Even the threat of a statewide walkout has its effects.
Politico reports:
OKLAHOMA LAWMAKERS SCRAMBLE TO STOP TEACHERS’ STRIKE: A plan to hike teacher pay moving through the state Legislature won’t stop a statewide teacher walkout planned for Monday, the Oklahoma Education Association told Morning Education. State senators are expected to consider a package today passed by the House that would boost teachers’ pay by $6,000 on average, with smaller raises for school support staff and state employees. The bipartisan deal represents “a great step in the right direction,” said association President Alicia Priest, but it is not sufficient to keep teachers in the classroom on Monday.
– “Because the hole is so deep, and because our employees and the students that we serve have been neglected for so long, we have to see the process to the finish line,” Priest said. “We will be walking out on Monday.” She added that after a decade of steep school funding cuts, the union is asking for pay raises and funding boosts that would span two or three years.
– The union said it rejected the plan for teacher raises because it falls short of teachers’ $10,000 ask, and because teachers in districts that pay higher salaries would get only a portion of the raise. Priest added that the bill doesn’t include the raises the union pitched for school support professionals, cafeteria staff and others. And it doesn’t include substantial boosts for district budgets. More details from NewsOK.
– The legislative proposal received a warmer welcome from the Oklahoma City American Federation of Teachers, which represents roughly 2,600 public school teachers in that city. “We’ve always said we want an adequate and substantial pay raise. This is in that ballpark,” union President Ed Allen told Morning Education. He added that his union would poll members today on whether to continue with the planned walkout. “Everybody wants more money, but this is substantial. I think our membership is going to say, ‘This is a good deal. Let’s take it, and keep working to get more.'”
– So far, 156 of the 512 districts in Oklahoma have agreed to close schools in support of the walkout. Another 17 are still considering resolutions to close schools, while one has rejected the walkout, according to a tracker run by the Oklahoma Education Association, an affiliate of the National Education Association. The districts that will close Mondayenroll about 70 percent of students in the state, according to the union’s tally.
– It remains unclear whether the walkout will continue beyond Monday. If so, it would run into standardized testing windows set by the state for students in elementary school through high school. An administration of the ACT test for juniors is planned for Tuesday.
– Further west, in Arizona, teachers plan to gather today at the state Capitol to announce their demands of the governor and state lawmakers. According to the Arizona Republic, there is no immediate plan to strike. More here.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I stand with OK teachers!!!
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Oklahoma’s teachers will have my support on April 2nd. Whether or not they are in the classroom. It is time for all Oklahomans to support public education in our state and stem this continuing slide of our state into mediocrity. Oklahoma’s state per capita income puts us into the middle rank of all the states — certainly we dot live in a poor state — and we are well able to afford to pay our state’s professionals more than just a living wage. I am tired of seeing our teachers forced to beg to be able to have appropriate supplies for their classrooms.
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education and commented:
I love the way the state made a “low-ball” offer hoping teachers would agree to it.
Stand your ground. Get the full 10K raise and better medical insurance.
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I hope the teachers are really savvy and do not go for the first offer, especially when they have been demeaned and denied reasonable autonomy that professionals deserve and have right to expect.
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Thank you, Laura. Well said. I support them walking until they get what they deserve, a lot more and a lot better. I am ready to vote to strike too. Los Angeles is currently hiding well over a billion dollars in revenue to shortchange teachers during contract negotiations. We, nationwide, need to walk until we get honesty, professional autonomy, reasonable compensation, and most of all, respect and dignity from our elected officials.
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“Vice News” recently looked at the crisis in Oklahoma through the eyes of one elementary teacher. She’s a thirty year veteran that is paid $37,000. She hasn’t had a raise in ten years. She pointed out all the materials in her classroom she had bought over the years. When she first started she had $1,000 for class materials, and today she gets $250. She has been through a bankruptcy due to poor health. Their health plan is terrible, and she is $30,000 in debt due to health issues. She’s looking at teaching on-line to help get herself out of debt. Lots of teachers have second jobs working in department stores or tutoring to make ends meet. She is a conservative Christian, but she said she will walk out because “enough’s, enough.”
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How can it be that there are so many paid, full-time “education advocates” and tens of ed reform orgs and yet West Virginia and Oklahoma public schools are in such desperate straits?
If ed reform had spent as much time on public schools as they do on selling ed tech product to public schools we probably wouldn’t have whole states turning to teachers to save their public school systems.
These students don’t need an Ipad or a Chromebook or a “reinvented government”. They need schools that are open and functioning. They need basic governmental competence and care.
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Sorry kids.
Our ridiculous, snobby, out of touch elites in government and the private sector were so busy “reinventing” your schools they forgot to fund them and keep them open.
Ed reform can’t even manage “basic competence” in running public schools, let alone “reinvent” them.
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Would someone notify our ridiculous, out of touch political class that PUBLIC SCHOOLS in the United States could use some attention?
“As funding questions persist and states face the possibility of West Virginia-style teacher strikes, more school districts across the country are asking whether changing to a four-day week could answer a number of their problems – or even prove beneficial to students.
A practice traditionally isolated to rural communities, more urban districts are considering the change.
For Dr. Chris Fiedler, the superintendent of the 27J district in the north eastern suburbs of Denver, Colorado, the reason for the change was simple: “it’s an underfunding issue.”
What do you think it will take to get their attention? They ARE aware 90% of their constituents attend these schools, right?
This is the work we’re paying them to do, is it not? Can we find some people who actually want to do this job? Do a clean sweep. Vote out every incumbent. Start over.
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Go Oklahoma PUBLIC School Teachers!
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http://iceuftblog.blogspot.com/2018/03/petition-to-repeal-nys-teacher.html
please sign and post
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I hope the teachers stand firm. This is just a first step. Next comes getting rid of standardized testing.
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“Thousands of teachers descended on the Arizona state Capitol on Wednesday to demand a 20 percent pay raise and increases to public education funding, which they say was $1 billion higher before the Great Recession.”
And…Arizona.
Ed reformers in Arizona have spent the last year pushing vouchers, apparently unaware that the public schools in the state were in such bad shape the teachers were getting ready to walk out.
This is the result of captured politicians ignoring the schools the vast majority of children actually attend and focusing exclusively on ideology-driven privatization schemes at the expense of existing public systems.
Imagine if there were no large group of public school teachers- a group large enough to get the attention of state politicians. Arizona’s public school families wouldn’t have any advocates at all.
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The more I meet state legislators, the more out of touch they appear to be.
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Ah the ironies of history and politics, revealed for everyone to see, with all those “deplorables” – teachers may skew Democratic, but this wouldn’t be happening if the Trump voters among them weren’t supportive – in West Virginia and Oklahoma involved in the most significant labor actions in years.
Makes the narrative a little more complicated, doesn’t it?
And maybe it suggests that concrete material benefits, instead of corporate-approved Identity Politics, is the way to shift politics in a more positive direction…
Just sayin’.
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Yep.
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