Teachers go on strike in Oklahoma and Kentucky
Arizona might be next state to see educator walkouts.
Thousands of teachers in Oklahoma and Kentucky walked off the job Monday morning, shutting down school districts as they protested cuts in pay, benefits and school funding in a movement that has grown in force since igniting in West Virginia earlier this year.
The wave of strikes in red states, mainly organized by ordinary teachers on Facebook, has caught lawmakers and sometimes the teachers’ own labor unions flatfooted. The protesters say they are fed up with years of education funding cuts and stagnant pay in Republican-dominated states.
In Oklahoma City, where protesting teachers were gathering at the Capitol on Monday morning, Katrina Ruff, a local teacher, carried a sign that read, “Thanks to West Virginia.”
“They gave us the guts to stand up for ourselves,” she said.
The next red state domino to fall could be Arizona. On March 28, thousands of teachers gathered in Phoenix to demand a 20 percent pay raise and more funding for schools.
As the movement has gained momentum, it has also grown more ambitious.
Striking West Virginia teachers declared victory last month after winning a 5 percent raise, but Oklahoma educators are holding out for more.
Last week, the Legislature in Oklahoma City voted to provide teachers with an average raise of $6,000 per year, or a roughly 16 percent raise, depending on
experience. Gov. Mary Fallin, a Republican, signed the package into law.
But teachers said it was not enough. They have asked for a $10,000 raise, as well as additional funding for local schools and raises for support staff such as bus drivers and custodians.
About 200 of the state’s 500 school districts shut down Monday as teachers walked out, defying calls from some parents and administrators for them to be grateful about what they had already received from the state.
To pay for the raise, politicians from both parties agreed to increase production taxes on oil and gas, the state’s most prized industry, and institute new taxes on tobacco and motor fuel. It was the first new revenue bill to become law in Oklahoma in 28 years, bucking decades of tax-cut orthodoxy.
In Kentucky, teachers are protesting a pension reform bill that abruptly passed the State House and Senate last week. If Gov. Matt Bevin signs it into law, it will phase out defined-benefit pensions for teachers and replace them with hybrid retirement plans that combine features of a traditional pension with features of the 401(k) accounts used in the private sector. Teachers in the state are not eligible for Social Security benefits.
Andrew Beaver, 32, a middle school math teacher in Louisville, Ky., said he was open to changes in teacher retirement programs, such as potentially asking teachers to work to an older age before drawing down benefits; currently, some Kentucky teachers are eligible for retirement around age 50. But he said he and his colleagues, many of whom have called in sick to protest the bill, were angry about not having a seat at the negotiation table with Bevin, a Republican, and the Republican majority in the Legislature.
“What I’m seeing in Louisville is teachers are a lot more politically engaged than they were in 2015 or 2016,” Beaver said. “It really is a wildfire.”
In Arizona, teachers are agitating for more generous pay and more money for schools after watching the state slash funds to public education for years.
“We’re going to continue to escalate our actions,” said Noah Karvelis, an elementary school music teacher in Tolleson, Ariz., outside Phoenix, and leader of the movement calling itself #RedforEd, after the red T-shirts protesting teachers are wearing across the country. “Whether that ultimately ends in a strike? That’s certainly a possibility. We just want to win.”
Karvelis, 23, said teachers would not walk out of class unless they were able to win support from parents and community members across the state, including in rural areas. But he said the movement would be influential regardless of whether it shuts down schools.
“We’re going to have a lot of teachers at the ballot box who I don’t think would normally go in a midterm year,” he said. “If I were a legislator right now, I’d be honestly sweating bullets.”
Lily Eskelsen García, president of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, called the movement an “education spring.”
“This is the civics lesson of our time,” she said. “The politicians on both sides of the aisle are rubbing the sleep out of their eyes.”