Arizona teachers adopting West Virginia
walkout model
West Virginia teachers may have unleashed a
national revolution.
Arizona’s teachers, who had millions taken
away by its state legislators after the 2008 financial meltdown, hope to adopt
the same “55 Strong” strategy of every teacher in the state walking out at the
same time.
Arizona teachers call their movement
Arizona Educators United.
West Virginia teachers got a 5% pay raise
by unanimous vote of the state Senate and House after a public outrage
supported the teachers, who often use their own money to buy food for the poorer
students, as they did during the walkout.
The Arizona New Times, run by Stuart
Warner, my former colleague at the Akron Beacon Journal, ran this article:
For Resha Gentry-Ballance, the murmurs started online.
A few days ago, her colleague shared a Facebook post
about the teacher strike in West Virginia. Email chains and social media
threads followed. Soon Gentry-Ballance, who leads the classroom teachers'
association in the Phoenix Union High School District, was listening as a
coworker explained the mobilizing strategies that made West Virginia’s strike
successful.
“Everyone in West Virginia walked out,” Gentry-Ballance
said, as if in disbelief. “It was a huge, big statewide action. To get that
kind of support, that’s really amazing.”
In some ways, Arizona’s educational system was already a
powder keg. The stunning nine-day strike in West Virginia seems to have lit the
match.
This morning, Arizona educators showed up to school
wearing red, a message to state leaders that the status quo in school funding
and teacher pay is unsustainable. The plan began after Arizona teachers watched
West Virginia schools shut down for nine days — the longest teacher strike in
state history — while unions successfully wrangled a 5 percent pay increase
from reluctant state legislators.
When asked about a possible strike at a press conference
on Wednesday morning, Arizona Education Association President Joe Thomas said
that statewide actions take many forms. He explained that in West Virginia,
there were lengthy discussions in the lead-up to the strike.
"I'm not saying it won't happen," Thomas said.
"I've not see this many teachers this frustrated since I've been in
Arizona."
Thomas expects the #RedForEd actions to gain momentum. At
the press conference, the teachers' organization announced their endorsement of
Democrat David Garcia for governor, who said that if elected he will be a
champion for educators.
Dylan Wegela, one of the organizers behind today’s
#RedForEd show of solidarity, said that the campaign has also created a forum
for educators to decide what comes next. “I think people are willing to do whatever
it takes to get the pay raise that we deserve, and to fix the problems with the
AZ Merit letter grades, and to make the schools are better for our teachers and
for our students,” Wegela said.
“To make a livable wage for teachers is the main goal,” he added.
Wegela is a teacher at Marc T. Atkinson Middle School in
Phoenix. He moved to Arizona from Michigan two years ago. Ever since he arrived
in Arizona, he said he's noticed "an energy that people are ready for change."
The question is: What happens next?
In West Virginia, union leaders negotiated directly with
the state legislature to secure their pay raise, which the governor signed on
Tuesday.
In Arizona, pay-raise decisions are generally siloed —
individual school districts have the final say on teacher paychecks — but all
the same, schools still are funded by the state government. Over the last
decade, Arizona has cut tons of funding from the education budget, and it has
reached the point where the average teacher's salary here is pretty much the
lowest in the country.
"This is my twelfth year teaching and truly, things
have gotten worse every year when it comes to the state's budget and funding
public education," said Amy Ball, a kindergarten teacher and the Madison
Classroom Teachers Association president.
A statewide teacher strike could light a fire under
Arizona politicians, forcing them to restore the hundreds of millions in
funding that disappeared after the 2008 financial crisis.
Governor Doug Ducey has been under tremendous pressure in
his re-election year to deliver a solution to the education crisis. In his
state of the state address, Ducey trumpeted a plan that would inject $371 million in
per-pupil dollars to public school budgets to restore some of the funding that
was cut during the 2008 recession. The governor argued that it would ease the
teacher shortage and lead to pay raises.
However, Thomas says that Ducey’s plan is too little, too
late.
“The governor has had four years to come up with a
long-term plan, and I don’t see it — I see in the year that he’s about to be
re-elected a plan to put some available dollars into districts,” Thomas said in
an interview on Monday. “Districts have needed those dollars every year he’s
been in office.”
Much like Arizona, the educational environment in West
Virginia was pretty terrible for teachers, and poised to get worse because of
changes to the public-employee health care system. It forced teachers to the
picket lines, even in a right-to-work state like West Virginia where they
were technically breaking the law by shutting down schools.
It’s enough to make Arizona teachers consider their
options at least, Gentry-Ballance said. Still, sometimes she sees anxiety among
would-be activist teachers.
“Just in my own district, I have colleagues who are
concerned about speaking up because they’re concerned about retaliation,” she
said. “I’m fortunate enough to have a strong association in Phoenix Union High
School District.”
As a result, Gentry-Ballance didn’t hesitate
when asked if she was going to wear red on Tuesday. “Oh, you bet,” she said.
Plenty of other people are with her. The Arizona Educators United group on Facebook, which kicked off
Wednesday’s #RedForEd event, now boasts an astonishing 16,500-plus members. On
Tuesday night, teachers kicked around the idea of a strike in a long thread
where educators voiced opinions ranging from complete readiness to trepidation.
Wegela said that this kind of debate will drive whatever
happens after this week.
“We’re going to see what the group wants, and
we’re going to go with whatever the group wants,” Wegela said.
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