Teachers Strikes not Covered

Headline from today's The Nation

Oklahoma Teachers Strike for a 4th Day to Protest Rock-Bottom Education Funding
The state legislature has approved an increase in teacher pay, but teachers still haven’t returned to their classrooms, demanding more funding for education in a state that has slashed it dramatically—and paid the price.
By Bryce Covert 11:31 AM

Silly man!

There aren't any teachers' strikes.

#fakenews

Edgar and Coldjoint posted very similar threads complaining about their political causes not being covered by the media. Maybe we should combine them.

https://able2know.org/topic/451032-1

Oklahoma teachers carried their walkout over school funding and higher pay into a ninth day on Tuesday as a union leader declared educators had the advantage in a battle with the Republican-dominated state legislature.

Republican lawmakers said they have made major moves to boost education spending, but it may be difficult to find more money. They have approved nearly $450 million in new taxes and other revenues to help fund teachers' pay raises and boost other education spending since the walkout began on April 2.

This week they blocked a union request to approve a bill to remove a capital gains tax exemption that educators said could bring an extra $100 million to state coffers.

A nonpartisan poll released last Friday, however, showed 72 percent of responding adult voters in the state supported the walkout.

"Momentum is on our side," said Alicia Priest, president of the Oklahoma Education Association, the state's biggest teachers union.

The walkout has closed public schools serving about 500,000 of the state's 700,000 students. Schools in the state's largest cities, Oklahoma City and Tulsa, were shut on Tuesday and planned to close again on Wednesday.

The Oklahoma strike comes amid a wave of action by teachers in states where budgets have been slashed. A West Virginia strike last month ended with a pay raise for teachers.

Teachers in Arizona, also seeking higher wages and more funding for education, were set for a protest on Wednesday to build support. The protest will not shut schools, local media reports said.

Opponents of the Oklahoma tax hikes say lawmakers could bolster education spending by cutting bureaucracy and waste rather than raising taxes.

"This year's education budget, which spends $2.9 billion (a 22 percent increase), has been signed into law. I don’t anticipate that bill being changed this year," Republican Senate Majority Floor Leader Greg Treat said on Facebook ahead of this week's legislative session.

Thousands of educators packed the state Capitol on Tuesday to urge lawmakers to find money to fund a $10,000 teacher pay raise over three years. Republican lawmakers said they have enough money for a pay raise of about $6,100.

Prior to the funding increase, Oklahoma teachers were among the lowest paid in the United States.

The nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said Oklahoma's inflation-adjusted per student funding fell by 28.2 percent between 2008 and 2018, the biggest reduction of any state.

(Writing by Peter Szekely in New York; Addiitonal reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Dan Grebler)

April 10, 2018
Kentucky Teachers to Hold Sick-Out Friday Despite Threats from Governor

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-deeper-cause-behind-the-school-strikes-teachers-are-competing-with-the-elderly/2018/04/08/6877cd6c-39bd-11e8-8fd2-49fe3c675a89_story.html?utm_term=.668d3058d61c

The deeper cause behind the school strikes: Teachers are competing with the elderly

Fernando Salicrup, a graphic design teacher at Henry Snyder High School, holds a sign during a teacher strike outside the school on March 16 in Jersey City, N.J. (Julio Cortez/AP)

By Robert J. Samuelson April 8
To those paying attention, the recent strikes for higher teachers’ pay in West Virginia and Oklahoma are a harbinger of things to come. You can attribute the strikes to the stinginess of the states’ political leaders. After all, average annual teachers’ salaries in these states ranked, respectively, 49th-lowest (Oklahoma at $45,276) and 48th-lowest (West Virginia, $45,622) in 2016, reports the National Education Association. But that’s the superficial explanation. The deeper cause is that teachers — and schools — are competing with the elderly for scarce funds.

The struggle will intensify.

We all know — or should — that the United States is an aging society (the 65-and-over population was 12 percent of the total in 2000 and is projected to be 20 percent in 2040). It’s also common knowledge that spending on the elderly, mainly Social Security and Medicare, has squeezed other federal programs, inflated budget deficits and created pressures for higher taxes. What’s less well known is that similar forces now assail states and localities.

