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After West Virginia, Arizona Teachers Lead 'RedEd' Rebellion, Oklahoma to Follow

  • Teachers in West Virginia are back on the job after ending a four-day strike that had kept more than 277,000 students out of class after achieving their demands.

    Teachers in West Virginia are back on the job after ending a four-day strike that had kept more than 277,000 students out of class after achieving their demands. | Photo: Reuters

Published 22 March 2018
Opinion

"Across the state, teachers say they make ends meet by selling their blood plasma," the New York Times reported. 

After a state-wide mass mobilization of teachers in West Virginia which moved state lawmakers to action for overdue pay raises, teachers in Arizona clad in red have followed suit and have taken to the streets holding a series of #RedforEd demonstrations to demand a better pay. 

RELATED:
After West Virginia, Teachers in Oklahoma, Arizona, Rise Against Low Wages

The teachers wore red to schools in Arizona marking the protest against the state's slow response to their demands of higher pay. 

Amy Ball, a kindergarten teacher in the Madison Elementary School District who participated in Wednesday's demonstration, told Arizona Central that the teachers are frustrated with no significant changes to the work or pay conditions. 

"School districts like mine and the teachers who work in them are forced to do more with less, and then act as if nothing is wrong,"  Ball said. "Teacher working conditions are student learning conditions and if we don’t stand for children, then we don’t stand for much."

Supporters of the teachers' movement, parents, school board members, and administrators, also took to social media with the hashtags,  #RedForEd and #AZWhatIsThePlan, to show their solidarity. 

The teachers in Republican-dominated Oklahoma have threatened to strike in April, not only for the pay raise but also against the government cuts to the state education fund. The last time the state saw a strike was in the 1990s which was also the last time the state implemented changes to its legislature to accommodate the necessary pay hikes.

The three states, West Virginia, Arizona, and Oklahoma where the teachers are seeking reform and pay raises are also some of the most austerity-laden U.S. states where conservative laws have kept state taxes as low as possible to promote more spending and encourage people to come to these states to settle. 

According to the New York Times, Oklahoma education system is so broken that around 20 percent of the schools in the state are thinking of having four-day weeks to save money. 

"We are hemorrhaging from a lack of funding," Larry Cagle, a Tulsa teacher, and organizer of one of several Facebook groups pushing for a walkout told the New York Times. "If I get fired, I get fired. I will absolutely not back down." 

RELATED:
'We Won!': West Virginia Agrees to 5% Raise to End Teachers Strike

Nearly 88 percent of students in a low-income neighborhood of Oklahoma have seen cuts to its advanced foreign language courses, along with classes in drama and debate, with one school rationing paper. And there are not enough parts to go around in robotics class, students said, according to New York Times.  

"Across the state, teachers say they make ends meet by selling their blood plasma, or by working second jobs as luggage handlers, Uber drivers or in lawn maintenance," the New York Times reported. 

Local broadcaster News 9 reported that Oklahoma legislators have been meeting to draft a plan to avoid the planned teachers' walkout by finding means to accommodate the pay hikes through raising the gross production tax, cigarette and fuel taxes, to generate an additional revenue of US$922 million.

The revenue created would fund raises for teachers, support staff, and state workers, and leave the state with an additional US$250 million in new revenue, according to News 9. 

"It's a new day. We got teachers fixing to walk out. I've got a stack of letters on my desk from seniors at Moore High School, wondering if they are going to graduate," Assistant Majority Floor Leader Mark McBride said. "It's time for us to do something."  

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