From Los Angeles and Oakland, California to Jefferson County, Kentucky, teachers have been actively protesting their working and living conditions. Many of the disputes have centered around stagnant teacher pay, large class sizes, and down-sized pension arrangements, while others focus on the spread of charter schools and other school “choice” schemes that undermine public schools.
These actions highlight an increased show of political power from teachers. In Kentucky, Arizona, and West Virginia, teacher walkouts occurred despite a lack of union-backing or state-sanctioned support for labor rights.
Half of all states have not increased K-12 education funding since before the 2008 recession, the AFT claims.
The American Federation of Teachers, the second largest teachers union in America, hopes to seize on this increase in teacher-led actions. They just launched a nationwide campaign, “Fund Our Future,” which they describe as a “major education initiative aimed at pressing lawmakers in state capitals and Congress to increase funding for public schools and universities.”
The AFT campaign is scheduled to take place throughout the month of March, when most state legislatures are deciding how to spend their revenue dollars.
Half of all states have not increased K-12 education funding since before the 2008 recession, the AFT claims, and the vast majority—forty-one states—have not invested adequately in higher education. The ripple effects of this are real, the AFT insists, and have caused the very situations teachers nationwide are now rallying against, including a drop in the number of nurses and other support personnel, an increase in class sizes, and an overall disinvestment in students, staff, and school infrastructure.
In Minnesota, the push for more funding is being led by the state’s new governor, Democrat Tim Walz. Walz is a former high school teacher who served six terms in Congress before being elected to the state’s highest office in 2018. In a preliminary state budget that was released in mid-February, Walz called for an additional $523 million in funding for K-12 education, a five percent increase over two years.
Such a funding boost would add up to a few hundred more dollars per student. This would help address the drop in public funding for education in Minnesota that stretches back to the early 2000s, when Republican governor Tim Pawlenty shifted more costs onto local school districts while also pledging not to raise taxes.
The Pawlenty era was dubbed the “Lost Decade” by the nonprofit Minnesota Budget Project, which documented its impact on education as well as on families’ access to child care and housing assistance.
In addition to seeking more money for preschool and K-12 programs, Walz has also argued for an infusion of over $50 million in tuition grant funding for lower income students who attend Minnesota’s two and four-year colleges. While on an “Education Tour” in early March, Walz, along with his education commissioner and fellow former teacher, Mary Cathryn Ricker, observed that students today are not benefitting from the kind of public education support Minnesota once offered. He says this has the potential to negatively impact the state’s robust economy. (Ricker was also the vice president for AFT until joining the Walz administration in late 2018.)
Striking a populist tone, Walz told local television station KVRR that he “philosophically and economically” disagrees with the idea that students should be forced to go into debt just to get a college degree. Instead, he said he believes that offering more universal access to education, minus the rising tuition costs and steep piles of student debt, will yield the most benefit to society overall.
Walz’s proposals have not been universally embraced, however. A Minnesota Public Radio report from February 19 outlined the partisan and geographic challenges to the Governor’s call for not only more funding, but also more tax revenue. To get his ideas through the legislature, the report noted, Walz will have to find support among Republicans—“who come mostly from outside the Twin Cities metro area and generally oppose the tax proposals that would fund his spending initiatives, such as a 20-cent gas tax hike.”
Still, Republican Senate Majority leader, Paul Gazelka, did indicate support from fellow party members for other Walz proposals, including more money for school safety measures. The rub right now, as on the national stage, is whether or not to fund such projects through an increase in tax revenue, as Democrats like Walz have argued, or through austerity measures, as advocated by many Republicans.
A renewed pushback against austerity is a key element of the AFT’s call to “Fund Our Future.” After years of education funding declines, at the national and local level, the AFT has argued that students and school communities have shouldered the worst of it through the loss of affordable college tuition rates, diminished access to enrichment classes such as art and music, as well as through staffing shortages.
There are no immediate plans for Minnesota teachers to officially join in on the AFT’s campaign, according to Education Minnesota spokesperson Chris Williams. However, he noted in an email that Education Minnesota supports the “spirit of the Fund Our Future” movement and will be organizing educators to fight for the “excellent public schools and colleges” all Minnesotans deserve.