Why Are Teachers Striking in Wv Again

DELBARTON, W.Va. – The coal miner'southward son had studied his canton's rough-and-tumble labor history, written his dissertation on it, taught his high school students about it.

Now Eric Starr, who knew history never repeats itself, felt history doing just that. And he was part of it.

Standing at a secret meeting like those held by hit miners a century ago, dressed in black except for a blood-red bandana like the ones those miners wore, he exhorted his swain public school teachers to defy the governor and their own unions and stay out on strike.

"I'm not going back,'' he said. "We've been sold out!''

That was last winter. Mingo Canton teachers – with no legal right to strike, no encouragement from their union and picayune prospect of victory – became the kickoff in West Virginia to vote to walk out over their health program and their pay.

The ane-day walkout spread.

On Feb. 22, 2018, teachers beyond Due west Virginia went on strike, sparking a movement that spread to other red states, including Oklahoma and Arizona, and then, this year, to Los Angeles and Denver. On Thursday, teachers plan to strike in Oakland, California.

But the 2022 West Virginia teacher strike, which changed so much nationally, didn't change that much back where information technology started. And on Tuesday, West Virginia teachers once more staged a walkout – just to maintain the status quo.

Starr sees the irony.

"I love seeing what'due south going on elsewhere,'' he says. He's 28, in his 4th twelvemonth of educational activity. "But West Virginia can be a slow place to change.''

When the 2022 Due west Virginia strike concluded March 7, it seemed like a great victory for public schoolhouse teachers, who for years had been blamed widely for the failures of American schools, and for West Virginia schools in particular.

But history, even when information technology repeats itself, isn't that simple. The 2022 strike's legacy is still in doubt.

• The state's promise of a dedicated funding source for public employees' health insurance – the main issue in the strike – remains unfulfilled.
• Despite a v percent raise, teacher pay remains far behind neighboring states', a disparity that explains why the year began with 700 classroom vacancies, or 4 percent of the country teacher force.
• The settlement did not increment the number of school specialists, like counselors and nurses, to assistance students from families scarred by the state'south opioid epidemic.
• The teachers' vow during the strike to "recall in Nov'' produced only mixed results. Republicans, most of whom opposed instructor demands, kept control of both houses in the Legislature. This yr they revived proposals that helped prompt the 2022 strike. Teachers and service personnel went on strike again.

The walkout on Tuesday closed schools in nigh every West Virginia county, and lawmakers sidelined the didactics legislation teachers were protesting. That's a victory for teachers.

But, teachers say, they are still waiting for the kinds of policies that would bear witness them respect. Suspicious of the country's GOP leaders, teachers are hit again Wednesday, to ensure lawmakers don't revive the bill in question. Most all schools are closed.

Teachers in America:No matter where they piece of work, they experience disrespect

'Whatever talks of striking'?

If last yr's strike wasn't revolutionary, it was remarkable.

At a time when organized labor seems in terminal pass up, a national public school teachers' movement emerged from the coalfields of southern West Virginia, one of the almost isolated and conservative corners of America.

At a time when political partisanship is peaking – and despite the Democratic slant of teachers' unions – the strike united Clinton and Trump voters. It was a political unicorn: a "liberal" cause advocated past conservatives.

But it was no anomaly. Children here are raised on stories of battles between miners and mine companies in what came to be known as "Bloody Mingo.'' Many of the teachers who walked out were outset on spotter lines when they were in diapers.

All the same these one-time passions might not have been revived without a weapon the miners never enjoyed – social media.

On Jan. 6, 2018, a teacher posted an innocent query on a Facebook page: "Merely curious if in that location are whatsoever talks of hitting.''

Soon, there was talk of little else.

Poll:Even when teachers strike, Americans requite them loftier grades. Unions fare worse.

Welcome to the Mountain State

Jay O'Neal is a middle school social studies teacher who moved to West Virginia in 2015. After his beginning year, he realized that because of increasing wellness insurance costs, he'd take home $450 less than the previous twelvemonth.

Teachers across the nation lost ground economically during and later on the Not bad Recession, as states slashed teaching spending. West Virginia, whose signature coal manufacture has collapsed, ranked 48th in instructor pay earlier the strike, according to the National Education Association.

