Teachers in Colorado and Arizona donned red t-shirts and rallied for a second day on Friday to demand higher pay and school funding in a growing revolt by U. S. public school educators.
PHOENIX (Reuters) – Teachers in Colorado and Arizona donned red t-shirts and rallied for a second day on Friday to demand higher pay and school funding in a growing revolt by U. S. public school educators.
Waving placards such as “Teachers Just Want To Have Fund$,” thousands of Colorado educators descended on the state capitol building in Denver to demand the booming state cough up hundreds of millions of dollars a year in school spending frozen since the recession.
“We have educators working two or three jobs to make ends meet,” said Kerrie Dallman, head of the Colorado Education Association, a statewide federation of teachers’ unions organizing the two-day walkout.
(Education funding 2008 thru 2015 tmsnrt.rs/2Iumbck)
(U. S. Teacher Salaries in 2017 tmsnrt.rs/2IsvlGa)
In Arizona, educators have some of the biggest classes and lowest pay in the country. They have received offers for higher salaries and funding but say they are insufficient and plan to continue their walkout. The protests have been spurred by activism in Republican-controlled states like West Virginia, Kentucky and Oklahoma that brought increases in pay and budgets.
Arizona’s historic state-wide strike has closed public schools serving more than 800,000 students. In Colorado, at least 600,000 students were not in class on Friday.
In Phoenix, teachers and their supporters again rallied at the capitol in 90-degree heat and continued to seek a meeting with Arizona Governor Doug Ducey.
The conservative Goldwater Institute sent letters to Arizona school districts warning them that the group may sue if classrooms remain closed in an “illegal strike.”
In Denver, protesting educators cheered as Democratic Governor John Hickenlooper told them he knew they were underpaid. However, they booed after he laid out a school spending proposal that was short of their demands.
“They’ve been telling us they value us, and we’re underpaid since 2009,” said one demonstrator, who asked not to be named.
Colorado lawmakers have offered schools the biggest budget increase since the recession. Teachers want the state to repay funding withheld under its strict budget laws since 2009, address a 3,000-teacher shortage and adequately staff schools with counselors, social workers and special educators.
The Arizona and Colorado protests are part of a wave of actions by teachers in states that have some of the lowest per-student spending in the county. A nearly two-week strike in Oklahoma ended earlier this month with a pay rise for teachers.
In Arizona, teachers are demanding a 20-percent increase in salaries, a return of education funding to 2008 levels and a freeze on tax cuts until the education budget reaches the national average.
Ducey, a Republican, has offered a cumulative 20 percent pay rise by 2020 and pledged $371 million over the next five years for school infrastructure, curriculum, school buses and technology.
“We are closer than we’ve ever been, and are confident that we are moving towards passing a solution through the Legislature,” Ducey spokesman Patrick Ptak said.
