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Oklahoma: Will Teachers Launch a Statewide Strike like West Virginia?

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2018 //
7

 

Oklahoma’s teachers are angry. They are among the lowest paid teachers in the nation, and teacher shortages are growing as colleagues move out of the state or give up teaching for something else.

Teachers across the state are seriously considering a statewide strike. 

One teacher started a Facebook page and with a few days, 52,000 people had signed up for it.

Teachers from the state’s two urban centers gathered at a Moore public library Friday evening to weigh their participation and the timing of any such organized effort.

The meeting attended by about three dozen teachers from seven districts around the state was organized by Heather Reed, a teacher at Lee Elementary School in Oklahoma City. Reed said April 2 is the date currently under consideration because that’s “when it might hurt the most.”

“Our teachers are exhausted, tired,” Reed said.

Also in attendance was Larry Cagle, a language arts teacher at Edison Preparatory School in Tulsa.

“We are at a crossroads where either something positive happens … or we find ourselves coming back in August with a severely demoralized and depleted teaching corps,” Cagle said.

In 1990, a four-day, statewide teachers’ strike forced House Bill 1017 through the Legislature and then a vote of the people. The measure raised taxes for increased teacher compensation in exchange for a series of policy changes, including class-size limitations, mandatory kindergarten, training for school board members and parent education programs.

A new Facebook group called “Oklahoma Teacher Walkout — The Time Is Now!” (bit.ly/ thetimeisnowok) was created late last week and already has more than 52,000 members.

Interesting that this new teacher militancy is happening even as the U.S. Supreme Court is considering a case that is intended to kill teachers’ unions. Oklahoma is a “right to work” state, but that hasn’t stopped teachers from collaborating to demand higher pay and better working conditions.

 

 

Categories Oklahoma, Teacher Pay, Teacher Shortage, Teachers, Unions

How to Donate to the Strike Fund for West Virginia Teachers

By dianeravitch
March 4, 2018 //
9

Thanks to Leonie Haimson for this information.

The strike fund helps teachers survive while they forfeit their salaries to be on strike for higher wages and lower healthcare costs.

You can donate to their strike fund here: https://www.gofundme.com/wv-teachers-strike-fund

Categories Teachers, Unions, West Virginia

Send a Pizza to the Striking Teachers in West Virginia

By dianeravitch
March 4, 2018 //
26

 

I heard from a trusted union leader and she told me that there was a site where one could send money for pizzas that would be delivered to the striking teachers of West Virginia. Teachers in the state are among the lowest paid in the nation.

Stand with them.

I am sending pizzas. I hope you will join me.

Here is the site.

https://www.gofundme.com/pizzas-for-west-virginia-teachers

Categories Teachers, Unions, West Virginia

West Virginia: Teachers to Politicians: We Won’t Be Fooled

By dianeravitch
March 4, 2018 //
9

Lauren Peace, the writer of this article, which appeared in the New York Times, is a reporter in Rochester, New York.

 

Morgantown, W.Va. — The rolling hills of West Virginia, where I grew up, are home to some of my fondest memories. But time and time again, I’ve watched them serve as a backdrop to injustice and negligence by those who lead, often at the expense of a vulnerable population.

This time, it’s our schoolchildren.

At $45,622, West Virginia teachers are the 48th lowest earning in the nation, according to the National Education Association. The minimum salary is just over $32,000. After months of tension over issues including salaries and health insurance costs, the state’s public schoolteachers went on strike Feb. 22.

On Friday, our state legislators refused to take action on a bill that would, over time, give West Virginia teachers a proposed 5 percent raise, and so the statewide work stoppage continued for a seventh day, with 250,000 students out from school as a result.

Despite the loss in critical class time, the fight cannot end prematurely.

As students remain at home, and families struggle to find alternative forms of child care, teachers have to trust that West Virginians will do what West Virginians do best; lean on each other.

We’ve seen it happening already. Students turn to classmates to study for Advanced Placement exams. Neighbors offer up their homes as oases while parents are at work. But it will take more than an internal, neighborly effort to realize what the work stoppage is all about: long-term, systematic change.

