A wave of teacher walkouts in Republi-
can-run states from West Virginia to Ken-
tucky to Oklahoma has cast a national spot-
light on the states’ tax-and-spend priorities
amid growing public disquiet over funding
for education and other public services.
Teachers have forcefully pressed their
case, at times going further than union
leaders by refusing to settle for less fromstate lawmakers. In West Virginia, a nine-
day walkout by 35,000 school employees
led to a March 6 deal that raised salaries
by 5 percent for all state workers and put a
freeze on rising health-insurance premiums.
In Oklahoma, teachers brought their
protest into the Capitol building earlier this
month, closing schools across the state. Themass walkout was the catalyst for lawmak-
ers to pass a major revenue bill – the first in
28 years – to raise teacher salaries, which
were among the nation’s lowest. At press
time, teachers were asking for $75 million
more for education before they go back to
work.
Arizona is watching closely: Thousands
of teachers rallied late last month in Phoe-
nix to demand a pay increase. In Kentucky,
schools were shut for two days recently after
a walkout prompted by last-minute changes
to pensions for new teachers.
Teacher activism in red states is chal-
lenging the tenets of Republican governance
in which austerity for public employees is
bracketed with tax breaks for businesses.
For Republicans who took statehouses
during the Great Recession, the drive to bal-
ance the books doubled as a political assault
on public-sector unions. Gov. Scott Walker,
who swept away collective-bargaining rights
in Wisconsin, said in 2011 that “we can nolonger live in a society where the public
employees are the haves and taxpayers who
foot the bills are the have-nots.”
At the time, many private-sector workers
were feeling the pinch, says Jake Rosenfeld,
a sociologist at Washington University in
St. Louis. “The message was that the pub-
lic sector had too many perks. That was a
message that found a receptive audience
for some time but seems to be less effective
now,” he says, noting that economically se-
cure voters are more apt to sympathize with
low-paid teachers.
When Matt Deen moved back to Okla-
homa from Oregon in 2013 to teach science
at an elementary school in Norman, he and
his wife, also a teacher, took a collective
$15,000 pay cut. That was bad enough, he
says. But the lack of basic materials and the
crowded classrooms – his fifth-grade history
and social studies class has 45 students –
have driven home the challenge of teaching
there. “I have never lived in a state where
I had to buy paper and pens for my class
because the funding wasn’t there,” he says.
Until last month, teachers in Oklahoma
hadn’t seen a raise in a decade. Over that pe-
riod, enrollment grew by some 50,000, while
inflation-adjusted funding fell 28 percent.
West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Ken-
tucky are all right-to-work states that ban
collective bargaining. So when teachers
walk out it is tricky for opponents to say
that sweetheart union contracts are drain-
ing state coffers, says Joseph Slater, a law
professor at the University of Toledo. “With
these workers, it’s hard to use that kind of
rhetoric. They aren’t highly paid and don’t
have collective bargaining rights,” he says.- Simon Montlake and Story Hinckley
Staff writers
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has new mantle
A ‘vozhd’ is an ancient, mythic
term for a transcendent leaderMOSCOW – A recent Time magazine cover
features Vladimir Putin with an insouciant
smirk on his face and a tiny imperial crownWALKOUTSTeachers challenge GOP austerity
Demands for spending hikes for education on rise in red states
TIMOTHY D. EASLEY/APFRANKFORT, KY: Thousands of teachers throng Kentucky’s Capitol building April 2 to rally for increased
funding and to protest changes to their state-funded pension system. Schools were closed.‘I HAVE NEVER LIVED IN A STATE WHERE I
HAD TO BUY PAPER AND PENS FOR MY CLASS
BECAUSE THE FUNDING WASN’T THERE.’- Matt Deen, a schoolteacher in Oklahoma
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