DELBARTON, W.Va. – The coal miner’s son had studied his county’s rough-and-tumble labor history, written his dissertation on it, taught his high school students about it. Now Eric Starr, who knew history never repeats itself, felt history doing just that. And he was part of it. Standing at a secret meeting like those held by striking miners a century ago, dressed in black except for a red bandana like the ones those miners wore, he exhorted his fellow public school teachers to defy the governor and their own unions and stay out on strike. “I’m not going back,’’ he said. “We’ve been sold out!’’ That was last winter. Mingo County teachers – with no legal right to strike, no encouragement from their union and little prospect of victory – became the first in West Virginia to vote to walk out over their health plan and their pay. The one-day walkout spread. On Feb. 22, 2018, teachers across West Virginia went on strike, sparking a movement that spread to other red states, including Oklahoma and Arizona, and then, this year, to Los Angeles and Denver. On Thursday, teachers plan to strike in Oakland, California. But the 2018 West Virginia teacher strike, which changed so much nationally, didn’t change that much back where it started. And on Tuesday, West Virginia teachers again staged a walkout – just to maintain the status quo. Starr sees the irony. “I love seeing what’s going on elsewhere,’’ he says. He’s 28, in his fourth year of teaching. “But West Virginia can be a slow place to change.’’ When the 2018 West Virginia strike ended March 7, it seemed like a great victory for public school teachers, who for years had been blamed widely for the failures of American schools, and for West Virginia schools in particular. But history, even when it repeats itself, isn’t that simple. The 2018 strike’s legacy is still in doubt. The state’s promise of a dedicated funding source for public employees’ health insurance – the main issue in the strike – remains unfulfilled. Despite a 5 percent raise, teacher pay remains far behind neighboring states’, a disparity that explains why the year began with 700 classroom vacancies, or 4 percent of the state teacher force. The settlement did not increase the number of school specialists, like counselors and nurses, to help students from families scarred by the state’s opioid epidemic. The teachers’ vow during the strike to “remember in November’’ produced only mixed results. Republicans, most of whom opposed teacher demands, kept control of both houses in the Legislature. This year they revived proposals that helped prompt the 2018 strike. Teachers and service personnel went on strike again. The walkout on Tuesday closed schools in nearly every West Virginia county, and lawmakers sidelined the education legislation teachers were protesting. That's a victory for teachers. But, teachers say, they are still waiting for the kinds of policies that would show them respect. Suspicious of the state's GOP leaders, teachers are striking again Wednesday, to ensure lawmakers don't revive the bill in question. Nearly all schools are closed. Teachers in America:No matter where they work, they feel disrespect 'Any talks of striking'? If last year's strike wasn’t revolutionary, it was remarkable. At a time when organized labor seems in terminal decline, a national public school teachers’ movement emerged from the coalfields of southern West Virginia, one of the most isolated and conservative corners of America. At a time when political partisanship is peaking – and despite the Democratic slant of teachers’ unions – the strike united Clinton and Trump voters. It was a political unicorn: a “liberal” cause advocated by conservatives. But it was no anomaly. Children here are raised on stories of battles between miners and mine companies in what came to be known as “Bloody Mingo.’’ Many of the teachers who walked out were first on picket lines when they were in diapers. Yet these old passions might not have been revived without a weapon the miners never enjoyed – social media. On Jan. 6, 2018, a teacher posted an innocent query on a Facebook page: “Just curious if there are any talks of striking.’’ Soon, there was talk of little else. Poll:Even when teachers strike, Americans give them high grades. Unions fare worse. Welcome to the Mountain State Jay O’Neal is a middle school social studies teacher who moved to West Virginia in 2015. After his first year, he realized that because of increasing health insurance costs, he’d take home $450 less than the previous year. Teachers across the nation lost ground economically during and after the Great Recession, as states slashed education spending. West Virginia, whose signature coal industry has collapsed, ranked 48th in teacher pay before the strike, according to the National Education Association. Yet teaching in West Virginia has gotten harder as students have gotten needier, partly because of the opioid crisis. Many are in a household with neither biological parent, and teachers sometimes must find ways to keep kids fed over the weekend, or get their electricity turned back on. One of O’Neal’s students found his father with a needle sticking out of his arm, dead of an overdose. O’Neal wasn’t born into West Virginia’s “strike culture.’’ But in October 2017 he started a Facebook group page to unite members of the state’s two main teacher unions, the West Virginia Education Association and the rival West Virginia Federation of Teachers. His timing was propitious. The state’s public employee health insurance agency had announced a new round of cost-saving measures. One based premiums for family coverage on the household’s total income, rather than just the teacher’s. Another was a wellness program that would effectively penalize those who didn’t do things like provide personal biometric data, go to the gym or wear an activity tracker like a Fitbit. The program was anathema to famously independent-minded West Virginians. What business is it of some bean-counter what my spouse makes? Or what I weigh? O’Neal heard plenty of grumbling in the teachers’ lounge, but little or nothing in public or on Facebook. His teachers' page had only about 1,000 members.