Eric Blanc wrote a book about the teachers’ strikes titled Red State Revolt: The Teachers’ Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics.
He is in Minneapolis now covering the teachers’ strike that started last Tuesday.
He writes in The Nation:
Thousands of educators are on strike in Minneapolis, two years into a pandemic that has pushed public education to a breaking point across the country. With the future of education in unprecedented limbo, the stakes are high—and not just in the Twin Cities.
Public schools were in crisis well before Covid-19. Especially in predominantly non-white, working-class school districts like Minneapolis, decades of underfunding, privatization, high-stakes testing, and low educator pay made it increasingly difficult for teachers and support staff to provide the education their students deserve.
In the Twin Cities and beyond, the past two years have reversed Red for Ed’s political momentum and exacerbated structural stressors and inequities, resulting in increased educator outflows from the profession and increased familyoutflows from public schools. By late 2021, a quarter of teachers, and almost half of Black teachers, indicated in national surveys that they were considering leaving their jobs. Over the past 18 months, Minneapolis Public Schools have lost over 640 teachers and support professionals.
Schools have lacked basic resources necessary to address students’ mental distress in the face of pandemic conditions, the police murder of George Floyd, and subsequent social unrest. In line with a growing trend of progressive unions to “bargain for the common good,” one of the Minneapolis strike’s major demands is for every school to be provided with a social worker and counselor every day, as well as increased hiring of school psychologists. “As educators, we have been saying ‘What about the kids?’ for decades,” explains Greta Callahan, president of the teachers’ chapter of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers. “And right now we’re at a place where we can no longer allow students to pay for the mistakes made by those at the top.”
Shortages of support staff, substitutes, and teachers in Minneapolis and St. Paul have deepened the difficulties of those educators who remain. This is especially the case for educational support professionals (ESPs), half of whom are people of color. “If we’re going to talk about racial justice, we have to talk about how we treat everybody in our system,” explains Shaun Laden, president of the educational support professionals’ chapter of Minneapolis Federation of Teachers. “The district doesn’t treat our members of color and our hourly workers with the dignity and respect that they deserve.” Faced with increased work burdens and a less-than-living wage—many ESPs make as low as $24,000 a year—it is not surprising that Sahan Journal found a 22 percent vacancy rate for Minneapolis ESPs, with many choosing instead to work at McDonalds or as FedEx delivery drivers. Unions are demanding that the starting pay for 90 percent of ESPs be bumped up to $35,000.
Of course, teachers are striking for higher pay but much more is involved. Open the link and read on.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The enemies of public school teachers and public education have always focused on the teachers’ demands for higher pay to make them sound greedy, and usually ignore the fact that pay is not the only demand.
Teachers want smaller class sizes.
Teachers want to get rid of high stakes tests and use teacher made tests that don’t leave the classroom as a way to improve their lessons.
Teachers want more support to help students that live in poverty and/or have learning disabilities
We could add more to this list of what teachers want to improve the schools they teach in.
Yes, pay is important since teachers have to eat and pay rent or a mortgage, too, but teachers seldom if ever only ask for a pay raise to keep up with the cost of living.
When I was teaching for thirty years in the public schools, teacher talk seldom if mentioned a pay raise. Instead, we talked about lower class sizes and being forced to and bullied to teach to those cursed worthless high stakes tests.
And the destroy public education crime syndicate never mentions how much teachers spend out of their own pockets for supplies in their classrooms and that is subtracted from their already low pay.
“Teachers spent an average of $750 on school supplies out of pocket during the 2020-2021 school year. The highest amount ever. 30% of teachers spent $1,000 or more on school supplies”
https://www.adoptaclassroom.org/2021/07/29/how-much-do-teachers-spend-on-supplies/
What’s also never mentioned by the Destroy Public Education Crime Syndicate is the fact that teachers are not paid by the hour. They are paid a monthly salary.
And studies show that teachers work more than 40 hours a week on average. Once the students are gone, that is not the end of our day.
My average during the thirty years I taught was about 80 hours a week if we count the time I spent correcting student work and planning lessons at home seven days a week and that includes the winter and spring breaks when that time away from the classroom meant more hours to catch up correcting student work and planning lessons.
When I was nearing 60 and thinking about retherming, my wife wanted me to retire at 60. i was considering a few more years to boost the retirement pay a b it more. but she said, “I want a husband, not someone sitting at the kitchen table every night working himself into an early grade on schoolwork.”
Teaching was the hardest, and most demanding job I had during the 45 years I worked, even compared to Marine Corps boot camp and combat in Vietnam, even compared to working in the private sector for 14 years before going into teaching in my 30s.
Teaching was not only physically exhausting, it was mentally and morally exhausting, too.
I have always thought, if teachers could be paid overtime the district would really go broke
You got that right.
Where’s our resident charter school proponent from St.Paul? I expected to see him here raving about the wonderfulness of charters.
Hiding in shame.
This is a felicitous month to go on strike. Teachers on the March! I am proud of my colleagues in the Twin Cities.