Who knew bad things would happen when you vote republican 
Oklahoma is a wealthy state, but its wealth is funneled off to the headquarters of giant oil and gas companies around the globe. The job of the Republican party is to make sure those gas and oil revenues aren’t taxes appropriately. You would hate to see the locals benefit from the natural resources of their own state. The Republicans have done a great job draining Oklahoma citizens of their wealth while convincing them that their poverty is all the fault of the evil Democrats.
The GOP takeaway is that teachers should be legislators for the raise. The bill also includes $50 million for schools (the cuts for FY 2017 were $54 million, so you can see that teachers were underwhelmed by the generosity).
Now more traditionally governed districts are trying to force teachers to return. One district is said to have threatened to fire teachers who participate in the walkout or who speak to media. Since OK has more than 1400 teachers with emergency certificates (a college degree, no criminal record, but with no training for classroom teaching), a fired teacher with a traditional certificate would have no problem finding a new job, so that is a bit of an empty threat.
I believe we are seeing an actual citizens revolt.
Unions may gain popularity again as the working poor come to the realization that that is the way they fight back against lobbyists.
The serfs outside the gates are unhappy Kochs and they know where you live
The problem is summed up by the teacher in Kentucky who voted Republican. Whet did she expect?
If those teachers did a lot more preaching and less teaching, the GOP might value them more. Oklahoma teachers have been near the very bottom in wages for a long time. Why did it take a booming economy and stock market along with West Virginia teachers striking to wake them up?
Hope Anna Langthorn, Olahoma’s 24 year old Democratic chair, can achieve more gains over this issue. I really like this young lady:
Kansas… are you there?
I’d wager a majority of teachers (white ones, anyway) vote the straight GOP ticket in Oklahoma, Kentucky, AND West Virginia. I wonder if any of them are nimble enough thinkers to have put two and two together yet? If not, I suggest they keep collecting their lousy pay in underfunded schools and let us know how all that is working out for them!
Leave it to AP not to explain that this is still a significant wage cut after taking inflation into account.
Yep, just like the oil and gas companies do in third-world countries.
But you repeat yourself. It was pretty much accepted until WW1 that the US was a third-world country. Things have gotten better in some parts.
The headquarters of many of these oil companies used to be in Oklahoma. When the decision makers moved, and their sons and daughters were no longer sitting in public school classrooms there along with everyone else, a certain perspective was lost.
The schools used to be a huge recruiting tool in small oil towns particularly. It’s interesting that the generation who benefited so greatly from that not-altogether-altruistic corporate necessity are now the parents of school kids themselves, and that those are the same communities that are leading the charge for more and more fair funding.
I dunno about that being an empty threat. Immobility of the teacher workforce has always been taken advantage of. When I was a kid, well-educated spouses of Large Employer in a smallish town meant that I had teachers with PhDs and research experience, because that was the pool they had to draw from. If you have family ties or a spouse with a job or money tied up in a house in a small town it may be a bit difficult to just pick up and move - and it’s not like there are a lot of alternative employers in most places.
That said, in many places the districts are supporting the teachers. They’re getting screwed too.
Great article and what a great pick!
We need to fight for fairness, but we need people to know that we’re fighting, which isn’t happening in the state now.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!
To quote the Texas lottery, you can’t win if you don’t play.
And this:
The Republican narrative is that those groups of people can’t have their rights because if they get their rights, you can’t have yours. They tell people there are only so many rights to go around, only so much privilege to go around. But that’s not the case. Our narrative needs to be that everyone needs to be treated with respect and dignity and be able to lead successful, happy lives, because that’s better for everybody. We’re failing there, in rural America, because these people are under the false impression that others’ success comes at their expense. It’s our job to show them otherwise.
It’s been a long time since I’ve rooted so hard for protesting workers. I love OK teachers.
Math are hard, particularly when you have to divide by ten to get the annual average increase.
That should be maths is hard.
I wonder what’s going on here. Is it just that republican legislatures are emboldened and going too far? Or is it that all the people bought into the idea that there legislators were only screwing them because that black man was in the white house ruining the economy, and are upset that they’re still getting screwed when america is demonstrably great again?
I was thinking something similar. I think that would be confirmed if other professions and unions start to strike (what’s taking them so long?). We need to get our elected officials to refocus on the average Americans rather than the upper echelons of the US caste system.
She’s doing a great job so far:
Nov 6, 2017 - Rosecrants is a Democrat who won in a district that is 60 percent Republican. He is one of three Democrats who have won GOP legislative districts in Oklahoma special elections in the months since President Trump won 65 percent of the vote in one of the country’s most conservative states.