After a statewide public school teacher strike made headlines in West Virginia in late February 2018, teachers in several other states have followed suit. Teachers employed in public schools in Oklahoma, Arizona, Colorado and Kentucky have also staged similar protests in hopes of securing pay raises, additional funding, healthcare benefits and improving student-to-teacher ratios.
West Virginia’s teachers walked out of their classrooms on February 22nd and did not return to work until March 7th, a day after the state legislature approved a 5 percent pay raise for all state workers, according to NPR. West Virginia Governor Jim Justice also assembled a special task force to explore how the state can lower health insurance costs in the wake of the protests.
But in Texas, law forbids teachers cannot engage in an organized work stoppage against the state, according to The Texas Tribune. Public school teachers who go on strike in Texas risk losing their teaching certificates, Teacher Retirement System benefits and any other rights or privileges obtained because of their employment.
“I think (the Texas legislature) would give us a raise if they could, but our schools are broke. They have been poor for a while now, we’ve gone through years and years of cutbacks,” Lee Bibb, a school teacher in a public San Antonio school district, said. “I just don’t see how in the world teachers could get more pay when they can barely afford to run the schools. It’s scary.”
Teachers are frequently forced to supplement school supplies for their classes out of their own pockets, Bibb said. Pencils, crayons, glue sticks and paper are just some of the supplies that teachers in Texas are tasked with replenishing themselves.
“We always have to conserve on paper and most the time I just pay for my own. I spend thousands of my own dollars,” she said. “I just started this job in January and I bet I have already spent $2,000 (on school supplies).”
In the 2008 fiscal year, the state of Texas covered 48.5 percent of public education costs, according to the Legislative Budget Board. By the 2019 fiscal year, however, the state will support closer to 38 percent of public education costs.
In 2016, teachers in Texas earned nearly $6,500 less than the national average for teacher salaries, according to The Texas Tribune. Despite that figure, public school teachers in Texas risk losing their pension and their employment if they choose to protest.
“Of course I (identify with the protests). The last school district I worked for gave us a cost of living raise almost every year or every other year for the 9 years I was there, but it was only an increase of 2 or 3 percent,” Bibb said. “But, they were also the lowest paying district in the city.”
There is not much deviation from this norm elsewhere in the country. Megan Church, a public art teacher who formerly taught at another public school district in San Antonio, accepted a position as an art teacher at another public school in New York City. She said public schools there face many of the same issues that have inspired teacher protests in other states.
“New York City is one huge (school district), so it encompasses 5 boroughs and 1.1 million students. That’s about the size of San Antonio. Depending on what borough one works within, resources and support can vary,” Church said. “Brooklyn is better than the Bronx, but far worse than Manhattan. Schools are also cut up into smaller schools. You will rarely find a school as large as (the high school I worked at in Texas), which is small by Texas public school standards. My current high school has only about 500 students.”
In Texas, Church said she was given an annual budget of over $6,000 for supplies and other expenses. In New York, that budget has been reduced to only $1,000 annually for the same number of students per class.
Budget cuts in public education have been substantial for every department, but are especially devastating for public arts programs, she said. Though the state’s student graduation rate ranks fourth nationally, Texas’ public schools rank 41st in national math and reading exams, according to U.S. News Rankings.
“It’s probably not worth it to go into education anymore, unless you know you are going to continue and work towards becoming an administrator,” Bibb said. “But, then you would most likely have to take on college debt to pay for the extra schooling.”
About Reece Nations: Undergraduate Managing Editor