<doc-sep>Striking West Virginia teachers and supporters rally at the state Capitol in Charleston on February 19, 2019. Photo: John Raby/AP/REX/Shutterstock/John Raby/AP/REX/Shutterstock West Virginia school personnel earned what looks like a second major labor victory in two years on Tuesday afternoon. Hours after educators walked out on strike, House legislators voted 53 to 45 to indefinitely table SB 451, a controversial omnibus education bill that has, in most of its many iterations, tied an additional pay raise for school employees to the creation of charter schools and education savings accounts that would subsidize the costs of private education, among other provisions. The vote is tentatively good news for teachers, but the bill may not be totally dead. In theory, someone could file a motion to reconsider tabling the bill. Education unions will hold a press conference at 7 p.m, and the House is in recess until 6 p.m. On Twitter, the West Virginia Education Association urged members to contact the 12 Republicans who voted to table the bill: Important - Please share Continue to contact the 12 Republican delegates who voted with the 41 Democrats.Thank them and urge them to stay with us should a reconsideration be called. Those 12 Republicans are... https://t.co/yPkGpwNuvp — WVEA (@WVEAnews) February 19, 2019 The West Virginia House of Delegates is in Recess until 6:00 pm. Stay tuned. It’s not over yet. #WVpol pic.twitter.com/Xp0a614P5z — WV Federation of Democratic Women (@WVFDW) February 19, 2019 At least one Republican delegate has said he doesn’t plan to file a motion to reconsider the bill: There’s a rumor a’swirlin’ that Del. Steele voted to kill SB 451 at the last minute just to be on the winning side, to file a motion to reconsider later. He just said unequivocally that this is not true and he is not planning to file that motion — Jake Zuckerman (@jake_zuckerman) February 19, 2019 Prior to Tuesday’s vote, school employees had characterized the bill as retaliation for last year’s history-making strike, which garnered national attention for the state’s comparatively low teacher salaries and helped inspire similar walkouts in Arizona, Oklahoma, and Kentucky. On Monday evening, leaders from the state’s three school employee unions announced a new walkout, nearly a full year after they shut down every school district in the state to demand living wages and funding for the public insurance agency that covers state employees. In the morning, before SB 451 met its probable demise, teachers expressed frustration with legislators. It’s “disheartening and it’s frustrating that here we are having to participate in our second strike,” Mingo County teacher Katie Endicott told New York magazine as she walked into the Capitol for a rally. Endicott’s husband is also a teacher, so they stood to benefit from a double pay raise. Despite last year’s hard-won victories, West Virginia teachers still earn relatively little compared to public school educators in other states. Even so, Endicott opposed the bill in its current iteration, and said she believed that her new raise would come at the expense of her students. “I’m willing to say, keep the $4,000 because the soul of West Virginia and our students are worth more than $4,000 a year,” she said. “So we’re not going to sell them out.” Kristina Gore, who teaches in Logan County, urged legislators to focus on other pressing matters, like the state’s opioid crisis. “Teachers agree wholeheartedly we have problems in public education, but if you want to fix them you must first understand those problems are symptoms of a bigger issue,” she told New York. “That issue is the social conditions in which our children live. Instead of trying to treat a symptom with garbage legislation that isn’t even vetted or proven to work, let’s brainstorm some legislation to fix the real problem. Let’s address the drug epidemic.” Tuesday’s strike placed significant pressure on state legislators, who had been mired in heated negotiations over the omnibus bill. As the West Virginia Gazette-Mail reported, the House version of the bill watered down the Senate’s original proposals for education reform. House legislators removed education savings accounts from the bill, restored seniority as a protective consideration for teachers at risk of being laid off, and capped the number of charter schools at two. The House scheme would have converted public schools to charter schools, but only with majority approval from school parents and employees. Teachers unions are uniformly opposed to the creation of new charter schools, which likely would have become a major obstacle to the implementation of this scheme. On Monday, Senate leaders countered with new proposals of their own. They unveiled an amended version of the bill that would increase the number of charter schools from two to seven and revive a clause to create education savings accounts, though it did limit these accounts to 1,000 students, down from 2,500 in the version the Senate originally sent to the House. By Tuesday morning, schools had closed in every county save one: Putnam County, which isn’t far from the state capital, Charleston. Although Putnam County superintendent John Hudson had refused to close school, some school employees appear to have defied him. News Channel WOWK 13 reported that picket lines had still formed at Putnam schools and that some school bus drivers had refused to pick up children. In Charleston, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, walked a picket line with educators. Not far away, other school employees, like Endicott, attended a demonstration at the Capitol. Robin Ellis, who also teaches in Mingo County and who traveled to the Capitol with Endicott, told New York that educators are “ready to do battle for public education.” “This will impact our children and our grandchildren and great-grandchildren. And we are ready,” she said. “We are not willing to stand back and replace a system which now offers education to all with a system that discriminates and will create chaos.” Fifty-three legislators listened. Twelve were Republicans who joined Democrats in the vote to table the bill. The House just voted on a motion made by Delegate Caputo to postone consideration of SB 451 indefinately.