IN THIS PODCAST: Nick Archuleta from ND United joins Amy & JJ to talk about the teacher walkouts in Oklahoma and Kentucky.
And, Archuleta explains why these are not ‘strikes’.
Oklahoma teachers are posting their crumbling textbooks online
Most recent story from KFGO.com:
Oklahoma eyes tax hikes as teachers’ strike threatens second week
By Lenzy Krehbiel-Burton
TULSA, Okla. (Reuters) – The Oklahoma Senate passed an internet sales tax on Friday to help fund the state’s public schools, but the $20 million measure represents just a fraction of new spending sought by teachers who walked out in protest of a decade of education budget cuts and low salaries.
Teachers vowed on Friday to continue their five-day-old strike, which has affected more than 500,000 students, in their fight for $200 million in increased annual education funding.
Lawmakers in the Republican-dominated state did not appear near approving the revenue boost sought by the close of Friday’s session. Other measures now before the Senate would bring total new funding to less than half of educators say is needed, in a state where teacher salaries are among the lowest in the nation.
The strike has garnered strong public backing, with a statewide survey from the Sooner Poll agency showing that 72.1 percent of respondents supported the walk-out.
“The walk-out will continue on Monday,” said Alicia Priest, president of the Oklahoma Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union with about 40,000 members.
Major school districts, including the state’s two largest Oklahoma City and Tulsa, said schools will be closed on Monday due to the strike.
Despite the disruption for families, many parents are supporting the teachers.
“The legislature is trying to push this as long as they can to set parents against teachers,” said the Rev. Evan Taylor, who has a son in the Tulsa school system and has shown his support by opening up his church as an impromptu day care site while schools are closed.
“They think this is going to backfire on the teachers, but I don’t think it will,” Taylor said.
The strike comes after a West Virginia strike last month ended with a pay raise and as teachers in other states angry over stagnating wages are considering walk-outs.
Oklahoma’s internet sales tax measure, which was already passed by the state House of Representatives, now heads to Republican Governor Mary Fallin, who is expected to sign it. The measures extends the application of the state sales tax to third-party internet purchases. The state already collects sales tax from direct internet sales.
Two other measures before the Senate on Friday to help fund education are a hotel tax expected to generate about another $50 million and a gambling measure that could bring in about $22 million.
If that legislation clears the Senate, depending on the details the measures would either have to head to the House for reconciliation or would go directly to Fallin, who has supported raising teachers’ pay.
Tens of thousands of teachers have come to the state Capitol this week calling for increased spending for an education system whose inflation-adjusted general funding per student dropped by 28.2 percent between 2008 and 2018, the biggest reduction of any state, according to the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Teachers want lawmakers to make changes in the state’s capital gains tax, which they say would raise the needed funds for education.
Some have spent the entire school week at the Capitol, filling galleries and joining rallies outside. Many say they are tired but energized by the support they have received.
“We just want to make sure that they are going to fix the problem and not dismantle it the minute we leave,” said Lindsay Burkhalter, a fourth-grade teacher in Ponca City, about 105 miles (170 km) north of Oklahoma City.
Last week, lawmakers approved the state’s first major tax increase in a quarter century, a $400 million revenue package that raised teacher pay by an average of about $6,000.
That was not enough for the teachers, who are seeking $10,000 over three years. Even with the pay raise approved by lawmakers, their mean salaries would be lower than teachers in every neighboring state, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed.
Oklahoma has the lowest median pay among states for both elementary and secondary school teachers, according to 2018 bureau data. The minimum salary for a first-year teacher was $31,600, state data showed.
A major cause of budget strain comes from tax breaks Oklahoma granted to its energy industry, which were worth $470 million in fiscal year 2015 alone.
When energy prices sharply declined a few years ago, so did the state’s tax revenue, leading to deeper cuts in education spending, which was already on the decline.
(Reporting by Lenzy Krehbiel-Burton in Tulsa and Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas; Writing by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Susan Thomas and Leslie Adler)
(Amy Iler & JJ Gordon are talk-show hosts at 790 AM KFGO in Fargo-Moorhead. “It Takes 2 with Amy & JJ” can be heard weekdays 11am-2pm. Follow Amy on Twitter @AmyKFGO. Follow JJ on Twitter @JJGodon701.)
