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Thousands of teachers in Arizona showed up to school Wednesday wearing red. In Oklahoma, teachers prepared a list of demands for the governor. Educators in both states are energized from watching the success of the nine-day teachers strike in West Virginia. They say they're prepared to do the same.
"West Virginia teachers walked out — and they make more than us," a teacher said at a school board meeting on February 28 in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, which was streamed online by the local newspaper. He wanted a strike too. So did many other teachers.
The West Virginia teachers strike, which shut down all public schools in the state for nine days, ended Tuesday after the governor and state leaders agreed to give teachers what they wanted: a 5 percent raise and a hold on raising health insurance premiums.
It was a remarkable victory for teachers in West Virginia, who are among the lowest-paid in the country and who have no right to bargain collectively. And it's giving hope to teachers at public schools around the country, who have seen wages shrink in recent years, particularly in red states where steep tax cuts have led to deep cuts in school funding.
Teachers in Oklahoma and Arizona said they're ready to follow West Virginia's lead if state lawmakers don't spend more on schools (teachers in Kentucky are getting restless too). Like West Virginia, teachers in Oklahoma and Arizona are among the lowest-paid in the United States, and they're fuming that lawmakers in Arizona only want to give teachers a 1 percent salary raise, or, in Oklahoma's case, none at all.
"It's been a powder keg here for a while," said Noah Karvelis, an elementary school music teacher in the Phoenix area. "Our backs are against the wall; we have nothing else."
The strike in West Virginia spurred Karvelis to mobilize teachers in Arizona on social media. On Sunday, they created a private Facebook group, Arizona Educators United, and within 36 hours, they had 8,000 members. The teachers are now weighing whether to strike and organized a statewide campaign to wear red on Wednesday as the first step.
Some of the teachers at my school who met up to take this photo! #REDforED @dougducey @PVEAmembers @pvschools @ArizonaEA @azednews @azcentral @AZGovEducation @CesarCota28 @teachergoals pic.twitter.com/QORVNeLE0K
— Angelina Cook (@angelinaacook) March 7, 2018
In Oklahoma, teachers are even further along with their own plan. The Oklahoma Education Association, a professional group that represents 35,000 educators in the state, said teachers are ready for a walkout if state lawmakers do not raise taxes and give teachers a proper raise. On Thursday, they plan to present the governor with a list of demands, which includes a $10,000 raise for teachers.
"Everything we have tried has failed," said Alicia Priest, president of the association. "What [happened] in West Virginia is giving teachers hope, myself included, that we can be change agents." In an online survey, about 80 percent of the group's members who responded said they support the idea of closing schools.
While labor unions have played a role in building the momentum, many teachers are ready to "burn down the house," Priest said.
The frustration has been years in the making. It's part of a backlash brewing in Republican states that have gutted school spending to offset deep tax cuts for businesses and wealthy earners.
Teachers said they were willing to put up with pay freezes and budget cuts during the recession, but not anymore. The US economy is growing and the labor market is tightening, and teachers have been watching private sector workers get raises while they fall further behind. Meanwhile, lawmakers in conservative states have resisted raising taxes to fund schools at pre-recession levels, even though their tax cuts played a key role in the budget crises. Karvelis says he thinks the angst teachers are feeling is the start of a larger "working-class uprising" against President Trump and Republican tax-cutting policies.
The last straw for West Virginia teachers
West Virginia has been struggling to balance its budget for years.
Lawmakers, both Democrats and Republicans, have been cutting corporate and business taxes for more than a decade. The idea was to attract investment in the state, but it was never enough investment to offset the lost tax revenue. Then came the recession. But instead of raising taxes, lawmakers just slashed spending, hitting schools the hardest.
As a result, public schools have been losing millions of dollars each year in state money, which is the main source of funding for local schools, followed by local property taxes. The amount of money the state of West Virginia now spends on each student is 11.4 percent lower than it was before the economy tanked in 2008.
Teachers haven't gotten an across-the-board salary raise since 2014, and they are among the lowest-paid teachers in the country. The average teacher salary in the state was $44,701 in 2016, according to the National Education Association, ranking West Virginia 48th in the nation in average teacher salaries.
Teachers wanted a 5 percent raise for the coming school year, even if it meant raising taxes. They were also upset that their health care premiums were rising, and they were especially mad about a new rule related to their health care coverage. In December, the Public Employee Insurance Agency, which handles health insurance for state employees, said workers would soon be required to start using a wellness app called Go365, which tracks a person's sleep and exercise and reports their progress. Those who don't meet their fitness goals would have to pay an extra $25 for their premiums and an extra $500 deductible if they wanted to opt out altogether.
About a month later, in January, teachers threatened to strike after lawmakers proposed an "insulting" 1 percent raise, without addressing health care costs. Labor unions scrambled to reach a deal with the governor for a 2 percent raise. Teachers rejected that too, prompting an unsanctioned "wildcat" strike.