<doc-sep>West Virginia teachers on Wednesday night ended their second strike in less than a year. Teachers will return to class Thursday, unions said. Hundreds of angry, chanting teachers had jammed the upper Rotunda of the West Virginia Statehouse Wednesday. Their goal: ensuring lawmakers would not try to tie a raise for teachers to funds for the state's first charter schools. The House of Delegates killed that proposal Tuesday, but teachers had worried it could re-emerge. "Educators agreed to return to their classes on Thursday. The House killed the Senate bill, and it should stay dead," said AFT-West Virginia President Fred Albert late Wednesday. "The public wants the 'public' in public education." Putnam County schools was the only system out of the state's 55 counties to hold classes Wednesday. Across the state, charity groups scrambled to provide lunches and child care for students who suddenly had no school to attend. The second day of the strike mirrored the statewide walkout last year in which protesters poured into the statehouse to demand – and win – a 5 percent raise for teachers and service workers. That strike, jarring in the largely conservative state, triggered a nationwide movement by teachers who walked out shortly afterward in Oklahoma and Arizona, followed this year by strikes in Los Angeles and Denver. On Thursday, teachers plan to strike in Oakland, California. In West Virginia, another 5 percent raise was included in this year's omnibus education bill making its way through the Legislature. But that was effectively killed by the House after the Senate added amendments that would have provided funds for seven charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately managed. Teachers argue that would drain money from public schools. As passions increased, West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, a Republican, called on lawmakers Tuesday to pass his "clean" 5 percent pay raise bill and effectively drop Senate additions, the Martinsburg Journal-News reported. A House committee was set to take up the bill again Wednesday that would also boost the pay of school service workers and state police. “I’m calling upon you to go back to work,” Justice said in a message to teachers and service workers. “Go back to work right now. Go back to work tomorrow. Give this process now a chance to really work. You’ve voiced your concerns.” But leaders of three unions that represent teachers and school service workers said they have trust issues with lawmakers and believe there’s still a chance for more alterations of the complex legislation. Randi Weingarten, national president of the American Federation of Teachers, said teachers essentially were prepared to abandon their raises to block additions to the education bill they strongly oppose. Strike:How a West Virginia teacher’s Facebook post started a national movement She charged that the Senate added "retaliatory" amendments that were anti-public education and anti-teacher. "That is why teachers all across West Virginia – bus drivers, school secretaries, para-professionals – have converged on Charleston, because they don’t have a choice,” Weingarten said, according to the Charleston Gazette-Mail. “The only time there was a real focus on public education by the Republicans in this state was when there was a walkout last year.” Contributing: The Associated Press<doc-sep>The bill that closed schools in West Virginia as teachers went on strike was tabled by state lawmakers only hours after the protest began. Teachers in West Virginia went on strike Tuesday in response to a new bill they believed was retaliation against their nine-day strike last February, which launched a movement of teachers’ union strikes across the country over the last year. Public schools in all but one of the state’s 55 counties had been closed on Tuesday while hundreds of teachers’ union members picketed at the state capitol. OAKLAND TEACHERS ANNOUNCE STRIKE OVER PAY, CLASS SIZE The complex bill, which included a provision to create the state’s first charter schools and allow for private school vouchers, was quickly killed by the West Virginia House of Delegates. The House voted 53-45 to table the bill indefinitely and the unions said they would meet with their members before they decide whether to take further action, including ending the strike. American Federation of Teachers' West Virginia chapter President Fred Albert said "it was very clear today that the House heard our voice." Senate President Mitch Carmichael said he was disappointed by the House's vote. "Today the champions of the status quo won," Carmichael added. "But that will not stop progress. They're on the wrong side of history. Other states are moving forward. It's a marker in the process of education reform. It's not the end. The students, parents and teachers lost." Why were teachers protesting the bill? The unions complained lawmakers never asked for their insight into the bill that would have overhauled West Virginia’s educational system. One sticking point has been a provision to create the state's first charter schools, which the unions believe would erode traditional public education but bill advocates say would give parents more school choices. Charter school laws have been enacted in 43 other states and Washington, D.C. The Senate version would have allowed for up to seven charter