Tag Archives: education crisis

Chicago Teachers Go On Strike, Capping Years Of Social Justice Activism

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From today’s NPR News Online:

For the second time in seven years, Chicago Public Schools teachers will be on strike starting Thursday, walking out of class, they say, in the name of better schools.

Gathered on the stage of the union hall on Wednesday, the Chicago Teachers Union said its delegates were in full support of moving forward with a strike. Delegates had already authorized the walkout and set a date so it would have taken a reversal to cancel the strike.

“We have not achieved what we need to bring justice and high quality schools to the children and teachers of Chicago,” said CTU President Jesse Sharkey. “We need to have the tools we need to do the job at our schools. We need pay and benefits that will give us dignity and respect. We are on strike until we can do better.”

Altogether, more than 30,000 workers will be on the picket lines. This includes 7,500 teacher aides, custodians and security guards who members of SEIU Local 73. SEIU said Wednesday evening it had rejected CPS’ contract offer and planned to strike on Thursday along with CTU.

Officials say schools will be open, with principals and other administrators supervising any children that need a place to go. They also are telling parents they can bring their children to libraries and some community organizations.

Some 300,000 students who attend district-run schools will be impacted. Another 62,000 students who attend charter and contract schools run by private organizations will not be affected.

Read the complete article here.

Striking teachers in Arizona win 19 percent raise and end walkout

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From today’s Los Angeles Times:

The Arizona governor signed a plan Thursday to give striking teachers a 19% pay raise, ending their five-day walkout after a dramatic all-night legislative session and sending more than a million public school students back to the classroom.

Gov. Doug Ducey’s signature awarded teachers a 9% raise in the fall and 5% in each of the next two years. Teachers did not get everything they wanted, but they won substantial gains from reluctant lawmakers.

Striking Arizona teachers win 19% raise, end walkout

“The educators have solved the education crisis! They’ve changed the course of Arizona,” Noah Karvelis of Arizona Educators United shouted to several thousand cheering teachers. “The change happens with us!”

Hours after Ducey acted, strike organizers called for an end to the walkout. Some schools planned to reopen Friday, with others likely to resume classes next week.

The Senate approved the pay raises just before dawn as hundreds of red-shirted teachers followed the proceedings from the lobby, many sitting on the cold stone floor.

The night before, the teachers, who are among the lowest paid in the country, held a candlelight vigil in a courtyard outside the original neoclassical Capitol building. They stood together with their right hands over their hearts and sang “America the Beautiful.”

Wrapped in blankets or sleeping bags, they napped on the ground or in folding metal chairs, occasionally using cellphones to monitor an online video stream of the legislative debate in the chambers.

Ducey said the teachers had earned a raise and praised the legislation as “a real win” for both teachers and students. The pay increases will cost about $300 million for the coming year alone.

Some teachers returned to the Capitol on Thursday as lawmakers debated the rest of the state’s $10.4 billion budget plan. Among them was Wes Oswald, a third-grade teacher from Tucson who made the two-hour drive for a sixth day.

Oswald said the budget still does not address serious issues such as the need for higher per-pupil spending, raises for support staff and a smaller-student-to-counselor ratio.

Teachers must still fight for those problems to be addressed, Oswald said, adding that “the worst thing would be for this movement to dissolve.”

Arizona Education Assn. President Joe Thomas said Thursday that educators now should focus on a campaign for a November ballot measure that would seek more education funding from an income tax increase on the wealthiest taxpayers.

“The budget is a significant investment, but it falls far short” of what the movement demanded, Thomas said.

Education cuts over the last decade have sliced deeply into Arizona’s public schools. Teachers wanted a return to pre-recession funding levels, regular raises, competitive pay for support staff and a pledge not to adopt any tax cuts until per-pupil funding reaches the national average.

Read the complete article here.

Teachers’ strikes: meet the leaders of the movement marching across America

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From today’s The Guardian:

When teachers in West Virginia went on strike in February, there was little indication that a swath of other states would follow suit.

But that action in the Appalachian state, which resulted in teachers winning a 5% pay rise, has spurred on educators in Oklahoma, Kentucky and Arizona.

Teachers in Oklahoma have been on strike since 2 April, while school districts have also walked out in Kentucky. In Arizona, teachers are demanding a 20% pay rise and could go on strike at the end of April.

In some states the protests are being driven from the bottom up, rather than by unions, as teachers and school districts take matters into their own hands.

Here are some of the leaders of the teachers’ strike movement.

Cindy Gaete is a 25-year-old teacher at Marshall elementary school in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The daughter of Chilean immigrants, she is currently the only Spanish speaker in her school, which is nearly a third Latino.

She says it is frustrating that in addition to her teaching duties that the lack of Spanish speakers means that any time the schools needs to communicate with parents that she has to serve as translator.

“The first thing I told my principal when I got hired is that if we are a third Latino, there should not be just one Hispanic teacher in your school,” said Gaete.

Inspired to fix her school, she helped lead a 110-mile March for Education that arrived in Tulsa from Oklahoma City.

As teachers are expected to end their strike this week, she says that it’s important for teachers like her to run for office to keep the momentum. On Saturday, Gaete decided to lead by example and file her papers to run for state representative in Oklahoma 78th house district.

“Today I start day one of my campaign for house district 78,” said Gaete in announcing her bid. “For my students. For my community. Because all students deserve an equitable educational experience, regardless of race, socio-economic status and gender.”

Read the complete article here.

Does Tenure Protect Bad Teachers or Good Schools?

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From today’s NYT “Room for Debate”:

Teacher tenure laws deprive public school students of their right to an education by making it difficult to remove bad teachers, a California judge ruled on Tuesday. The case, Vergara v. California, pressed by parents backed by a Silicon Valley millionaire, David Welch, is expected to be the first of many around the country to take on tenure.

Do tenure’s job protections prevent bad teachers from being fired or do they provide for greater stability for low-paid faculty?

Read several viewpoints in this debate here.