Spending on the elderly is squeezing K-12 schools, police, parks, libraries, roads and other infrastructure (water projects, sewers), mainly through two programs: (a) Medicaid, a joint state-federal program of health insurance for the poor, which pays about half of nursing-home and long- ­term-care costs for the aged and disabled (on average, states pay about 37 percent of Medicaid’s costs); and (b) contributions to underfunded pensions for state and local workers.

Here’s how the Rockefeller Institute of Government, a nonprofit think tank, assessed the situation in a 2016 report:

“In 37 states, pension contributions plus state-funded Medicaid grew by more than state and local government tax revenues between 2007 and 2014, in real per-capita terms. In response . . . state and local governments have cut infrastructure investment, slashed support for higher education, cut social benefits other than Medicaid, cut spending on K-12 education . . . and reduced most other areas of the budget.”

No doubt some legitimate savings can be achieved; and conditions vary across states and localities. Still, state and local tax revenues are growing slowly, Rockefeller reports, and virtually all the increase from 2008 to 2015 (88 percent, to be precise) was absorbed by higher pension contributions and Medicaid costs. Meanwhile, tuition at state colleges and universities rose from 29 percent of total educational revenue in 2000 to 47 percent in 2014; and per-pupil K-12 spending, adjusted for inflation, fell 5 percent from 2008 to 2014.

The squeeze will worsen. As baby boomers age, more of them will end up in nursing homes. Similarly, the Affordable Care Act included an expansion of Medicaid benefits that, so far, 33 states (including D.C.) have adopted, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The federal government initially covered all of the expansion’s cost, but this share is scheduled to fall to 90 percent in 2020. There will likely be proposals for states to pick up even more of the tab. Congressional Republicans have suggested converting the federal share to a block grant, which would probably raise states’ costs.

What should be done?

I have long advocated that Medicaid’s coverage of long-term care — the costliest part of the program — be moved into Medicare, which is fully paid by the federal government. This would break the automatic link between an aging population and the pressure on states and localities to cut non-health-care spending. It would be easier for them to set their own priorities, rather than being bound by the trajectory of health spending.

Under this proposal, the states and localities would take full responsibility for Medicaid’s coverage of children and poor adults, who represent about three-quarters of beneficiaries but only one-third of costs. This would reinforce states’ and localities’ existing responsibilities to educate and protect children through K-12 schools and traditional welfare.

To make the transfer of responsibilities budget-neutral, some federal aid programs for states and localities — transportation and K-12 education pop to mind — could be ended. The truth is that we can no longer afford overlapping bureaucracies, which are often expensive and ineffective.

Of course, this proposal stands virtually no chance of passage. Hard choices couldn’t be avoided. The underlying issue is genuinely difficult. It’s children vs. grandparents.

A sensible society would direct its governmental programs and investments toward preparing for the future. Instead, our emphasis is backward-looking, with more and more support going to the aged. On the other hand, a compassionate and caring society — a civilized society — doesn’t discard its older members just because their self-reliance and social utility have declined.

Teachers and others will continue to battle the demographics. Until we muster the courage to be candid about the choices, we will be stuck in a place we don’t want to be.

Read more from Robert Samuelson’s archive.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2018/04/12/oklahoma-teacher-walkouts-backstory/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=gs

National news stories have frequently framed the Oklahoma teacher walkout as a “red-state revolt,” a sudden explosion of dissatisfaction with education funding in the Sooner State. Such a framing is understandable. After all, who expected deep-red Oklahoma to be the site of massive protests over the state of public services? Although the “red-state revolt” framing is intuitive, it greatly oversimplifies a highly complex issue.

Author
D
Deven Carlson
Associate Professor of Political Science; Associate Director for Education, the National Institute of Risk and Resilience - University of Oklahoma
devencarlson
Education funding in Oklahoma—and the inseparable issue of teacher salaries—has been a long-simmering frustration of citizens in the state. And while the boil-over of these frustrations has garnered significant headlines, the factors that initially ignited the flame have gone largely unreported. Fully understanding the current teacher walkout requires grasping three interrelated issues: first, the history of teacher labor stoppages in the state; second, institutional rules and partisan composition of the Oklahoma legislature; and finally, prior proposals to address the issue of education funding, particularly with respect to the proposed revenue sources. The teacher walkout is the product of a collision between a fiscally conservative policy environment, citizen frustration with the state of public education, and a structural funding roadblock that has hamstrung policymakers.

