Updated April 26.
Teachers across Arizona plan to walk off the job Thursday to protest low salaries and school budget cuts, while some in Colorado will rally at the Capitol in Denver on Thursday and Friday, shutting down over a dozen of the state’s largest school districts.
The two states are the newest front for the nationwide teacher protest movement that began in February in West Virginia, and quickly spread to Oklahoma and Kentucky. Teachers — and many parents — in all of these states say taxes are too low to adequately fund schools.
The movement has shaken up politics, with voters and lawmakers from both parties questioning fiscal austerity. Here’s what has happened so far, and what to expect:
What are teachers asking for?
In Arizona, teachers are demanding a 20 percent raise for themselves, a raise for support staff and yearly raises until Arizona’s average teacher salary, currently $47,000, meets the national average, currently $59,000. They’re also calling for a restoration of school funding that has been cut since the Recession, and no new tax cuts until the state’s per-pupil spending, which was under $7,500 in 2015, meets the national average, which was about $11,000 per year.
The Colorado Education Association, a union that represents 35,000 educators, is asking for over $1 billion annually in new education funding. The union supports a ballot referendum that would raise taxes on corporations and on incomes over $150,000 annually. It opposes a proposal to change teacher pension plans to be more like the 401(k) accounts used in the private sector, and to raise the teacher retirement age to 65 from 58. The union said it would be willing to accept a teacher retirement age of 60.
What were the outcomes of the previous walkouts?
In West Virginia, teachers won a $2,000 raise after their statewide walkout.
In Oklahoma, the threat of a walkout yielded a $6,000 raise for teachers and smaller raises for school support staff. The walkout itself, which lasted nine days, did not lead to much new funding for classrooms, and many teachers ended the protest disappointed. But in a state that has aggressively cut taxes and public services, teachers succeeded in pushing Republicans and Democrats to support a bevy of new or higher taxes, on oil and gas production, tobacco, motor fuels, online sales and gambling.
In Kentucky, legislators met teachers’ demand that they override Gov. Matt Bevin’s veto of the state budget, which Mr. Bevin said was not austere enough.
Why is this happening now?
Teachers, parents and students have noticed the impact of low budgets on the classroom, whether it is a four-day school week in rural Oklahoma and Colorado, or 15-year old social studies and science textbooks in Phoenix. When educators saw West Virginia teachers win a raise in March after a daring statewide walkout, they realized more radical tactics might work in their states, too.
Other movements have also energized teachers. Some have been inspired by #MeToo, the March for Our Lives and protests against President Trump and his lightning-rod secretary of education, Betsy DeVos.
What is the difference between a walkout and a strike? And what consequences do teachers face for walking out?
In Colorado, teachers can legally strike in some circumstances. Last week, Republicans in the State Senate introduced a bill that would allow school districts to seek an injunction against an impending strike. Teachers who went on strike anyhow would be subject to fines or jail, and schools would be prevented from paying teachers for days in which they participated in a demonstration. The measure has little chance of becoming law, since Democrats control both the state House of Representatives and the governor’s mansion.
Teacher strikes are considered unlawful in Arizona, as they are in Oklahoma, Kentucky and West Virginia. Rank-and-file teachers in these states don’t hesitate to use the term “strike” to describe their actions, but union leaders prefer the term “walkout.” They point out that teachers aren’t striking against their managers — principals, administrators or local school boards — but are instead protesting state policies. Many teachers have used sick days or personal days to attend protests and rallies.
It is unlikely that teachers participating in this movement would lose their jobs en masse; all of these states have teacher shortages because of pay and other factors. During the wave of teacher strikes in the 1960s and 1970s, union leaders like Albert Shanker sometimes did go to jail, but it would be surprising to see that happen now.
Is this a feminist movement?
You may have noticed that the majority of the teachers photographed at these protests are female.
About three-quarters of American teachers are women. When the modern teachers’ union movement began in Chicago in 1897, it was an explicitly feminist movement with close ties to the suffragists. Teachers are relatively underpaid compared with other skilled workers because historically they have been women. Many policymakers assumed teachers were being supported by higher-earning spouses or other male relatives.
Today, two women — Lily Eskelsen García and Randi Weingarten — lead the two national teachers’ unions, and state affiliates in West Virginia, Oklahoma and Kentucky are also led by women. Even so, many of the most visible grass-roots leaders of this new protest movement are young men who started Facebook pages to help organize protests, rallies and walkouts.
Do parents and the public in these states support the movement?
Unlike West Virginia and Oklahoma, Arizona has never before had a statewide teacher walkout. The state is typically skeptical of organized labor, though in recent weeks, thousands of parents have joined teachers at “walk-in” protests outside schools on Wednesday mornings.
Though teacher walkouts are incredibly disruptive for families, who rely on schools for child care and nutrition, the public is often supportive. In Oklahoma, several public opinion polls showed that parents overwhelmingly supported teachers during their walkout. When teachers walked out in Chicago in 2012 and Wisconsin in 2011, nonpartisan polling found the majority of parents and the public supported the teachers.
How are local unions and the two big national unions involved?
This is a movement that began on Facebook with rank-and-file teachers in conservative states, who moved faster and more aggressively than their union leaders in demanding action from lawmakers. In all these states, union membership is optional for most teachers. That said, the state and national unions stepped in quickly with crucial organizing and lobbying muscle, and coordinated closely with grass-roots leaders.
How does this movement compare to the 2012 teachers’ strike in Chicago, or the 2011 protests in Wisconsin?
When Chicago teachers went on strike in 2012, they had some of the same concerns that teachers do in 2018. In particular, they wanted more funding for support staff at their schools, like guidance counselors and nurses.
The biggest issue in Chicago, however, was the school reform agenda of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who was pushing to evaluate teachers using student test scores. Education policy changes aren’t the focus of the current movement, which is more about salaries and school funding for basic needs like textbooks and foreign language classes.
Even so, teacher activists in Arizona say they are frustrated by public funds being diverted to charter schools and tax credits that help parents pay for private school tuition. Many Kentucky teachers oppose charters, too, and those in West Virginia were angry after legislators proposed making it easier to become a teacher without training in education.
The public employee protests at the Wisconsin State Capitol in 2011 began after Gov. Scott Walker introduced a plan to roll back collective bargaining and cut pensions. In that case, the teachers lost, and both policies became law.