When teachers in Oklahoma went on strike for nine days this spring, the state’s politicians may not have realized that the movement for justice in the classroom was just beginning. Oklahoma’s teachers joined the national wave of walkouts and protests to demand better pay and more funding for public education. The teachers won pay bumps and the first tax increases passed by the state legislature in 28 years.
Oklahoma’s teachers, like their fellow educators around the country, had spent years watching their state legislature slash taxes as schools suffered. For Alicia Priest, head of the Oklahoma Education Association, the raises they won this spring were to be celebrated. But they weren’t enough. A Republican-dominated legislature, Priest said, wouldn’t consider additional revenue sources to fully fund the teachers’ demands.
“We got here by electing the wrong people to office,” Priest told the New York Times earlier this year. “We have the opportunity to make our voices heard at the ballot box.”
The rest of the state seems to agree. This summer, Republican primary voters severely punished a dozen incumbent politicians that went up against the teachers during the legislative battle, ending their chances at reelection. That amount of turnover is “unprecedented,” the Tulsa World said, and could signal major changes for the state legislature.
The wave in Oklahoma is just part of a greater movement propelling teachers and their allies towards more political power. And they’re not just pushing politicians to adopt their proposed policies — they’re becoming the politicians themselves. Nearly 1,500 current or former educators are running for state office, according to the National Education Association, and thousands more are galvanized as part of a grassroots movement pushing for drastic priority shifts in state politics.
But educators across the country aren’t waiting for state legislatures to take action. instead, teachers in several states have attempted to take their demands directly to the voters. Ballot initiatives have become a popular tool for teachers hoping to use the momentum from the strikes to circumvent more conservative legislatures to gain necessary education funding.
Colorado voters have the option to increase education funding and curb inequality at the same time on Election Day. They’ll decide on Amendment 73, which would raise corporate taxes from 4.63 percent to 6 percent, and would change the state’s flat tax structure. The amendment would create progressive tax brackets for Coloradans making more than $150,000 a year. The resulting revenue from both changes would go to a dedicated public education fund.
The fund couldn’t be more necessary — Colorado spends about $2,800 less per student than the national average, due to a state budget funding mechanism that functions as an IOU to schools when money’s short. A February study from the Education Law Center found that the state’s wages for teachers were the least competitive in the country. That’s no news to teachers in Pueblo School District, who went on strike this May —the first teacher’s strike in the state in 24 years — to demand a 2 percent raise. Besides low teacher pay, the funding cut has had a tremendous impact on the quality of education. A majority of school districts have gone down to four school days a week and students are stuck with aging textbooks and equipment.
A fiscal impact statement from the Colorado legislature estimates that the amendment would bring in an additional $1.6 billion in revenues for the 2019-2020 school year. Proponents also point out that Amendment 73 helps address inequities in the tax system as well. Ninety-two percent of Coloradans won’t be affected by the change in income tax, which is overwhelmingly targeted at the state’s richest 1 percent.
While the Colorado amendment is the most ambitious, plenty of other states are putting measures related to education-related funding on the ballot. Like Colorado, Utah has resisted raising taxes by siphoning money away from schools. Now, a question on the state’s ballot will ask residents whether they favor increasing the gas tax to send more money to schools. But despite being a nonbinding question, the Koch brothers-funded Americans for Prosperity has mounted a campaign against the measure.
Utah’s far from the only state where business interests have come out against education initiatives. Two of the most promising school funding mechanisms — an Arizona initiative and a Hawaii constitutional amendment — were both thrown off the ballot by the states’ respective Supreme Courts. The high courts decided that the language of both ballot initiatives was too misleading.
But Arizona’s educators aren’t about to let the court have the last say. Now the state’s teacher’s movement is pushing to oust two of the Supreme Court justices behind the decision to throw the measure off the ballot. If Arizona’s education-minded voters are as galvanized as Oklahoma’s were this summer, those justices should be concerned. Teachers are proving that their movement is only ramping up.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.