Major school districts in North Carolina have decided to close school on May 16, when teachers will mass in the State Capitol. That is the day the General Assembly reconvenes.
There are few states in which the state legislature has been more punitive towards teachers and public schools than North Carolina.
#RedForEd rolls on.
Tens of thousands of teachers in Arizona went out on strike last Friday, demanding a restoration of deep budget cuts over the past decade and pay raises. The legislature passed a new budget today that fell short of meeting their demands.
The strike may end, for fear that teachers will lose public support if they stay out longer.
”The legislation signed by Gov. Doug Ducey (R) early Thursday did not meet all the demands initially laid out by the groups coordinating the walkout, and some teachers had hoped to keep schools closed until legislators committed to a larger budget. But it was enough progress for union leaders to recommend teachers return to the classroom and prepare for another battle later in the year….
”The budget bill gives teachers a 9 percent pay raise next year, which, combined with a 1 percent raise already given, gets them halfway to the 20 percent hike they have called for. Ducey has promised that the second installment will come by 2020, though that is not guaranteed by the package he signed.
“The plan steers bulk money to districts and gives them the discretion to dole out the raises as they see fit, meaning not all teachers will receive the same percentage pay bump. An analysis done by the Arizona Republic found that a minority of districts under the plan will not receive enough money to give all their teachers 20 percent increases.
“The bill also hikes state spending on schools by $200 million per year more than Ducey originally proposed at the start of the year. Still, it comes up well short of the walkout organizers’ demand that funding be restored to 2008 levels, adjusted for inflation.”
So…the districts will decide who gets a raise. Overall funding remains far below what it was pre-2008.
Are the Koch brothers giving each other a high-5?
Will the teachers remember in November and vote out these scoundrels?
Justin Parmenter, a teacher in North Carolina, explains that teachers in his state have good reasons to walk out, like teachers from West Virginia to Arizona. The state legislature has kept their pay low and failed to fund the schools adequately. At the same time that the Tea Party dominated legislature was administering cuts to schools and teachers, it was cutting taxes for corporations and expanding charter schools.
Consider the facts of the last several years:
The day of reckoning in North Carolina is May 16, when the Legislature reconvenes.
Expect to see teachers at the State Capitol on May 16.
They will be there to demand that North Carolina make good public education a priority.
Linda Darling-Hammond writes here about the historic protests by teachers now sweeping through red states.
She writes:
“A nation that under-educates its children in the 21st century cannot long survive as a world power. Prisons — which now absorb more of our tax resources than public higher education did in the 1980s — are filled with high school dropouts and those with low levels of literacy. We pay three times more for each prisoner than we invest in each child’s education annually. With an aging population and only three workers for every person on Social Security, the United States especially needs all young people to be well-educated enough to gain good work in the complex and rapidly changing economy they are entering. Without their ability to pay the taxes that support the rest of society, the social contract will dissolve
Teachers in North Carolina are planning to take a personal day to march in Raleigh on May 16, when the General Assembly reconvenes.
Come one, come all!
The Network for Public Education has opened early registration for the 2018 annual conference in Indianapolis, the heart of Pence ountry.
Please join us for an exciting event!
Meet education activists from across the country.
Meet your favorite bloggers.
Network with your allies.
Special rates for early registration.
The Blog for Arizona describes the inside story of the Arizona teachers’ strike and Governor Doug Ducey’s feckless efforts to stop the strike without making any concrete concessions to teachers.
“Doug Ducey, the ice cream man hired by Koch Industries to run their Southwest subsidiary formerly known as the State of Arizona, is a practitioner of propaganda over policy. He rolls out a glossy media P.R. campaign and gets his corporate benefactors to pay for advertising praising him for his P.R. campaign. The substance of the actual policy gets lost.
“Ducey did this for his #ClassroomsFirst initiative in which he declared himself to be the “education governor,” he did this to sell his unconstitutional Prop. 123 to settle the education inflation adjustment lawsuit against the state so that the state would not have to pay restitution for funds stolen by our GOP-controlled legislature, and he is doing it yet again with his #20by2020 teacher pay proposal.