On February 22, every school in the state had to shut down when teachers didn't show up for work. Support for the teachers grew, with labor unions representing coal miners speaking out on their behalf. Teachers insisted on a 5 percent raise and lower health care premiums. State lawmakers agreed to a 4 percent raise instead. The strike continued until late Tuesday, when the governor and state lawmakers agreed to a 5 percent raise and a hold on health care premium hikes.
On Wednesday, West Virginia's schools reopened.
By then, teachers in Arizona and Oklahoma were already preparing their own rebellions.
Oklahoma teachers had tried asking nicely for a raise. That didn't work.
Oklahoma teachers saw in West Virginia a similarity to their own situation. They haven't gotten an across-the-board raise since 2007.
Oklahoma is suffering its own budget crisis after years of cutting income tax rates for the state's top earners. Cuts went into effect in 2009; then taxes were lowered further in 2012 and 2014. The tax cuts didn't lead to an economic boom as promised. Instead, they triggered a massive budget gap and school funding cuts, and ended up shifting the tax burden to lower-income families.
That's one reason why teachers in the state haven't gotten a payscale raise in 10 years (local school districts could pay teachers more, but few did). The drop in state funding also led 20 percent of the state's public schools to switch to a four-day school week.
Oklahoma teachers made an average salary of $45,276 in 2016, according to the National Education Association, ranking the state 47th in average teacher salaries.
Now the state faces an estimated $425 million budget hole for the next fiscal year, and lawmakers still haven't figured out how they are going to pay their bills. The teachers' last hope was dashed last month when lawmakers defeated a bill called Step Up Oklahoma, which would have raised more than $700 million by taxing cigarettes, diesel fuel, and wind energy and raising oil production taxes from 2 percent to 4 percent. Some of that money would have been used to give teachers a 1 percent pay bump.
The bill never passed. Instead, lawmakers passed a very different bill, one that would slash school funding by another $16.2 million. The state's Republican governor, Mary Fallin, is expected to sign the bill this week.
That was the final blow to Oklahoma's teachers, and they started pointing to what was happening in West Virginia.
"Change does not happen by accident. If you think that if you just wait long enough and things will get better, you are mistaken; you have to make it happen," Bon Bennett, a track coach and government teacher, said during the school board meeting in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, last week. Many teachers who stepped up to the microphone voiced similar views.
On Thursday, the Oklahoma Education Association plans to reveal a set of demands to the governor, likely modeled on the Step Up Oklahoma legislation that failed. Priest says school administrators and teachers will close the schools and march to the state capitol if they can't reach a deal.
"I think those states that are trying to cut taxes in order to spur the economy should take a step back and look at what is going on in West Virginia and other states," Priest says.
Arizona lawmakers have gutted school spending to the extreme
The school funding crisis in Arizona is bad from every angle. State spending per student dropped 36.5 percent from 2008 to 2015 — the largest drop of any state, according to an analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Teachers in the state had the lowest average salary in the country in 2016, and they saw the biggest drop in pay from 2015 to 2016, likely a result of inflation outpacing meager pay increases.
Meanwhile, state lawmakers have been on a tax-cutting spree — slashing taxes on a host of businesses in 2016, from insurance companies to charter plane operators. Last year, Gov. Doug Ducey (R-AZ) signed a bill with more tax breaks for businesses as well as a 1 percent raise for teachers.
Karvelis, the Phoenix-area music teacher, says the 1 percent raise was a joke. Among educators, Arizona is known as being the "worst place to be a student and a teacher," he says.
He said his colleagues are tired of working retail jobs and driving for Lyft and Uber on the side to pay their bills. He recently had to move out of an apartment he shared with his girlfriend because he couldn't afford the rent.
As in most states, teachers unions in Arizona negotiate contracts with local school districts, but both groups have little say in how much money they get from the state, which is a key source of funding for most American public schools.
The teachers unions have threatened to punish lawmakers in the midterm elections. But momentum is building for immediate action.
I am nervous to leave it up to the voters in Az to vote them out. What will we do if most of us just get the 1% raise? It’s not enough to keep up with rising costs of rent. It will leave us even further behind, for yet another year.
— Deirdre Cronin (@azdedo) February 28, 2018
Karvelis tweeted to the head of the Arizona Education Association suggesting more action:
Most of my colleagues that I have spoken with are supportive of a strike- especially with the current momentum and WV's success. Several have been talking about it for months (even years) now, as well. What are your thoughts?
— Noah Karvelis (@Noah__Karvelis) February 28, 2018
The Twitter conversation has spawned hashtags like #AZWhatsThePlan? and #RedForEd.
Karvelis created the Facebook event calling teachers and supporters to wear red on Wednesday.
"West Virginia is showing the entire nation what can happen when teachers stand in solidarity," read the event page, which had more than 2,000 participants. "Arizona’s teachers are taking note and realizing that now is the time for us to start organizing our campuses and districts."
The teachers are even more organized now, and have launched the Arizona Educators United group. They are closely watching what Oklahoma is preparing to do next.
No one seemed to care that it's illegal for teachers to strike in most states, including Arizona and Oklahoma. Priest, of the Oklahoma Education Association, prefers the term "walkout."
"We need to do what we are doing," she said. "Nothing else has worked."
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