It’s easy to feel like West Virginia’s teachers are gaining national momentum when the state’s name has appeared in national headlines this week. But the coverage has merely scratched the surface of a complex issue that predates these school closings. It is rooted in a history of West Virginia politicians putting the interests of outsiders looking to make a quick buck off the state’s beautiful land before the needs of the people who live on it.

We’ve seen it in flimsy safety and environmental regulations, which have resulted in the deaths of countless miners, and in the chemical spills that have plagued surrounding populations, leaving citizens without drinking water and living on poisoned land. We’ve seen it in the opioid crisis, too, where powerful drug companies made sure that pills were plenty, but options for treatment continue to be scarce.

And now we see it in education, where teachers, the single most valuable resource available to children in this state, and therefore the most powerful influence in guiding us toward a prosperous future, were presented with a health insurance plan that amounted to a pay cut, all while senators, who receive hefty checks from gas and energy companies, could have funded education needs had they passed a modest tax increase on these companies.

This isn’t the first time West Virginia teachers have demonstrated statewide unity. In 1990, an 11-day work stoppage over similar issues led to better wages, but the increase was temporary.

That’s why when James C. Justice, our Republican governor, announced Tuesday that he had reached an agreement with union leaders and told teachers to go back to work, with nothing more than a good-faith handshake, those on the ground thought better of it.

Despite top-down orders from their union leaders to return to classes, county by county, teachers got together. They met in public spaces and communicated diligently with their neighbors, and on Wednesday night, the teachers of all 55 counties made the decision, collectively, to extend the work stoppage on their own terms.

They kept schools closed on Thursday and Friday, and say they will continue the strike until the Senate passes the proposed raise; 55 counties united, shouting “this time will be different.”

“Over the course of Wednesday, you saw every single county in the state just clawing to get back together, and we did it,” said Kat Devlin, an English teacher at University High School in Morgantown. “This is the prime example of a grass-roots movement. It’s the teachers and the people on the ground making this happen.”

This is about more than livable wages. It’s about haves and have-nots, it’s about workers’ dignity, and it’s going to set the bar for labor organizers everywhere.

The teachers of West Virginia are leading the way with a conviction that should be a national example for challenging inequity.

When they get back into their classrooms, hopefully sooner rather than later, they must talk to their students about how, under intense pressure, and with little more than the support they found in each other, they fought for what was right, and they were heard.

Lauren Peace (@LaurenMPeace) is a reporter at the Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester.

Categories Teacher Pay, Teachers, Unions, West Virginia

Florida: Senate Approves Bill to Punish Teachers’ Union

By dianeravitch
March 4, 2018 //
31

 

At a time when teachers in Parkland proved that they are braver than armed guards, the Florida Senate struck a blow at the union that represents the state’s teachers. One senses the ugly hands of Jeb Bush and his consigliere, Patricia Levesque, behind the scenes.

“The Senate on Friday narrowly defeated an effort to eliminate part of a major education bill that could force teachers’ unions to disband if they don’t meet new membership standards.

“In a 21-17 vote, the Senate rejected a proposed amendment by Sen. Perry Thurston, D-Fort Lauderdale, that would have removed the controversial provision from the bill (HB 7055). The provision could cause teachers’ unions to lose their state certification if their membership falls below 50 percent of the employees they represent in the collective-bargaining process. If decertified, a union would have to reorganize and seek another majority vote from the members they are seeking to represent.

“Thurston said the provision was singling out teachers among all unions and that there is already a decertification process in state law that would allow teachers to disband a union if they were unhappy with the representation.

“It’s not right that we say teachers are the only ones we are going to punish,” Thurston said.”

Maybe it is time for a statewide teachers strike in Florida.

The articulate students at Parkland should speak out for the teachers who saved their lives. Name the bill for the teachers who lost their lives shielding students.

Start a fund to defeat the senators who voted for this bill. I want to contribute.

This is an outrage.

 

 

 

Categories Education Reform, Florida, Teachers, Unions

West Virginia: Why Teachers Are Still Striking

By dianeravitch
March 2, 2018 //
15

 

In this article, a teacher in West Virginia explains why teachers decided not to end their statewide strike. Promises from politicians are worthless. They want action.