“Ducey’s dark money “Kochtopus” allies in the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry started a new group called the “Arizona Education Project” and fielded a $1 million soft-sell TV ad blitz to say “Arizona schools are making progress.” Arizona “Ground Zero” for Koch Attack on Public Education. As the Arizona Daily Stareditorialized, “no number of feel-good TV spots will change the fact that Arizona comes in last, or almost last, in numerous rankings of per-pupil state spending in the nation.” Education ad campaign doesn’t change the facts.
“The “Kochtopus” Death Star, the Goldwater Institute, is now threatening school districts with lawsuits for closing during the #RedforEd teacher walkouts, no doubt on Gov. Ducey’s behalf. Goldwater Institute sends letter to schools calling Arizona teacher walkout unconstitutional. Per usual, the Goldwater Institute is full of shit and bluster. The actual point of their intimidation campaign is a reminder that “We own this state, and you will obey!
”With more than 50,000 educators and their supporters marching on the state capitol this week in a sea of red, our self-described “education governor” (sic) refused to meet with education leaders, Ducey to meet with ‘decision makers,’ not teachers to talk about salaries, and instead negotiated a “deal” with his GOP legislative leaders in a one-sided negotiation that did not include the teachers. Governor announces budget deal with teacher pay raise — but gives no details.”
Republican leaders negotiated a deal among themselves, refusing to talk to teachers. The presence of 50,000 teachers wearing #RedForEd did not earn them a seat at the table. One side talking to itself, said “Arizona Republic”columnist E.J. Montini, is not a deal. One little detail: the Republican Plan is to distribute any new funding to districts and let them decide whether to increase teachers’ salaries. Some pay raise that is!
Blog for Arizona writes:
”You have this weekend to contact your state legislators and to let them know that without new tax revenue dedicated to public education for teacher raises and to restore the billions of dollars cut by our GOP-controlled legislature over the past decade, there is no “deal.” And if they vote for this budget gimmick of “robbing Peter to pay Paul” yet again, you will be voting them out of office in November. Enough is enough.”
This is a historic moment. Teachers have walked out in West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Kentucky.
Today they walk out in Arizona and Colorado.
There will be more.
Huffington Post invited me to explain the reasons for this mass rebellion here.
I referred to the work of Bruce Baker and the Education Law Center about school funding, comparing the states. And I referred to the work of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities about the failure of many states to fund schools since the recesssion of 2008.
The bottom line: do we care about our children, our future, our society?
The spring of 2018 may well be remembered as the beginning of a mass movement by working people against the domination of corporations and the 1%.
The leadership in red states and the federal government have tilted the tax system to favor the very wealthy, while demanding sacrifices from the powerless majority.
The teachers in West Virginia were first to say “Enough!”
But they are far from last.
The ALEC-inspired Republican legislatures killed collective bargaining, and the Supreme Court in expected to hobble labor unions with the Janus decision.
But that’s not going to stop working people from organizing and demanding a fair share of the bounty that they produced.
For all of Facebook’s sins and transgressions, it has nonetheless created a way for voiceless people to organize and act. Teachers and others created collectives on Facebook and used them to mobilize for mass actions.
The teachers’ strikes were organized by grassroots efforts that began on Facebook. Powerless teachers discovered that by acting in concert, they became powerful. They have used their numbers to demand fair pay and benefits and have stood up courageously to legislatures known to be in the pockets of the oil and gas industries and other malefactors of vast wealth.
Piece by piece, day by day, as they lead us, we will recover our democracy. We will rebuild the institutions now under assault by Trumpism and its variants. The names of the leaders are not well-known. They won’t be on the covers of magazines or interviewed by late night TV hosts. They are ordinary citizens who have stepped forward to demand justice, equity, and fairness and to revive our democracy.
Tomorrow, the teachers of Arizona Walk Out.
Here is a report from the front lines by Linda Lyon, president of the Arizona School Boards Association.
She says that the state is about to be hit by the perfect haboob. A mighty storm.
Diane Ravitch's blog 