Yet teaching in West Virginia has gotten harder as students have gotten needier, partly because of the opioid crisis. Many are in a household with neither biological parent, and teachers sometimes must notice means to go along kids fed over the weekend, or become their electricity turned back on. One of O'Neal's students constitute his male parent with a needle sticking out of his arm, dead of an overdose.

O'Neal wasn't born into West Virginia's "strike culture.'' But in Oct 2022 he started a Facebook group folio to unite members of the state's 2 chief teacher unions, the West Virginia Teaching Clan and the rival West Virginia Federation of Teachers.

His timing was propitious. The country'due south public employee health insurance agency had appear a new round of toll-saving measures. One based premiums for family coverage on the household's full income, rather than just the instructor's. Another was a wellness program that would effectively penalize those who didn't do things like provide personal biometric information, go to the gym or wear an activity tracker similar a Fitbit.

The programme was anathema to famously independent-minded West Virginians. What business is it of some bean-counter what my spouse makes? Or what I weigh?

O'Neal heard enough of grumbling in the teachers' lounge, simply trivial or aught in public or on Facebook. His teachers' folio had only about 1,000 members. "I don't go it,'' he told a friend. "Zilch'southward happening.''

It was equally if "strike" was a dingy word. "Everyone was thinking about information technology,'' recalls Eric Starr. "Then someone worked up the guts to say it.''

Strike fever

That someone was Rachel Kittle, a 32-year-old special pedagogy instructor from – no surprise – the coalfields. She didn't feel gutsy, however. Striking was just what she and her colleagues were already talking about.

Soon after her Jan. half-dozen post – "whatsoever talks of hitting?'' – O'Neal got a bulletin from a friend: "Have you looked at Facebook?''

TEACHERS' VICTORY: Showed 'power of women'

There was Kittle'due south query, followed by an explosion of comments. The first was dismissive: "The unions are terrified and the teachers are unwilling.'' But there were other voices:

• "Non all teachers.''
• "At that place will not be an end to the cuts until a line is drawn.''
• "As long equally y'all take it without protesting, they will continue giving information technology to you.''
• "Teachers went on strike in 1990. How did that get organized?''

Soon, O'Neal couldn't keep up with requests to bring together the group.

Strike fever spiked after Gov. Jim Justice, who'd been elected as a Democrat with spousal relationship support before becoming a Republican to dorsum Trump, proposed a mere 1 percentage raise in his State of the State address.

Dale Lee, president of the WVEA union, felt compelled to address the topic at a rally on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Teachers expecting a call to the barricades were disappointed.

"I've heard a lot of people talk most, "Information technology's time for a walkout; it'south fourth dimension for a strike,' " Lee said. "It'southward non the outset pace in what we should do to achieve our goals.''

Simply this was a battle in which marriage leaders would be followers.

It started in the coalfields

On Jan. 23, Mingo County teachers became the first in the state to decide to skip school for a twenty-four hours to get to the state capital to protest. They chosen information technology "Fed Up Fri.'' Several other southern coalfield counties rapidly followed arrange.

Without a right to strike or bargain collectively, the teacher unions had become more practiced at lobbying the state officials who fix their members' compensation than at against them. Now, they struggled to grab up with the rank and file. A WVFT official told the Charleston Gazette-Mail that the union didn't know how many counties had decided to walk out, but was sending staffers to county meetings "to find out what's going on.''

On Fed Up Fri, teachers from the coalfields gathered in the capitol rotunda in Charleston to protest. As they chanted, colleagues around the state watched.

A month later, on Feb. 22, afterward another one-mean solar day walkout and a statewide strike say-so vote, 20,000 teachers went out.

Timeline:How the 2022 West Virginia instructor strike evolved

School was closed in all 55 counties. Superintendents, already facing a teacher shortage, didn't take nearly enough subs to concur classes. The teachers would never lose a day's pay.

Public opinion seemed with the teachers. When the attorney general said the strike was illegal and offered to go to courtroom on behalf of county school boards, he got no takers.

5 days into the strike, the governor and the marriage leaders, who'd been negotiating, appear a settlement, including a five percent raise. They told teachers to become dorsum to work two days afterwards, on March 1.