Here is the interview. Go online to open the links.

“Public schools in West Virginia were closed for a sixth day on Thursday, as teachers striking over health care costs and pay largely rebuffed a deal this week between Gov. James C. Justice and union leadership aimed at getting them back to school.

Mr. Justice has ordered a task force to examine health care costs and the State House passed a bill raising wages by 5 percent. But with the bill’s fate in doubt in the Senate and scant details on health care funding, many teachers remained angry, and they flooded back to the Capitol, wearing red and black, to protest on Wednesday and Thursday.

We spoke on Wednesday night with Katie Endicott, 31, a high school English teacher from Gilbert, W.Va., about why she and many other teachers are not yet prepared to return to school. The interview has been edited and condensed.

What are the origins of the strike?

They told us that essentially if you weren’t a single person, if you had a family plan, your health insurance was going to rise substantially. As a West Virginia teacher — and I’ve been teaching 10 years — I only clear right under $1,300 every two weeks, and they’re wanting to take $300 more away for me. But they tell me it’s O.K., because we’re going to give you a 1 percent pay raise. That equals out to 88 cents every two days.

They implemented Go365, which is an app that I’m supposed to download on my phone, to track my steps, to earn points through this app. If I don’t earn enough points, and if I choose not to use the app, then I’m penalized $500 at the end of the year. People felt that was very invasive, to have to download that app and to be forced into turning over sensitive information.

Go365 was thrown out. Of course they decided to give a freeze [on insurance rates], and I think people thought that might be enough. But we understand that this is an election year. They can freeze it right now, but what happens after the election? The feeling is, we have to get this fixed, and we have to get it fixed now.

What compelled you to strike?

I take care of the bills in my family and knew I can’t afford it, I can’t. I have two children, I live paycheck to paycheck. When I realized that they were taking hundreds of dollars and then they tried to tell me they were giving me a pay raise of 1 percent, I knew I can’t just sit back. I can’t be complacent, something has to change.

We went to the Capitol on Feb. 2, we stood in solidarity, and they would not talk to us.

When we walked out of there, my husband looked at me and he said, “I feel so defeated.” They didn’t listen to anything that we had to say.

We were just walking silently from the Capitol and one teacher said, “Guys, we’re really going to have to strike.” At that point, I knew.

What was it like to leave your classroom?

I teach seniors and 10th graders, my kids are aware of everything that’s going on. I’m the pep club leader at my school, the prayer club leader, on the prom committee. My first period senior class, I started crying and I said, “Guys, I legitimately don’t know when I will be back.” I have an A.P. exam on May 9, and that is not going to change.

We have been having local rallies as well as going to the Capitol. Our son is a little confused because we’ve been wearing bunny ears because the governor called us dumb bunnies. He’s been telling everyone that if his mommy and daddy are dumb bunnies he’s a dumb bunny, too. He insists on wearing bunny ears in public like we’ve been doing at the protests.

[Tuesday] was my day to be at a local rally. I was at that rally for approximately three hours. I got in the vehicle with colleagues, we drove several hours to Charleston to the Capitol. There was music playing, the crowd was singing “Country Roads.” It was really amazing to see all the educators come. So many people were there. Students were there. People brought their kids.

How did you feel after the deal was announced?

Initially a lot of people around me were very happy, because we thought we won. I was excited. And then the union leaders came out and talked to us and we realized really quickly we did not win anything. The crowd turned very angry very quickly. Just because the governor suggests a 5 percent pay raise doesn’t mean it’s going through.

Now they’re saying you get 5 percent and well P.E.I.A. [the public insurance offered to teachers and state employees] is still frozen. At that point the crowd starts chanting, “A freeze is not a fix.” Everybody was very angry, very angry that we were told to go back to the classroom when we felt like had not achieved what we set out to achieve.

Our county said we would not be returning to the classroom. We did not want to go back with a promise. We wanted it signed, sealed and delivered. We wanted it to be fulfilled, not just empty words. We knew that if we went back and there were not details of a plan and a true commitment, then we could easily lose everything.