The starting point for understanding the current situation in Oklahoma is April 1990, the last time teachers in the state walked off the job. Protesting low pay and poor working conditions, teachers took their case to the state Capitol and lobbied legislators to take swift action on the issue. The legislature responded by passing House Bill 1017 in fairly short order, giving teachers much of what they wanted, including higher pay, smaller class sizes, and an increase in general funding.

However, not everyone was happy with the tax increases contained in the legislation. The ink from Gov. Henry Bellmon’s signature was still drying as the backlash began to take shape. Opponents first brought a repeal effort to the voters in the form of State Question 639. When that failed by a 46-54 margin, these groups focused their efforts on requiring a 75 percent supermajority in each chamber of the Oklahoma legislature in order to increase taxes. This initiative was put to the voters as State Question 640, and it passed with the support of 56 percent of Oklahomans who voted in a low-turnout March 1992 referendum.

State Question 640 has had the effect its supporters intended. From the time the constitutional amendment took effect up through 2017, lawmakers were never once able to marshal enough support behind a revenue measure to satisfy the supermajority requirements. These requirements do not apply to revenue reductions, however, and lawmakers have regularly approved new tax credits over the past quarter century, including a major income tax reduction in the past decade.

The institutional rules governing the legislature—and the policy outcomes they facilitate—have had predictable consequences for K-12 finances in the state, with funding levels over the past 25 years either stagnant or declining, depending upon the state of the economy and, particularly, the price of oil and gas. One oft-cited statistic indicates that, on an inflation-adjusted basis, total per-pupil funding from the state declined nearly 16 percent between 2008 and 2015. The decline is even larger—28 percent—if one only considers general, or formula-based, state funding.

The funding situation has posed challenges for maintaining levels of educational quality in the state. Indeed, about 20 percent of districts in the state operate on a four-day school week, and low salaries have contributed to acute teacher shortages in some districts as qualified educators choose to seek employment in higher-paying states. Given these conditions, Oklahomans have grown increasingly dissatisfied with the level of state support for their schools.

Pessimistic that any legislative proposal to increase education dollars could meet the 75 percent supermajority requirement, education advocates took their initial efforts straight to the voters. The most prominent of these efforts, State Question 779 in the 2016 general election, would have increased the state sales tax by 1 percentage point, with the revenue earmarked for public education. Nearly 70 percent of the revenue would have been allocated to common school districts, funding teacher salary increases of at least $5,000—the remaining 30 percent would have been allocated to postsecondary education.

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State Question 779 failed, commanding support from only about 40 percent of the voters. The failure of the referendum, however, cannot simply be interpreted as voters not wanting to increase education funding, although that certainly played a role for some voters. In addition to those who opposed the initiative from the spending side, SQ779 also encountered opposition from those who opposed using the sales tax as the revenue source, particularly liberal groups concerned about regressivity and state municipalities that rely on the sales tax as their primary funding mechanism. Further, because SQ779 was not a preferred solution of elected leadership, these officeholders told voters that they would address teacher pay in the 2017 legislative session if SQ779 failed.

The 2017 legislative session came and went without any notable action on teacher pay or education funding. State lawmakers faced a budget deficit of nearly $900 million and were unable to do any more than maintain education funding at current levels. Because Oklahomans had been told that education funding would be a priority of the legislature, Gov. Mary Fallin sensed citizens’ frustration and recommended that legislators address teacher pay in a special session of the legislature in fall 2017. But once again, in part due to the supermajority requirement, the legislature gaveled out of session on Nov. 17, 2017 without taking action on teacher pay or education funding. Dissatisfied with legislators’ efforts, Fallin issued a call for a second special session, and again included the issue of teacher pay in her call—this second special session is ongoing, running concurrently with the 2018 regular legislative session.

The legislature’s inability to address education funding and teacher pay is the product of an interesting dynamic. Republicans dominate the Oklahoma legislature, holding about 75 percent of House seats and 83 percent of Senate seats, and a strong majority of the caucus supported raising revenue to increase teacher pay. However, a minority of the caucus would not vote to increase taxes under any circumstances, which meant that the GOP needed Democratic votes to meet the supermajority requirement for tax increases. In a stroke of irony, the supermajority requirement gives Democrats significant leverage in any negotiations despite their small number of seats. The Democrats have used this leverage, voting against multiple proposals to increase education funding because the revenue sources were unsatisfactory.

