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West Virginia Teachers Strike

avalon

avalon

Antwan Scott
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An entire state's public school teachers are currently on strike. That would be a pretty big story if there weren't already so many pretty big stories on a daily basis.

Teacher pay raise stalled in WV Senate

The original proposal pre-strike was to offer a 2% raise this year and 1% the next two years. After a few days the governor offered a 5% which was passed by the state house, but Republicans have blocked it in the state senate. There is also an issue with rising healthcare costs which the governor promised a task force to look into, but no substantive solution.

Striking teachers go out of their way to make sure students have food

The West Virginia Teachers’ Strike Takes Aim at Coal and Gas
 
West Virginia teachers are better paid than North Carolina teachers.
 
myDeaconmyhand said:
West Virginia teachers are better paid than North Carolina teachers.
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2017 NEA statistics show the average teacher salary for NC, 2016 to be $47,941 and WV, 2016 to be $45,622. Page 32 if you're interested.

http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/2017_Rankings_and_Estimates_Report-FINAL-SECURED.pdf

Also, "North Carolina teachers are now averaging more than $50,000 a year"

The average salary for a North Carolina teacher has increased to more than $50,000 a year for the first time.

Recently released figures from the state Department of Public Instruction put the average salary for a North Carolina public school teacher at $51,214 this school year. That’s $1,245 more than the previous school year.

The $50,000 benchmark has been a major symbolic milestone, with Republican candidates having campaigned in 2016 about how that figure had already been reached. Democrats argued that the $50,000 mark hadn’t been reached yet and that Republicans hadn’t done enough, especially for highly experienced teachers.

The average teacher salary has risen 12 percent over the past five years, from $45,737 a year. Since taking control of the state legislature in 2011, Republicans raised the starting base salary for new teachers to $35,000 and gave raises to other teachers.

The National Education Association has not released this year’s annual report on teacher pay, but last school year the national average salary was $58,950. According to DPI, North Carolina ranks fifth in the Southeast in average teacher compensation, with Georgia being the highest at $54,602.

The recent pay increases helped improve the state’s ranking on average teacher pay to 35th in the nation in last year’s NEA report. The state had fallen to 45th in 2011 after the recession froze pay increases.

The state can’t take complete credit for teachers eclipsing the $50,000 mark, because many school districts supplement the state base salary. This year, the average local supplement was $4,337.

Teacher raises are likely to again be a hot issue this year with control of the General Assembly at stake in the fall elections. Republican lawmakers say their goal is to raise average teacher salaries to $55,000 a year by 2020.
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http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/education/article203297889.html
 
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BillBrasky said:
^ Yeah we're f***ing loaded down here
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Yeah, I saw that coming. Obviously, NC still has a ways to go. Worth noting however that NC pays 64% of teacher salary, which is above the national average of 46%. Counties and municipalities have to suck it up at some point too.

Obviously, the cost of living in Charlotte and Raleigh is way the hell higher than anywhere in WV.
 
BiffTannen said:
2017 NEA statistics show the average teacher salary for NC, 2016 to be $47,941 and WV, 2016 to be $45,622. Page 32 if you're interested.

http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/2017_Rankings_and_Estimates_Report-FINAL-SECURED.pdf

Also, "North Carolina teachers are now averaging more than $50,000 a year"



http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/education/article203297889.html
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I got my information from the Washington Post article on the strike, which lists North Carolina as having lower pay according to the bureau of labor statistics

"West Virginia high school teachers made an average of $45,240 a year in 2016, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That is the 47th-lowest salary in the 50 states and the District of Columbia, better only than Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma and South Dakota. Elementary and middle school teachers do slightly better — they’re only 46th lowest."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...chers-in-other-states/?utm_term=.768860671a7d
 
Probably splitting hairs but NEA is using hard data from the states and BLS is using statistical data. Fair enough to say salaries in both states suck but at least NC is heated in the right direction.
 
Oklahoma comes closer to joining West Virginia in a major teacher strike

A survey last fall of 250 teachers who left Oklahoma schools said most left because of poor pay, and they took jobs that paid them $19,000 more a year on average. Twenty-four percent still lived in the state but commuted across state lines to higher-paying jobs, said the survey's author, Theresa Cullen, an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma.

"They're just tired of fighting," Cullen said. "They've lost hope."

In their place, schools have been plugging the gaps with undertrained teachers who are given emergency teaching certificates in order to hurry them into schools.

During the 2011-2012 school year, the state of Oklahoma granted 30 emergency teaching certificates to new teachers who had not satisfied their certification requirements. This year, that number exploded to 1,917 teachers as districts struggled to retain teachers who have left for higher-paying jobs.

Dozens of Oklahoma schools, particularly near the Texas and Arkansas borders, have also cut back to four days of school a week to cut costs but also to better compete for teachers who might be interested in having three-day weekends.
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BiffTannen said:
Too late. WV just reached a deal for a 5% raise.
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They reached the same deal last week, with the same breaking news- the pay raise wasnt the issue, the health insurance fix, and the fixed revenue source was the issue.
 
https://jacobinmag.com/2018/03/west-virginia-teachers-strike-agreement-budget

On Tuesday afternoon, a deal to give all public employees in the state of West Virginia a 5 percent pay raise was passed by the legislature and signed by the governor.

A struggle that mobilized tens of thousands of workers, won widespread popular support, and was led by rank-and-file leaders, ended in a tangible victory. Confusion arose, however, as reports indicated that Republican state politicians wanted to offset the increase with cuts to social services. But though the Republicans are threatening to pay for this in part through cutting essential services, the bill itself is not tied to any such cuts...


...And what a lot of people have already forgotten is how much we have already won. Even before the walkouts began, in his hope to avoid a strike, the governor dropped his push for catastrophic changes to PEIA, such as the total family income requirement and the Go365 wellness program. The government was forced to keep the PEIA insurance premiums and deductibles at their current level. Also, because of the strike, we were able to ensure that a lot of bad education bills weren’t able to get passed. The charter school bill didn’t go anywhere, and additional anti-union bills like “payroll protection” all were dropped.
 
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