WV teachers and school workers brace for round three

West Virginia teachers and schools support workers have won two major victories over the last year or so.The successful 2018 strike help set off a wave of similar rebellions around the country, and the dominoes are still falling.

This weekend I had the pleasure of attending a presentation by Eric Blanc, author of the new book Red State Revolt: The Teachers' Strikes and Working-class Politics. Blanc was in West Virginia at the time of the 2018 strike and has followed the wave around the country. It was nice to hear how great the reputation of WV school workers is around the country.

I'm starting to get anxious about round three, which will be the special session of the legislature that could begin on May 22. This Metro News article highlights some of the issues. It's not clear how much of SB 451, the bad old "ominous omnibus" bill will be brought back. During many hearings around the state, stakeholders called for more mental health services, small class sizes and such.

Aside from outside astroturf groups, there has been no groundswell in support of privatization.

Still, I think a lot will depend on how teachers, school service workers and their allies stay engaged on this one. As the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass said, "Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.”

Eye on the Ominous Omnibus education "reform" bill

I've been a bit under the weather lately so am behind on blogging the ups and downs of the Ominous Omnibus education "reform" bill in the WV legislature. Here's where I think we are:

SB 451, aka SB 666, passed the Senate 18-16 Feb. 4, with all Democrats and two Republicans voting against. It contained an infinity of charter schools, thousands of "education savings accounts" (ESAs) to siphon money away from public schools, anti-union "paycheck protection" measures, penalties for work stoppages and such. And a 5% raise for state workers. It was clearly an effort to punish teachers and school service workers for winning last year.

In the House education committee, amendments were made that took out some of the worst features, including paycheck, penalties, and ESAs. It limited charter schools to two.

Yesterday there were two public hearings at which teachers and parents vastly outnumbered  the out of state and astroturf bill supporters. I love it that one of the speakers against the bill compared charter schools to bedbugs. Bring two of them home and see how it goes...

THEN, the house finance committee apparently thought it was the REAL education committee and began putting more bad stuff back in the bill. THEN that failed and the earler, somewhat less bad, bill was sent to the floor, where it is now.

My friend and twitter critter Sean O'Leary of the WV Center on Budget and Policy dropped these gems during the process:

"Marathon public hearings, all night committee meetings, all for a bill that nobody but lobbyists want. Meanwhile, PEIA stuck with a band-aid of a one-year fix, with no permanent solution in sight."

and

"Lobbyists for charter schools and ESA's get called up to present to House Finance committee, while teachers and parents opposed get shuffled though a public hearing 70 seconds at a time."

It's still not clear what teachers and school service workers are going to do. I guess it depends on what goes down on the House floor...but we could be looking at an epic rematch. A rally in support of public education is planned for tomorrow at 6:30 on the riverside steps of the capitol.

And just to be clear, many teachers and school service workers are willing to give up a pay raise in order to kill a bill that threatens public education in this state.

"Why in the world are we doing this?"

Say what you want about WV Governor Jim Justice--I certainly have. But he does have his moments. One of these occurred today at an impromptu press conference on the ominous omnibus senate education bill.

His main message was "why are we doing this?" While he admitted education in WV could be improved, he came out strongly against charter schools and attacks on teachers' organizations (paycheck "protection," which is more like paycheck reduction). He admitted that he believed the senate bill was at least partially an act of retaliation against teachers. He said that he'd veto the bill in its current form and urged that it be broken up into component parts, each of which could be considered independently. And he called for the passage of a clean pay-raise bill for teachers and state workers.

The main theme seemed to be that we don't need something this divisive, saying "Come on, we're better than this."

It's still unclear how the senate under the leadership of Mitch Carmichael will respond or what the house thinks about the whole thing. In a worst case scenario, the veto, if it happened within a certain time, could be overturned by a simple majority.

Still, he came out and strongly said things that many of us have been saying.

Obviously, it's nowhere near over and we need to stay on this. Still, this was something that probably nobody was expecting this morning.