This dynamic put GOP leadership in a tough spot. They could maintain their inaction on education funding and continue drawing the ire of the public, or they could negotiate with Democrats to identify mutually acceptable revenue sources. After a long stalemate, the legislature came to bipartisan agreement on a set of revenue sources. Achieving a supermajority in each chamber, HB1010xx became law on March 29, 2018, increasing cigarette taxes, fuel taxes, and the gross production tax on oil and gas. The signing of HB1010xx represented the first tax increase to pass the Oklahoma legislature since the previous teacher walkout, 28 years earlier. An accompanying piece of legislation, HB1023xx, makes clear that these revenues are slated to fund teacher raises that will average about $6,000, as well as raises of about $1,250 to school support staff, and provide an additional $50 million in general education funding.

So that brings us to where we are today, in the second week of the teacher walk-out with the situation again at a stalemate. Teachers support the new revenues generated by HB1010xx, but are rightfully concerned that they are insufficient to meet the promises made in HB1023xx. Educators have indicated that the walkout will continue until the legislature takes action to fully fund HB1023xx. After all, who knows how long it will be until education is meaningfully addressed again. Fearing that it could be another 28 years, teachers feel that the time is now. Political leadership, on the other hand, feels like they’ve just completed a historic lift, and that expectations for any additional action are simply unrealistic. It remains to be seen how this will play out, but clearly the politics surrounding education in Oklahoma are much more complex than a “red-state revolt.”

My "Daughter" is one of those Teachers on strike in Oklahoma.

They are mostly trying to ignore them. At some point, a Teacher had to bring in two outdoor chairs, to school for the school children to sit on, as the majority are broken, cracks in the seats, you can imagine their bottoms. Two broke completely.

The school books are tattered there are too many kids, per teacher, the Teachers don't have time to mix a bit of fun in, as there is no room in the classrooms to do so, recreation wise.

The pay is ridiculous and off course, my "Daughter" and those that are striking, can go further inlet and obtain higher pay, I believe around $20k per year difference, but they are not striking purely on pay, they are striking for the children as well, education, equipment, funds.

I am very proud of her.

Thank you for her story. I wish I knew how it will all turn out.

Arizona teachers vote for first-ever statewide strike

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/04/arizona-teachers-vote-statewide-strike-180420075924512.html

HAPPENING NOW: Teachers are walking from Chase Field to the state capitol. https://on.kgun9.com/2HvgWNH

Georgia school bus drivers join labor revolt in public education

Robbie Brown loved her students. For 18 years, she drove them in her yellow bus to and from schools in DeKalb County, Georgia. And then, last Friday, two police officers showed up at Brown’s house with a letter. She’d been fired.

Brown is one of at least seven drivers sacked after staging a “sickout” to demand better pay and benefits. Last Thursday, nearly 400 school bus drivers and monitors in DeKalb County called in sick, aiming to pressure school district officials to boost driver pay, improve retirement packages and reclassify drivers from part-time to full-time employees. The drivers have 50 demands in all. Some paint a picture of a bus system in disrepair: Drivers say they need restrooms at parking lots, working intercom systems, air conditioning on buses. Other demands, like “fair treatment for bus drivers,” tell a story of workers who are tired of being pushed around.

While district officials say they fired “ringleaders,” drivers say plans for the sickout emerged informally, and spread by word of mouth. Drivers in DeKalb, which covers part of Atlanta, are not unionized, and as public employees in Georgia, they’re barred from collective bargaining and striking. But Brown, who’s 51, felt like she had to speak out.

https://www.scalawagmagazine.org/2018/04/georgia-school-bus-drivers-join-labor-revolt-in-public-education/

NC Association of Educators finalizes logistics as Rally for Respect could draw tens of thousands

https://www.wral.com/nc-association-of-educators-finalizes-logistics-as-rally-for-respect-could-draw-tens-of-thousands/17549157/

North Carolina teachers will be the next to walk out.

We have relatives in NC, one a retired teacher and the other works in the school system. I'll try to catch up with her tomorrow and see what she knows.