schools statewide and provide for up to 1,000 education savings accounts for parents to pay for private school. The accounts would be for special-needs students and those who have been bullied. DENVER TEACHER STRIKE REVEALS US DIVIDE OVER BONUS PAY The House version did not call for such savings accounts and would limit charter schools to one each in Cabell and Kanawha counties. Before the House vote, Republican Gov. Jim Justice had said he would veto the bill if it included the savings accounts and more than two charter schools. He was critical of how the Senate handled the legislation. What were West Virginia teachers protesting last year? Almost exactly a year ago, teachers in West Virginia went on strike after the governor signed a 2 percent pay raise for the next year. West Virginia teachers were among the lowest-paid in the country and hadn't seen a salary increase in four years. After nine days of picketing and protesting, which left 277,000 students out of school, the House of Delegates approved a 5 percent increase. After the February 2018 protests, teachers in Arizona, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Washington state, Los Angeles and Denver followed suit. The strike in Los Angeles ended in January and the protest in Denver ended last week. Teachers in Oakland, California, have authorized a strike starting Thursday over class sizes, counselor and nurse staffing and raises. The Associated Press contributed to this report.<doc-sep>
Update: West Virginia’s House of Delegates voted Tuesday afternoon to postpone action on the controversial education bill indefinitely. West Virginia teachers are furious with state lawmakers — again. About 19,000 teachers walked off the job on Tuesday, closing down nearly every school in the state for the second time in a year. But this time, teachers are not fighting for pay raises. They’re protesting Republican efforts to privatize public education. Union leaders called for a strike Monday evening after Republicans senators voted for a bill that would open the door to allowing the first charter schools in West Virginia. That means some of the money earmarked for public schools would be diverted to fund privately run charter schools, homeschooling, and online classes. The education bill would also make it easier to fire teachers without considering seniority during layoffs. Senators passed the bill with a slim 18-16 majority and sent it to the House of Delegates. The chamber is expected to vote on the bill Tuesday afternoon. “The state Senate is trying for a second time this year to ram through a so-called education bill that defunds public education, retaliates against teachers who stood up for their students last year, and appears to be driven by outside wealthy interests like Americans for Prosperity that, like [Education Secretary] Betsy DeVos, want to eliminate public schools,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, in a statement Monday. The backlash caught some lawmakers off guard, considering that the education bill also includes money for pay raises and more nurses and school staff. But teachers say they won’t allow the state to start privatizing public education just so they can get a raise. They want legislators to scrap the bill and start over. So instead of going to class, thousands of teachers crowded the Capitol building in West Virginia Tuesday morning to express their disgust. “Kill that bill,” they chanted. “Public schools yes, charter schools no.” This latest coordinated action comes nearly a year after West Virginia teachers launched a successful nine-day strike in February 2018 to increase teacher salaries — a move that rippled across the country and fueled similar strikes in six states. And the trend continues in 2019: Teachers in Los Angeles went on strike in January, Denver teachers walked out of class last week, and Oakland, California, teachers plan to strike on Thursday. Now educators in West Virginia are flexing their muscles again, showing politicians that they’re willing to fight for more than a pay raise. The national teachers revolt began in West Virginia Public school teachers in West Virginia started a national movement when they launched a major strike last February. A total of 35,000 educators and school staff didn’t show up for work during the stoppage, adding up to a total of 318,600 lost workdays. Teachers in the state were angry that they hadn’t received an across-the-board salary raise since 2014, and were among the lowest-paid teachers in the country. The average teacher salary in the state was $44,701 in 2016, according to the National Education Association, making West Virginia 48th in the nation. Lawmakers, both Democrat and Republican, have been cutting corporate and business taxes for more than a decade. As a result, public schools have been losing millions of dollars a year in state money, which is the main source of funding for local schools, followed by local property taxes. The state of West Virginia now spends 11.4 percent less per student than it did before the economy tanked in 2008. So West Virginia teachers went on strike, shutting down all 680 public schools in the state for nine days. The walkout ended in March, after the governor and state leaders agreed to give teachers what they wanted: a 5 percent raise and a hold on increasing health insurance premiums. Underpaid teachers across the country were watching. More than 100,000 public school teachers in six states have walked out of class since, rebelling against years of stagnant wages, crumbling infrastructure, and deep budget cuts to education. The strikes in Arizona, West Virginia, Kentucky, Oklahoma, California, and Colorado had broad public support, forcing state lawmakers to raise pay and fueling a national movement to boost investment in public education. Now West Virginia’s teachers have started another battle. Whether their strategy will work a second time is still unclear.