logo
    • Magazine
    • Membership
    • Donate
  • Racial Justice
  • Economic Justice
    • Collections
  • Climate Justice
  • Health Justice
  • Leadership
  • CONTENT TYPES
  • Subscribe
  • Webinars
    • Upcoming Webinars
    • Complimentary Webinars
    • Premium On-Demand Webinars
  • Membership
  • Submissions

Teacher Walkouts Bring “Education Spring” to the Nation’s Heartland

Erin Rubin
April 3, 2018
Share
Tweet
Share
Email
Print
“Teacher Strike! Argh…” by Darin McClure

April 2, 2018; New York Times

Teachers in Oklahoma, Arizona, and Kentucky are following West Virginia’s lead and striking for better pay and education funding. Leading the effort are young, activist-inspired colleagues, who have had enough with low pay and deteriorating working conditions.  As Dana Goldstein writes in the New York Times, “pent-up rage over years of pay freezes and budget cuts” is fueling the walkouts.

The only surprising thing about the Oklahoma teachers’ strike is that it’s taken so long to get here. NPQ reported in August on the miserable state of Oklahoma’s school system. With a state $900 million in debt and the second-lowest teacher pay in the nation, the Sooner State was relying on community supports like the Kaiser Foundation to help keep teachers working in the state. Even that was not enough, and over 1,400 positions were filled by “emergency certified” teachers, whom Newcastle superintendent Tony O’Brien described as “upright and breathing.” Nearly 20 percent of schools switched to four-day weeks to cut costs, even though pay was so low that some teachers were donating plasma to pay their bills.

NPQ’s Marty Levine reported in 2016 that “between 1996 and 2015, after adjusting for inflation, public school teachers saw their pay decrease by $30 a week while the weekly pay for college graduates overall grew by more than $100.” Oklahoma’s teachers are striking for a $20,000 raise and an increase in funding for buses, custodians, and textbooks. According to Vox,

Last week, Oklahoma legislators passed a $447 million compromise to boost teacher pay and school funding by raising taxes on oil production, diesel fuel, and cigarettes. But that was only a fraction of the $3.3 billion requested by the teachers, and the Oklahoma Education Association—the professional educators’ group that is leading negotiations—rejected the deal.

Jami Cole, a third-grade teacher, said the bill “just broke my heart.” Alberto Morejon, the 25-year-old middle school social studies teacher who started a Facebook group to organize the walkout, had a different approach; he said, “They had to make us go to the extreme and now they’re just trying to throw a Band-Aid on it and it’s just not going to work.” As of Monday night, Morejon’s Facebook group had over 61,000 members.

Noah Karvelis, an elementary school music teacher in Arizona and leader of the movement calling itself #RedforEd (because of the red t-shirts worn by protestors), said, “Our unions have been weakened so much that a lot of teachers don’t have faith.” That situation is not likely to improve after the Supreme Court decides the Janus case, which many fear will weaken labor unions across the country. Should Janus be decided against the unions, public sector unions throughout the US could be forced to operate under so-called “right to work” rules, which compel unions to provide services to all workers, whether or not they pay dues. Such a decision would both weaken unions economically and also could have major political effects. A Nation article cited a recent Brookings study that found that nationally “Right-to-work laws decreased Democratic presidential vote share by 3.5 percent.”

Sign up for our free newsletters

Subscribe to NPQ's newsletters to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

By signing up, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of use, and to receive messages from NPQ and our partners.

The unions supported the teachers while steering clear of directly organizing the wildcats. Wildcat strikes have come back into favor in recent years, spurred by the fact that unions through collective bargaining often lack the power to negotiate the wages and working conditions their members believe they deserve.  National Education Association Vice President Becky Pringle joined protestors in Kentucky, saying:

You are in the front of the lines to ensure your students have the kind of education that inspires their imaginations and unleashes their brilliance. So, don’t be shy about your business. Don’t be afraid of your power. My question this morning to you is, “What are you prepared to do?”