But the Senate's Republican leaders had not signed off; the rank and file had not been consulted; and the governor, some teachers pointed out, was a coal-visitor owner. "We weren't gonna autumn for his word,'' Kittle recalls. Teachers outside the capitol chanted: "Dorsum to the tabular array!'' and "We got sold out!''

At county meetings like the one in Mingo where Eric Starr spoke upward, the rank and file agreed. They weren't going dorsum – they were going wildcat.

The strikes spread

Meanwhile, in Arizona, a teacher named Noah Karvelis had started a Facebook page like the one in W Virginia. Most of his colleagues supported a strike in their state, he tweeted, "especially with … WV's success.''

He created a Facebook issue that called on Arizona teachers to wearable red: "W Virginia is showing the unabridged nation what happens when teachers stand in solidarity.''

Finally, Westward Virginia's Republican Senate agreed to a v per centum raise for all state employees. And the governor promised to freeze health insurance premiums for xviii months; to create a task force to find a dedicated source of wellness insurance funding; and to waive higher costs for workers who didn't comply with the wellness plan.

On March vii, after nine canceled school days, the teachers went back to form.

Simply teachers in other states started to walk out. On April 2, Oklahoma and some counties in Kentucky; April 26, Arizona; April 27, Colorado. On May 16, Due north Carolina teachers staged a ane-day walkout and rally.

A glass one-half empty?

A year later, it'south piece of cake to emphasize what the Westward Virginia teacher strike didn't do.

The raise, which averaged about $two,000 per teacher, was inappreciably life-changing. Information technology let teachers pay off some bills or pay downward some loans, or maybe buy a machine. But their colleagues continue to flee to higher-paying districts in other states. Mingo Loftier Schoolhouse, for instance, has been trying since May to supplant its choir manager, who left for a like job in Ohio that paid $10,000 more. No 1 has even practical for the vacancy.

As for wellness insurance, the governor has proposed $150 million in the country upkeep to stabilize employees' costs. Merely in that location still has been no agreement on how to insulate such funding from the yearly budget procedure.

The strike's political legacy is also unclear. Some fault teachers for not mobilizing enough relatives and friends to vote; some say teachers themselves didn't turn out in enough numbers, reviving memories of the pre-strike complacency that frustrated activists similar O'Neal.

Whatever its crusade, the teachers' failure in November to elect more than supporters in the Legislature came back to haunt them this twelvemonth.

The broad instruction bill that prompted Tuesday'southward walkout would have given teachers another 5 pct enhance, but also allowed the country to establish its outset lease schools. It would have let parents take taxpayer money for their child'due south education in public school and spend it on options such as private school. Those were the sorts of issues behind the 2022 strike.

To kill legislation that hadn't even been passed, teachers had to strike once again. They won a victory in ensuring their state of affairs didn't get worse. But it also didn't get better.

The former-time miners went on strike confronting mine owners. Today, public teachers ultimately strike against taxpayers, personal or commercial. Taxpayers are voters, and voters say they're for college teacher salaries. They too say they're confronting higher taxes.

Talk of the nation

In one way, the strike didn't so much revive history as contrary it.

With the autumn of coal, a region once famed for sometimes-cussed independence became synonymous instead with a fatalistic credence of the status quo and a dependence on welfare, from food stamps to disability pay.

The strike, even so, put Due west Virginia of a sudden in the vanguard of the centre working class.

No one personifies that reversal more than Robin Ellis, a Mingo High English language teacher who is besides a grandmother, a social conservative, a Republican and one of the 69 percent of W Virginians (and 83 percent of Mingo residents) who voted for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton in 2016.

She'due south also the girl of an 83-year-former retired union miner who went on strike several times.

During last year's strike, Ellis stood on her town'southward main street to flag down motorists and, every bit traffic backed upwards, make the teachers' case. And, like young Eric Starr, she rose at a meeting afterward the tentative settlement to urge her colleagues to stay out.

She says the strike was virtually more than money or respect. It was nigh an obligation to the generations past. "The discussion 'strike' prompts something in us hither,'' she says.

"I don't recall my daddy has ever been prouder of me.''

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Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2019/02/20/teacher-strike-west-virginia-school-closings-education-bill/2848476002/

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