West Virginia’s Teachers Continue #RedforEd Pushback Against Charter Schools and ESA Vouchers
Just over a year ago, in late February 2018, school teachers across West Virginia launched the first of a nationwide wave of walkouts and strikes that became #RedforEd. Teachers in every one of West Virginia’s 55 school districts walked out; schools were shut down across the entire state. Teachers were protesting abysmally low salaries and desperately needed services for their students. The West Virginia strike last year yielded a 5 percent raise for school teachers.
Then again on February 19, 2019, West Virginia’s teachers walked out again across 54 of the state’s 55 school districts to protest an omnibus education bill moving through the state legislature. The bill, known as Senate Bill 451, included another pay raise for teachers, but the Republican dominated West Virginia Senate had also inserted poison pills—authorization for seven charter schools and a statewide Education Savings Account (ESA) neo-voucher program for 1000 eligible students with special needs. After the debate broke down, the the West Virginia House of Delegates voted to table Senate Bill 451 indefinitely—killing the bill. Governor Jim Justice responded by calling a special session of the legislature to reconsider the omnibus bill after the end of the regular legislative session.
The special session was convened yesterday, May 20. Its purpose is supposedly to consider the omnibus education bill, but members of the legislature have not been able to reach any sort of consensus. It now appears legislators will consider extraneous matters and delay the conversation about education for several weeks. Some people believe the delay is designed to push the discussion past the end of the school year as a strategy to prevent the possibility of another statewide teachers’ strike.
The very same issues from the earlier Senate Bill 451 remain on the table: another raise in salaries for teachers, and the launch of school privatization in the state of West Virginia, a CONTINUE READING: West Virginia’s Teachers Continue #RedforEd Pushback Against Charter Schools and ESA Vouchers | janresseger
