I always thought of the Dallas News as a conservative newspaper, but here is a column by editorial writer Michael A. Lindenberger arguing that Texas teachers need to go out on strike to force the legislature to fund the schools.
He writes:
”Why not? Nothing else has seemed to work to get state lawmakers to spend more on an education system whose funding is so bad that in 2014 after a 12-week trial a state district judge ruled it was literally illegal.
Even as Texas’ need for a trained and productive workforce — that is, an educated one — becomes more and more acute, lawmakers keep shrinking the state’s share of overall school funding. What’s it going to take to shake them out of this downward spiral?…
”But as the costs go up, the state has shifted more and more of the burden to local school districts, whose money comes straight from taxes on homes and commercial properties. That has homeowners hopping mad, naturally, and Gov. Greg Abbott has formed a commission charged with looking at how to further cap property taxes.
”Meanwhile, no one seems to have stopped to ask: What happens when the real estate values cool off, and the supply of money from homeowners taps out? When is the state going to start upping the share it pays?…
”What’s scary is that the lower the state’s percentage gets, the more underfunded our schools will be, and the harder it will be to fix. This is all made worse because in 2011 the Legislature took a giant cleaver to the school budget and trimmed $5.6 billion right off the top; it has been climbing out of that hole ever since…
”If the courts can’t — or won’t — step in, and lawmakers are too busy talking about bathrooms, who else is going to be heard? How else is anything going to be changed?”
The Legislature was completely transfixed by debate over a bill to prohibit transgender students to use the bathrooom of their choice. So school finance reform was ignored.
“It’s too bad that the Texas Legislature met last year, and has missed the wildfire spreading out from West Virginia. Maybe what the lawmakers needed most was a reminder to get their minds out of the bathroom stalls and back on the urgent need to improve and adequately fund public schools in Texas.
”We can only hope that by the time state lawmakers meet in 2019, teachers here will be ready to make their voices heard, too.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education and commented:
As much as I and other teachers in the State of Texas would like to force a work stoppage. This article outlines why we won’t.
https://www.texastribune.org/2018/04/05/texas-public-school-teachers-strike-union-oklahoma/
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New York teachers have the punitive Taylor law against striking teachers. Teachers are fined two days for each day on strike. Texas’ law is much more punitive. To avoid a walk-out, teachers in New York have picketed before and after school. It helped to get the attention of parents and community members picking up and dropping off students. The other action New York teachers have tried is called “work to rule,” in which teachers only work contract hours with no voluntary participation outside of the school day. This is tricky because most teachers want to do their best for their students.
Maybe in Texas the teachers should picket in Austin at the state house after school since it is the state that is cutting funding and being unreasonable. None of these actions is as effective as work stoppage. Teachers should also look for grounds to sue the state for failure to adequately fund education.
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The best thing teachers in Texas can do is delay the start of school. We have “state sick days” at the beginning of school, up to 10. For 10 days of sickness and gridlocking Austin we might be able to send a message.
The unfortunate reality is that they know what to do, they just chose not to do it. The fine leadership of little dan patrick and his desire for vouchers. Misplaced priorities.
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SUE the state. yes.
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The traditional media in the United States has a “long” history of bias that leans toward one political camp or another but that bias doesn’t mean they deliberately lie like many of the Fox alleged news shows or script what their puppet talking heads can say like the Sinclare Broadcast Group does. Fox and Sinclare are propaganda mills. Most of the traditional media are not propaganda mills that deliberately lie. Bias does not mean the same thing that the definition of a lie does.
A liberal or conservative media bias doesn’t mean they don’t occasionally run a piece that favors the other camp.
Definitions:
bias = prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair.
lie = noun
1. a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.
Synonyms: prevarication, falsification.
Examples:
Donald Trump is a deliberate serial liar … lies flow from his twitter fingers and mouth like water over Niagra Falls. Liars never admit they are liars.
The New York Times admits it is a liberal paper (with a liberal bias) but that doesn’t mean the New York Times deliberately lies on its news pages but maybe in some of its Op-Ed pieces, but the NYT will also run conservative Op-Ed pieces because the NYT has moderate conservatives on its editorial and reporter staff too. The difference here is the NYT does not hide the fact that they are a liberal paper so we can expect a bias but should not accept any outright lies masquerading as factual truths.
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