Where do you think the protest goes from here? What do you hope to achieve?

They are telling us that P.E.I.A. cannot be fixed overnight. While we understand that, simply saying there will be a task force is not enough. We need to know who is going to be on this task force. We need specific details about how this is going to be fixed.

The governor mentioned, I think, three different sources of possible revenue to fix it. Which one? How much? We feel like the plan is too ambiguous right now. We need to know.

West Virginia has a long history of protest. How does this strike fit into that?

We know that we come from these mountains and we are strong and we have pride and we love this state. We come from an area that is known for standing up for what they believe in. The union wars, they originated in the south in Mingo County.

We believe we’re following in their footsteps. We believe the movement was started years ago through the mine wars. We’re just reviving the movement that was started years ago.

Categories Resistance, Unions, West Virginia

West Virginia: Teachers Strike Across the State for Pay, Health Care

By dianeravitch
February 22, 2018 //
14

 

West Virginia teachers went out on strike across the state, closing down every public school.

“Teachers across West Virginia walked off the job Thursday amid a dispute over pay and benefits, causing more than 277,000 public school students to miss classes even as educators swarmed the state Capitol in Charleston to protest.

“All 55 counties in the state closed schools during Thursday’s work stoppage, Alyssa Keedy, a spokeswoman for the state’s Department of Education, said.
 “Work stoppages by public employees are not lawful in West Virginia and will have a negative impact on student instruction and classroom time,” West Virginia Superintendent of Schools Steven Paine said in a statement this week. “Families will be forced to seek out alternative safe locations for their children, and our many students who depend on schools for daily nutrition will face an additional burden. I encourage our educators to advocate for the benefits they deserve, but to seek courses of action that have the least possible disruption for our students.”

“Data from the National Education Association show that in 2016, West Virginia ranked 48th in average teacher salaries. Only Mississippi, Oklahoma and South Dakota sat below it in the rankings, which included 50 states and the District.

Categories Teacher Pay, Unions, West Virginia

Norm Hill: Dr. Martin Luther King’s Last Crusade: For Sanitation Workers in Memphis

By dianeravitch
February 22, 2018 //
21

Trump, DeVos, and other Republican enemies of a good and decent society falsely claim to be leading “the civil rights movement of our time,” that is, for vouchers and charters and school choice and against teachers’ unions. It is worthwhile to remember why Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was in Memphis on the day he was assassinated. He was fighting for the city’s sanitation workers. They were ill-paid and worked in dangerous conditions. They wanted to form a union to demand their rights. He was there to help them.

Norm Hill was a close associate of Dr. King. He was with him in Memphis on the day he was murdered.

He tells the story here. 

He reminds us that “at the 1961 AFL-CIO convention, King warned that black people should be skeptical of anti-union forces, noting that the “labor-hater and race-baiter is virtually always a twin-headed creature spewing anti-Negro epithets from one mouth and anti-labor propaganda from the other.”

Organized labor is under attack today. The far right wants to obliterate it. They want all workers to be part of the “gig” economy, with no pensions, no benefits, no collective bargaining, no representation. Voucher schools do not have unions; they are free to discriminate against students and staff. Let us not forget that more than 90% of charter schools are non-union, which explains why the anti-union Walton Family Foundation, the Koch brothers, the DeVos family, and ALEC are devoted to opening more charter schools. They are not interested in better education or civil rights. They want to break the last powerful unions: the AFT and the NEA.

Dr. King understood that powerless workers need unions to fight for them.

Hill ends like this:

While Memphis Mayor Henry Loeb continued to oppose the unionization of the sanitation workers, in the end, his opposition was overridden by the city council that felt the pressure from mounting constituent complaints about tons of garbage reeking in their streets.

Success.

Yet, on the 50th anniversary of the Memphis sanitation workers strike, organized labor faces new and powerful challenges. For example, the case of Janus v. AFSCME, which the U.S. Supreme Court is taking up, raises whether unions have the fundamental right to expect public workers they represent to pay union dues. The matter is likely to be decided this year. The implications of a decision, for obvious reasons, could be profound regarding public sector unions like, for instance, the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of Teachers, affecting millions of workers.

