closing some of the biggest schools. In
September, teachers in about a dozen Washington state districts walked off the job as classes resumed, though many soon went back to work.
Now, teachers are running for political office – in staggering numbers.
Educators in high-profile races include Jahana Hayes, the 2016 national teacher of the year, a Democrat who is likely headed to Congress to represent Connecticut’s 5th District. Former chemistry teacher Chrissy Houlahan, who got her start with Teach for America, is trying to turn Pennsylvania’s 6th District blue. In Wisconsin, lifelong educator Tony Evers is taking on Republican incumbent Scott Walker in the governor’s race, after Walker pushed a law that gutted the state’s teachers unions. (Walker insists he reformed education in his state, allowing schools to pay good teachers on merit.)
“This is reaction not to just teachers not having a voice, but the fact that we’re seeing the national discourse move away from education,” said Houlahan, an Air Force veteran who called teaching “the hardest thing I’ve ever done, hands down.”
“Truth, facts, science – those matter,” she added. “If we don’t educate, we’re going to continue to be a divided nation.”
Decisions about money for education are made at the state level, which means teachers’ infusing state legislative ranks could have a profound effect on classrooms. According to the National Education Association, 1,455 educators are running in 6,066 state legislative races on Tuesday. That means someone with an education background – from classroom teachers to support staff to college professors – is running in nearly 1 in 4 statehouse races.
Teachers running for office is nothing new, but this scale is unprecedented, said Campbell Scribner, an education historian at the University of Maryland. For instance, more than 300 members of the American Federation of Teachers union are running for office — triple the number that ran in 2014 or 2016.
“Americans have always looked to schools to fix social problems,” Scribner said. “So teachers are in a unique position to win because people care about schools.”
Teachers across the country say they’re running for many other reasons, too.
When Hayes first got into the congressional race in Connecticut – ultimately advancing after a tough, close primary – many told her she couldn’t win because she was a single-issue candidate.
“I definitely begged to differ,” Hayes said. “When you have kids in your classroom who can’t learn because they’re worrying about adult problems, because someone lost their job and now they have to move, or they have an allergy but can’t get an EpiPen because their parents can’t afford it, those scenarios are playing out in teachers’ minds, while other people just see numbers on a budget.”
While most of the thousands of educators running this week are Democrats, roughly 30 percent of educators running in state legislative races are Republicans. That includes Toni Hasenback, a 7th grade English teacher in Elgin, Oklahoma.
Education, Hasenback said, is “the one industry that touches everybody.” And it is not a partisan issue.
If Christine Marsh, the 2016 Arizona teacher of the year and a candidate for state Senate, wins a seat in Phoenix, her supervisor from her student-teaching days plans to come out of retirement and take over her classes during the legislative session.
“In an ideal world, politicians would be taking care of business, and our students would be valued,” she said. “We should be able to close our doors and teach. But that’s not happening, so we have to step up.”