NEA President Lily Eskelsen García added, “This is a man-made crisis…You are part of a movement that cannot be stopped.” García dubbed the movement America’s “education spring” and added that the walkouts are “the civics lesson of our time.”

Other nonprofits have stepped in to help support the teachers by providing services to students that they would normally get in school. Over 400,000 Oklahoma students get free or reduced priced lunches, for instance, so food banks stocked up to help fill the gaps while schools were closed. The Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy offered to serve as an information checkpoint for parents looking for services.

Even the students joined in. Raylynn Thomas, 16, whom the Washington Post described as a “top student,” said her history book stopped with Barack Obama’s inauguration and the ceiling of her classroom leaked onto the desks in the rain. “It’s just making it really hard for me to go school,” she said, so she got on a bus to join her teachers at the capital.

Across the country, we are seeing a pattern of young people taking charge of their communities and leading the way to the change that many others hope for; the upsurge in labor activism is related to the rise of social justice movements nationally. Of course, such activism is not without risk. For example, the young activists leading the #BlackLivesMatter and other protest movements centered on racial justice have often been portrayed negatively in the press and have sometimes been victims of attempts at reform. The teachers in Oklahoma face risks, too. As a local Oklahoma teacher’s union president acknowledges, a walkout is a test of nerves—and people’s paychecks are very much on the line. There’s a reason that a former national steelworker president titled his memoirs One Day Longer. Still, the teachers are going into this, eyes wide open. After years of debate about school reform, school choice, teacher assessment, and other buzzword solutions, teachers are weighing in, signs in hand.—Erin Rubin

Share
Tweet
Share
Email
Print
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Erin Rubin

Erin Rubin was an assistant editor at the Nonprofit Quarterly, where she was in charge of online editorial coordination and community building. Before joining NPQ, in 2016, Erin worked as an administrator at Harvard Business School and as an editorial project manager at Pearson Education, where she helped develop a digital resource library for remedial learners. Erin has also worked with David R. Godine, Publishers, and the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers. As a creative lead with the TEDxBeaconStreet organizing team, she worked to help innovators and changemakers share their groundbreaking ideas and turn them into action.

More about: Nonprofit NewsTeacher protests and strikes

Become a member

Support independent journalism and knowledge creation for civil society. Become a member of Nonprofit Quarterly.

Members receive unlimited access to our archived and upcoming digital content. NPQ is the leading journal in the nonprofit sector written by social change experts. Gain access to our exclusive library of online courses led by thought leaders and educators providing contextualized information to help nonprofit practitioners make sense of changing conditions and improve infra-structure in their organizations.

Join Today
logo logo logo logo logo
See comments

NPQ_Winter_2022Subscribe Today
You might also like
Teacher Shortages Grow as Many Choose to Leave
Martin Levine
Teachers Authorize Strikes if Reopenings Lack Proper Precautions
Ruth McCambridge
US Colleges and Universities Reveal a Range of Plans for Reopening
Marian Conway
Faculty Vote Calls on Harvard to Divest All Fossil Fuel Assets
Steve Dubb
Montréal Professor Resigns His Position to Take a Stand for the Climate
Steve Dubb
Chicago Teacher Strike Continues as District and Union Remain Far Apart
Martin Levine

Upcoming Webinars

Remaking the Economy

Black Food Sovereignty, Community Stories

Register Now
You might also like
AOC’s “Tax the Rich” Dress Dazzles Met Gala, while...
Anastasia Reesa Tomkin
Foundation Giving Numbers for 2020 Show 15 Percent Increase
Steve Dubb
Strike MoMA Imagines Art Museums without Billionaires
Tessa Crisman

Like what you see?

Subscribe to the NPQ newsletter to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

See our newsletters

By signing up, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of use, and to receive messages from NPQ and our partners.

Independent & in your mailbox.

Subscribe today and get a full year of NPQ for just $59.

subscribe
  • About
  • Contact
  • Advertise
  • Copyright
  • Careers

We are using cookies to give you the best experience on our website.

 

Non Profit News | Nonprofit Quarterly
Powered by  GDPR Cookie Compliance
Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.