Denver teachers hit picket lines over pay
DENVER — Striking teachers on Monday picketed outside of schools and marched through Denver’s streets as car horns blared in support of the latest U.S. walkout amid a swell of educator activism that has affected at least a half-dozen states over the last year.
Just over half of the 4,725 teachers working in district-run schools called in absent for Denver’s first strike in 25 years. Some students crossed picket lines to get to class as schools remained open with administrators and substitute teachers in classrooms.
In one school, students danced and chanted in the hallways as they walked out in support of their teachers. Other students joined hundreds of teachers and union members in a march past City Hall that held up traffic in downtown Denver.
Science teacher Abraham Cespedes said Denver educators were empowered by recent teacher activism and strikes from Arizona to West Virginia.
“By us doing this we finally became united,” he said, marching with fellow teachers, members of other unions and students.
The strike affecting about 71,000 students in the school district comes about a year after West Virginia teachers launched the national “Red4Ed” movement with a nineday strike in which they won 5 percent pay raises.
There have since been walkouts in Washington state, Arizona, Kentucky and Oklahoma, as teachers protest low pay, crowded classrooms and staffing shortages.
Most recently, Los Angeles teachers went on strike last month. That walkout ended when teachers received a 6 percent raise and promises of smaller class sizes and the addition of more nurses and counselors.
In Denver, the dispute is over the school district’s incentive-based pay system. The city’s school district gives bonuses ranging from $1,500 to $3,000 a year to teachers who work in schools with students from low-income families, in schools that are designated high priority or in positions that are considered hard to staff, such as special education or speech language pathology.
The union is pushing to lower or eliminate some of those bonuses to free up more money that would be added to overall teacher pay.
The district sees the disputed bonuses as key to boosting the academic performance of poor and minority students. Denver teachers say the reliance on bonuses in the district leads to high turnover, which they say hurts students, and that spending money on smaller class sizes and adding support staff, like counselors, is the best way to help disadvantaged students learn.
At a news conference, district Superintendent Susana Cordova said negotiations will resume on Tuesday.