Gage Skidmore
Teachers in conservative states like Arizona, walked out this past year to demand higher wages and better school funding and working conditions. They are poised to do it again.
Earlier this year, #RedforEd campaigns took off around the country, from West Virginia to Oklahoma and points in between. Teachers and support staff, even in notoriously anti-labor states like Arizona, walked off the job and into state capitals, demanding better pay and more funding for schools, among other key issues.
With 2019 just around the bend, the wave of education activism shows no signs of ebbing.
On November 7, educators in Alabama, for example, held the state’s first #RedforEd rally with support from both the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers. Citing rising health insurance premiums as well as inadequate pay and minimal classroom funding, hundreds of Alabama teachers gathered on the steps of the state capitol in solidarity, despite the fact that Alabama has been a right-to-work state for decades. (Teachers in right-to-work states do not have the legal authority to strike.)
Teachers in Louisiana, too, are contemplating collective action in 2019, in defiance of their state’s restrictive labor laws. Average teacher salaries in Louisiana fall just under $50,000, according to news reports, and the Louisiana Federation of Teachers has put lawmakers on notice, advising them to either bump up teacher pay or prepare for a walkout. The governor, John Bel Edwards, told reporters he aims to push for a $1,000 per-teacher raise in the coming months, although union members have pointed out that this would still leave the state’s teachers making less than their peers in neighboring states.
With 2019 just around the bend, the wave of education activism shows no signs of ebbing.
But the walkout threat is not just about teachers’ salaries and benefits, and it is not just an issue in right-to-work states like Alabama, Arizona, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. It is not even just about teachers who work in traditional public school districts.
Early in December, hundreds of charter school teachers in Chicago, from some fifteen schools operated by the UNO/Acero charter network, walked off the job in the nation’s first-ever collective action by charter school employees. In Chicago, about 25 percent of Chicago’s charters participate in collective bargaining agreements. Only days later, on December 9, the striking teachers and support staff erupted in celebration when it was announced that union leaders had reached a tentative deal with management that includes smaller class sizes, better pay, and the ability to operate as sanctuary schools on behalf of the chain’s majority Latino student population.
Acero teachers and support staff became members of the Chicago Teachers Union just this year, and their success indicates, perhaps, that charters could represent a new base of support for unions heading into 2019. The strike also prompted Chicago mayoral candidate and former teacher Toni Preckwinkle to declare that she would stop the expansion of privately run, publicly funded charter schools, should she become mayor. Such a campaign promise could signal shifting winds for Democrats, who, until now, have widely supported the spread of charter schools and other market-based education reform tactics, even as funding for public schools has slipped across the country. Chicago’s current mayor, Rahm Emanuel, has been a very high profile charter school backer, and has overseen the closure of scores of the city’s public schools during his tenure.
The cumulative pressures of stagnant pay and benefits and dwindling public support—both financial and otherwise—for teachers and support staff does not appear to be letting up. Teachers in Oakland, California are currently gearing up to walk off the job, citing pay that is thousands of dollars less than that of teachers in neighboring districts, not to mention the fact that they have been working without a contract for over a year.
Teachers who work in large districts in cities like Oakland, face a bevy of problems, writes Otis R. Taylor, Jr., including rising class sizes and shrinking salaries. “‘Teachers are sick and tired of being pushed around,’” Oakland Education Association vice president, Ismael Armendariz, told Taylor before pointing out how many vacancies there are in Oakland’s schools. “People aren’t coming into this profession anymore,” Armendariz concluded.
Perhaps they aren’t coming into the teaching profession because in districts like Los Angeles, teachers haven’t seen a raise in eight years, and also have been working without a contract for over a year as union and district negotiators have locked horns over class sizes, special education caseloads, and whether or not the Los Angeles school district can afford to provide more resources to students, staff and schools.
If the situation in Los Angeles is not resolved by early January, when students and staff return from winter break, teachers in this district—the nation’s second largest—are reportedly prepared to go on strike. If they do, it appears they may have plenty of company from unions across the country.