Union rejects teacher raise plan shortly after Speaker’s proposal

The teachers union calling for a statewide strike next month called a teacher pay raise proposal from House Republicans a “political stunt.”

Thursday afternoon, House Speaker Charles McCall unveiled a teacher pay plan he said would give most teachers as much as a $20,000 raise within six years.

While addressing the media, McCall said he had a six-year plan that could make Oklahoma teachers the highest paid in the region, costing over $700 million, once fully implemented. However, the plan lacked a proposal for how to pay for it.

The Oklahoma Education Association, which has demanded more than $800 million in new funding, partly to fund a $10,000 teacher pay raise, immediately rejected the plan.

“The deal announced today by Speaker Charles McCall and his leadership team is not a plan at all,” said Alicia Priest, president of the Oklahoma Education Association. “It’s nothing more than a political stunt that falls woefully short of the revenue needed to save our schools and keep teachers in Oklahoma classrooms.”

The OEA’s demands also include over $200 million for state employee pay raises.

“We are left out again on pay,” said Sterling Zearley, executive director of the Oklahoma Public Employees Association, which has said it will join the April strike.

Zearley said the plan was “no plan at all” as it lacked a strategy to fund it.

Tax increase efforts in the Legislature have failed in recent months, even those aimed at increasing teacher pay.

The first year of McCall’s plan would cost the state $114 million and deliver an average of $2,000 per teacher.