In response to a White House and far right that appears determined to not only turn back the clock — but break it — regarding organized labor in America, arises a new necessity. We must, following the example of Randolph and Dr. King, harness an emerging coalition of progressive forces that today must include not only traditional civil rights and labor groups, but also Black Lives Matter, and the #MeToo and related women’s movements.

At the same time, demonstrations of this collective power must be felt at the ballot box nationwide, especially as midterm elections draw near.

Randolph left us an indelible blueprint for action when he said, “At the banquet table of nature, there are no reserved seats. You get what you can take, and you keep what you can hold. If you can’t take anything, you won’t get anything, and if you can’t hold anything, you won’t keep anything. And you can’t take anything without organization.”

 

Categories Civil Rights, Unions

Florida: Stop This Horrible Legislation!

By dianeravitch
February 5, 2018 //
2

 

 

This just in from the Florida Education Association

 

CONTACT: Sharon Nesvig 850.201.2833 or 850.510.9346

Florida Education Association Launches Media Campaign against HB 7055

Tallahassee—Today, the state’s largest teacher’s union launched a media blitz intended to stop HB 7055 – a massive education omnibus bill being pushed by Speaker Corcoran; the second such measure in two years. The bill attempts to logroll nearly five dozen statutes and numerous bills into one giant mess, with virtually no public input or open legislative hearings.

“This monstrosity is a clear attempt to destroy our public schools while telling professional educators they simply are not welcome in Florida,” said Joanne McCall, President of the FEA, “Today we are asking lawmakers to stand up to Speaker Corcoran and for our children, for our teachers and for our public schools. We are asking them to say ‘enough is enough’.”

The campaign features a 30-second video titled, “The Swamp” which highlights the problems with Corcoran’s anti-student, anti-school, and anti-teacher measure:

It’s an attack on Florida families.

House bill 7055 is another Tallahassee assault on our local public schools.

Political insider Richard Corcoran has a plan to divert even more of our tax dollars to unaccountable private schools while slashing the pay of even our best teachers.

His bully bill wastes more money on failed programs while our schools starve, and our children suffer.

It’s time to drain the swamp…and we know just where to begin.

You may view the ad here: https://youtu.be/0CbkGMTwxvE

McCall also added, “There are so many things wrong with HB 7055, it’s hard to know where to begin except to say it takes even more tax dollars out of our public schools and diverts them into unaccountable failed private schools while punishing good teachers. If we hope to attract talent to or grow high quality jobs in our state, how can we do that as we tear apart our public schools?”

# # #

The Florida Education Association is the state’s largest association of professional employees, with more than 140,000 members. FEA represents pre K-12 teachers, higher education faculty, educational staff professionals, students at our colleges and universities preparing to become teachers and retired education employees.

Categories Education Industry, Florida, Privatization, Teachers and Teaching, Unions

Jennifer Berkshire: How Education Reform Ate the Democratic Party

By dianeravitch
November 27, 2017 //
93

This is one of the best pieces I have read about the pernicious effects of “education reform” on the the Democratic Party. I have consistently argued that the Democrats triangulated so far during the Clinton administration that they blurred the distinct lines between the parties, then ended up supporting the Republican policies of testing, accountability, and choice, which previously they abhorred.

Jennifer Berkshire here fills in the details with her sharp eye and wit. So thoroughly have Democrats joined with Republicans in demonizing teachers and unions, that there is hardly a dime’s worth of difference between them on education issues. Things have gotten so bad that one Democrat espousing privatization recently co,pare the teachers unions to Alabama governor George Wallace, blocking children as they try to escape public schools to enter charter nirvana.

