Teachers walk out over poor funding
PHOENIX: Thousands of teachers in Arizona and Colorado walked out of their classrooms on Thursday to demand more funding for schools, the latest surge of a teacher protest movement that has already swept through three states and is spreading quickly to others.
Hundreds of state schools were shut down in Arizona because of the walkouts, which turned the streets of downtown Phoenix into seas of crimson as educators and their supporters marched to the state Capitol wearing red T-shirts and chanting “Red for Ed”, as the movement is known here.
Widespread teacher protests have in recent months upended daily routines in the conservative-leaning states West Virginia, Oklahoma and Kentucky. But the sight of public workers protesting en masse in the Arizona capital, one of the largest Republican strongholds in the country, and demanding tax increases for more school funding spoke to the enduring strength of the movement and signalled shifts in political winds ahead of this year’s midterm elections.
“I’ll be voting for anyone who supports public education,” said Jamie Woodward, a curriculum coordinator from Cottonwood, Arizona. “We have impoverished teachers living in camper trailers.” Ms Woodward, 40, was a registered Republican for 17 years, she said, but recently became an independent.
An analysis by The Arizona Republic showed that more than 840,000 of the state’s 1.1 million state school students could be affected by the school closings.
Teachers and their supporters began gathering on Thursday morning around Chase Field, a baseball stadium in Phoenix. From there, they marched to the Capitol to hold a rally calling for restoring education funding to pre-recession levels, raising their pay, and halting tax cuts until per-pupil funding reaches the national average.
The march unfolded peacefully, with many teachers walking with their children and other supporters; nearly everyone was wearing the red shirts symbolizing their movement.
Much of the protesters’ ire was directed personally at Governor Doug Ducey, a Republican, who has resisted demands to end tax cuts to bolster public education spending. Teachers pressed ahead with the walkout despite a promise by the governor to increase their salaries 20% by 2020. Betting that a growing economy will bolster revenue, Mr Ducey said he could provide the raises and reinforce school budgets without tax increases, a proposal that many teachers
and lawmakers doubted.
In a statement on Thursday, the governor urged citizens to contact their legislators to urge approval of his pay plan.
In Colorado, about 2,000 teachers, students and parents descended on the steps of the gold-domed Capitol in Denver on Thursday, where they urged lawmakers to increase classroom funding.
At least 27 districts in Colorado cancelled classes, saying they would not have enough teachers to accommodate students on those days.