Thousands of teachers returned Tuesday to the Oklahoma Capitol in Oklahoma City to protest low teacher pay and years of cuts to school funding, continuing a strike launched Monday.
Nearly 200 of the state’s 550 school districts remained closed, according to a tally on the Oklahoma Teacher Walkout Facebook group. An estimated 30,000 teachers and educators had gathered at the capitol on Monday, joined by hundreds of state employees.
Teachers are demanding that state legislators come up with $3.3 billion over the next three years for school funding, benefits, and pay raises for all public employees. On Monday, lawmakers didn’t give an inch.
That made teachers even angrier.
“Although teachers and education supporters made history today, our work is far from over. Lawmakers promised educators they were doing all they could to find new revenue. But, with a packed gallery full of education supporters and a line of people waiting to get inside, the House of Representatives adjourned for the day without doing a single thing,” Alicia Priest, president of the Oklahoma Education Association, said in a statement.
“This disrespect from lawmakers only drives the anger and frustration of teachers and education supporters, and it’s why Oklahomans from every corner of this state have no trust in this legislature,” she added.
Oklahoma’s teachers are rebelling against a decade of state tax cuts that triggered deep cuts in education spending, forcing about 20 percent of public schools to switch to a four-day-week schedule and pushing average teacher salaries to rank 49th in the country. Teachers haven’t gotten a raise in 10 years.
Oklahoma is still dealing with a budget crisis after lawmakers have slashed business taxes and top income tax rates year after year. A round went into effect in 2009; then taxes were lowered further in 2012 and 2014. The tax cuts were supposed to lead to an economic boom, but instead, they triggered a massive budget gap of about $1.5 billion each year.
To deal with the shortfall, the government cut spending everywhere. The cuts to education were so deep that 20 percent of the state’s public schools had 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. The last time teachers got a raise from the state was in 2008.
On Monday, teachers met with lawmakers in the capitol to urge them to raise taxes to fund their schools. They said legislators were receptive but showed little urgency in passing a bill. Teachers encouraged each other to keep the pressure on their state representatives on Tuesday.
“Tell them about not being able to have the lights on in the hallways, students having to wear coats in class because the heat is not supposed to be above 57 degrees,” one teacher urged her colleagues.
The education funding crisis in Oklahoma is so severe that the state is struggling to find, and keep, qualified teachers. About a quarter of Oklahoma City’s teachers leave every year, and the state had to issue a record number of emergency teaching certificates — 1,917 — for the current school year. A growing number of students in Oklahoma don’t have properly certified teachers.
Now Oklahoma faces an estimated $425 million budget hole for the next fiscal year.
Emboldened by the success of the nine-day teachers strike in West Virginia, Oklahoma educators presented a list of demands to state lawmakers in February. They gave legislators about a month to pass a bill.
The group asked for a $10,000 average pay raise for teachers over three years — $6,000 in the first year, then $2,000 for each of the following two years. (In 2016, a $6,000 average raise would have been enough to push Oklahoma from the 49th to 28th in teacher pay, right above Montana and Virginia.)
Oklahoma’s teachers are also asking for a $7,000 raise for school support staff over three years, raises for all state employees, $200 million in school funding, a 5 percent cost of living pension adjustment for retired teachers, and more funding for their health care plans.
The teachers’ demands add up to about $3.3 billion over three years. That’s money Oklahoma doesn’t have on hand — the state would need to raise taxes.
Many politicians in Oklahoma City resisted giving in to the teachers’ list of demands but felt the pressure to do something. In recent weeks, lawmakers have proposed a handful of bills; one would have raised teacher pay by about $5,000, but it didn’t include more funding for schools or anything else. (That bill passed, but not the bill to raise cigarette and oil taxes to pay for it.)
Another plan called for a $2,000 raise for teachers next year and a $4,000 raise the following year, but it didn’t include anything else, not even a source of funding to pay for the raises. The Oklahoma Education Association opposed both measures.
The latest bill, which the governor signed into law last week, is the most generous yet, but the $447 million it would bring is still far too little. Teachers have rejected that proposal too.
On Tuesday, teachers seemed determined to stay out of class as long as it takes to get lawmakers to take action. But doing so will be harder for some teachers than others. While dozens of school districts, including Oklahoma City schools, have shut down indefinitely in support of the strike, others have not.
Teachers who work at schools that remain open are using sick days or personal days to participate in the walkout, and others are paying substitute teachers from their own pockets.