She writes:

“To begin to chronicle the origin of the Democrats’ war on their own—the public school teachers and their unions that provide the troops and the dough in each new campaign cycle to elect the Democrats—is to enter murky territory. The Clintons were early adopters; tough talk against Arkansas’s teachers, then among the poorest paid in the country, was a centerpiece of Bill’s second stint as Governor of Arkansas. As Hillary biographer Carl Bernstein recounts, the Arkansas State Teachers Association became the villain that cemented the couple’s hold on the Governor’s mansion—the center of their Dick Morris-inspired “permanent campaign.” The civil rights language in which the Democratic anti-union brigade cloaks itself today was then nowhere to be heard, however. And little wonder: Civil rights groups fiercely opposed the most controversial feature of the Clintons’ reform agenda—competency tests for teachers—on the grounds that Black teachers, many of whom had attended financially starved Black colleges, would disproportionately bear their brunt.

“Hillary made the cause her personal crusade in 1983, trotting out anecdote after anecdote about teachers she’d heard about who couldn’t add or read. The reform package passed, cementing Bill’s reputation as a new breed of Democratic governor, one who wasn’t afraid to take on entrenched interests in order to tackle tough problems. “Anytime you’re going to turn an institution upside down, there’s going to be a good guy and a bad guy,” recalls Clinton campaign manager Richard Herget. “The Clintons painted themselves as the good guys. The bad guys were the schoolteachers.”

“By the early 1980s, there was already a word for turning public institutions upside down: neoliberalism. Before it degenerated into a flabby insult, neoliberal referred to a self-identified brand of Democrat, ready to break with the tired of dogmas of the past. “The solutions of the thirties will not solve the problems of the eighties,” wrote Randall Rothenberg in his breathless 1984 paean to this new breed, whom he called simply The Neoliberals. His list of luminaries included the likes of Paul Tsongas, Bill Bradley, Gary Hart and Al Gore (for the record, Gore eschewed the neoliberal label in favor of something he liked to call “neopopulism”). In Rothenberg’s telling, the ascendancy of the neoliberals represented an economic repositioning of the Democratic Party that had begun during the economic crises of the 1970s. The era of big, affirmative government demanding action—desegregate those schools, clean up those polluted rivers, enforce those civil rights and labor laws—was over. It was time for fresh neo-ideas.

“Redistribution and government intervention were out; investment and public-private partnerships were the way to go. Neoliberal man (there are no women included in Rothenberg’s account) was also convinced that he had found the answer to the nation’s economic malaise: education, or as he was apt to put it, investment in human capital. “Education equals growth is a neoliberal equation,” writes Rothenberg.

“But this new cult of education wasn’t grounded in John Dewey’s vision of education-as-democracy, or in the recent civil-rights battles to extend the promise of public education to excluded African-American communities. No, these bold, results-oriented thinkers understood that in order to fuel economic growth, schools had to be retooled and aligned in concert with the needs of employers. The workers of the future would be prepared to compete nimbly in the knowledge-based post-industrial society of the present, For the stragglers still trapped in older, industrial-age models of enterprise and labor, re-training—another staple of the neoliberal vision—would set them on the path to greater prosperity….

“Today’s Democratic school reformers—a team heavy on billionaires, pols on the move, and paid advocates for whatever stripe of fix is being sold—depict their distaste for regulation, their zeal for free market solutions as au courant thinking. They rarely acknowledge their neoliberal antecedents. The self-described radical pragmatists at the Progressive Policy Institute, for instance, got their start as Bill Clinton’s policy shop, branded as the intellectual home for New Democrats. Before its current push for charter schools, PPI flogged welfare reform. In fact, David Osborne, the man so fond of likening teacher unions to arch segregationists in the south, served as Al Gore’s point person for “reinventing government.” Today the model for Osborne’s vision for reinventing public education is post-Katrina New Orleans—where 7,500 mostly Black school employees were fired en route to creating the nation’s first nearly all-charter-school-system, wiping out a pillar of the city’s Black middle class in the process.”

Read the article.

It brilliantly describes how Democrats attacked their own base, embraced Republican ideas, and merged their thinking with that of Republicans. A sure-fire recipe for disaster, since Republicans are so much better at being Republicans than Democrats are. You can’t win by destroying your base.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats, Democrats for Education Reform, Deregulation, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Republicans, School Choice, Teachers, Unions
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