Rachel Levy
The march and rally in Virginia, organized by Virginia Educators United, was one of the largest to descend on the state capitol in the last century.
The #Red4Ed movement has kicked off in Virginia: On January 28, as many as 5,000 public school teachers, educators, workers, parents, students, and other stakeholders marched on the Virginia state capitol in Richmond to demand fully funded public schools. The march and rally, organized by Virginia Educators United, a “grassroots campaign” of teachers, staff members, parents and community members, was one of the largest to descend on the state capitol in the last century.
The well-organized event was supported by strategic use of social media and a user-friendly website. The group’s demands include restoring funding for education to pre-2008 recession levels, increasing teacher pay to national averages, paying education support professionals competitive wages, recruitment and retention of highly qualified teachers and more teachers of color, more funding for school infrastructure costs, and ensuring sufficient numbers of support staff like counselors and social workers.
The day of the rally, Virginia lawmakers pledged to fund Governor Ralph Northam’s initiative to provide teachers and school staff with a five percent pay increase. This raise, however, is only for certain state-mandated positions, and localities can’t or won’t always provide the required matching funds.
Rachel Levy
Virginia teachers have demanded pre-recession levels of funding for schools.
Virginia Educators United has not, unlike most every other group in the Commonwealth, released any statement about the controversy surrounding racist photos found on Governor Northam’s medical school yearbook page. But they have made it clear in their post-rally press release, as they have on past occasions, that they will not be satisfied until all their original demands are met: “We will not be pacified by a raise while our students continue to be educated in unsafe facilities, our support staff levels still languish behind where they were a decade ago, and our general school funding still represents a moral crisis.”
Virginia Educators United were able to kick off the #Red4Ed effort in the state, which they did working apart from the state’s major professional educator association Virginia Education Association, by casting a wide net embracing all teachers, educators, education professionals, parents, students, and community members.
There is broad, bipartisan support for public education in Virginia, despite terrible funding. This support is not a sign that Virginia as a whole is getting “bluer.” In fact, support for school privatization is stronger in places like Richmond with more socially liberal but gentrifying, market-friendly forces. The problem is also that in more conservative, traditionally Republican-voting areas, while support for the institution of public education is strong, support for the policies that will make public schools more equitable, integrated, and better funded is not. And in more conservative areas, there is an inherent discomfort with advocacy and activism—I know from my own research that most people seem to understand advocacy to mean being supportive and uncritical of decision-makers.
At the rally on January 28, David Jeck, superintendent of Fauquier County public schools, stated that, “the localities are not at fault here.” But such a statement lets wealthier communities off the hook. Local districts in Virginia have also made cuts to education, and did not restore pre-recession funding. And local districts in Virginia are hindered by restrictive proffer policies that make it difficult to collect revenues from developers or otherwise leverage sufficient taxes on businesses and non-personal property. Better-heeled parents support their local public schools not by advocating for more funding, but by funneling donations and in-kind donations directly to their school via parent groups and local businesses and foundations.
“We will not be pacified by a raise while our students continue to be educated in unsafe facilities.”
At the state level, the structure of the General Assembly itself poses obstacles. Virginia has a part-time “citizen” legislature. And even though in 2017 a record of number of women, people of color, and progressives were elected to the House of Delegates, the capacity of citizens, such as those connected with Virginia Educators United, to engage in advocacy is limited. Participants must be available at any time, including during weekends, holidays, early mornings, and late nights when the General Assembly is in session (for forty-five days and ninety days, alternatively). This means that most such advocacy efforts are left to professional lobbyists, organizations, and associations.
But professional groups, including Virginia Education Association, don’t have the grassroots approach of Virginia Educators United. And public education supporters in the more conservative areas may not support the tactics—unyielding advocacy and striking—that might be necessary to bring the real investment that is required.
The combination of different kinds of support for a public education that is equitable, integrated, and adequately funded is sorely needed. Virginia Educators United is leading the way.