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West Virginia Teacher Crisis
and Trumpville is radiosilent
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33 Replies
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It’s not a crisis if teachers don’t want to work.
Now, if the garbagemen go on strike….If Trump made a comment about the WV teachers strike, you would be spittling all over your monitor about how he has declared a ‘war on labor’.
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he already has with the tax cuts for the rich
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I’ve heard some interviews on NPR this week. It’s not about wanting to work but rather making a livable wage. It’s WV and that can’t be that much. There are teachers getting boned on salary there.
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Lowest pay in the country, no?
But fw would accept that pay for radiologists im sure.
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Quote from DICOM_Dan
I’ve heard some interviews on NPR this week. It’s not about wanting to work but rather making a livable wage. It’s WV and that can’t be that much. There are teachers getting boned on salary there.
In WV federal minimum wage IS a living wage in WV. A double wide on an acre of rocky hollow doesn’t cost all that much….
They are bitching about their family deductible having gone up to $1950 over the last 5 years. I wish I could find a plan with a family deductible that low for any less than 3 grand a month. They should thank the anointed one for their deductibles, they just got shafted like everyone else.
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I’d like you to personally show these greedy teachers how easy it is to live on their salaries by personal example, including their increased but still highly generous deductible. Let’s extend all radiologists’ salaries to the Federal minimum wage & tell them all to shut up, just buy that double-wide & be grateful. Health insurance would decrease a bit for everyone too.
Now that would be a lesson indeed.-
Quote from Frumious
I’d like you to personally show these greedy teachers how easy it is to live on their salaries by personal example, including their increased but still highly generous deductible. Let’s extend all radiologists’ salaries to the Federal minimum wage & tell them all to shut up, just buy that double-wide & be grateful. Health insurance would decrease a bit for everyone too.
Now that would be a lesson indeed.
If you want to make more money, there is always a train that leaves WV.
WV is poor. What these teachers want is for other poor people to pay more taxes so they can enjoy low deductibles. It’s all one pot. If they want more money, there is always the train down to DC.
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So your solution is teachers abandon WV so taxes can come close to zero and no school taxes since no teachers.
Everyone’s happy!
Your disposable society.
But why pick on teachers? Healthcare in WV depends on taxes too. Even private insurance gets tax benefits that we pay for. Bring down those healthcare incomes including physicians to teachers’ levels & there will be more $ to spread around without raising taxes. That could be argued as a nationwide solution.
Everyone’s happy!-
WV’s real dilemma is remaining steadfast in their fantasy of a return of coal mining to save them & a belief in the Republican Party to save them, the same Party who has no interest in helping them & believes they are a waste and a wasted effort. These are the deluded voters who voted for Trump to rescue them. He has no interest in that.
WV voters are always selecting solutions that make thing worse for them & theirs. They need to look into the mirror to find who is at fault.
In the meantime, yes, pay teachers to provide better education so the children have better options.-
so true–they need to get off that GOP plantation
Quote from Frumious
WV’s real dilemma is remaining steadfast in their fantasy of a return of coal mining to save them & a belief in the Republican Party to save them, the same Party who has no interest in helping them & believes they are a waste and a wasted effort. These are the deluded voters who voted for Trump to rescue them. He has no interest in that.
WV voters are always selecting solutions that make thing worse for them & theirs. They need to look into the mirror to find who is at fault.
In the meantime, yes, pay teachers to provide better education so the children have better options.
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WV also has one of the worst heroin epidemics in the country. Teachers moving out with perhaps the whole population following does nothing to address real issues except the mythology of some saving tax money for their own pocket instead of building lives and the country.
Maybe a better beginning of solutions is to bring back and strengthen unions.
[link=https://www.npr.org/2018/03/04/589968953/heroin-e-the-women-fighting-addiction-in-appalachia]https://www.npr.org/2018/…ddiction-in-appalachia[/link]
[link=http://time.com/5176094/west-virginia-teacher-strike/]http://time.com/5176094/w…rginia-teacher-strike/[/link]
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I guess today the teachers decided to continue the strike for 1% difference between what the legislature voted and what they want.
Not too many math teachers involved it seems. -
The same argument applies to the State, for 1% they are willing to keep the schools closed.
They missed math probably because their teachers decided to move to a place that paid a living wage.
Only you aspire for a double wide in WV. Most others aspire for more. -
Quote from Frumious
The same argument applies to the State, for 1% they are willing to keep the schools closed.
You are not good at math either it seems. It’s that thing with plus and minus. The teachers lose money with each additional week, the state saves money by not having to pay them.
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Quote from Frumious
The same argument applies to the State, for 1% they are willing to keep the schools closed.
They missed math probably because their teachers decided to move to a place that paid a living wage.
Only you aspire for a double wide in WV. Most others aspire for more.
I’d guess people in WV are just like the rest of the county. They just want to make a wage and be able to support their family. A place to live, healthcare, food, child care. They’re something like the 48th worst in pay among all states for teacher pay. I guess everyone can just pack up and leave WV because they’re not making enough money.
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Quote from sentinel lymph node
he already has with the tax cuts for the rich
Those with fat union paychecks are first in line to benefit from the tax cuts.
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[link=https://www.axios.com/west-virginia-teacher-strike-ends-after-state-leaders-reach-deal-15a19037-c7fb-40c8-96f7-4fc4791be462.html?source=sidebar]https://www.axios.com/wes…62.html?source=sidebar[/link]
West Virginia’s teachers will be returning to the classroom now that Gov. Jim Justice and other state leaders have agreed to a deal that gives state workers, including teachers, a 5% pay raise, [link=https://www.apnews.com/50bbbb160df44549a3d331ebb4f10c33/West-Virginia-leaders-reach-deal-to-end-teachers-strike]reports AP. [/link]The decision, reached on Tuesday, brings and end to [link=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/22/us/west-virginia-teacher-walkout.html]the 9-day strike[/link], the longest in state history.
[b]Why it matters: [/b]According to the most recent research from [link=http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/2017_Rankings_and_Estimates_Report-FINAL-SECURED.pdf]the National Educator’s Association[/link], teachers in West Virginia made on average about $45,000 annually in 2016, a figure on the lower end of the scale compared to the average in most other U.S. states.
[b]Why youll hear about this again:[/b] The success of the West Virginia teacher strike could inspire teachers in other states to do the same. A school district in Oklahoma is looking for aid, and have said they would support a walk-out if needed, [link=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2018/03/06/oklahoma-teachers-may-strike-statewide-and-tulsa-schools-officials-say-they-would-support-it/?utm_term=.9757c46186e3]according to the Washington Post.[/link]
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Hard to know for sure if I believe him but the head of the one teachers union said he was a master’s degree holder with 12 years and made $41k. He said the number is inflated because of admin types. Even $45k seems kind of low end for teachers. I do think there’s a solid group of people who do this more as a calling. I grew up in Catholic school we’re the teachers made even less.
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Teachers tired of living in poverty. 2 more states’, Kentucky & Oklahoma teachers walk out over wages – or lack of.
Red states where education investment has always been the lowest priority.
Or consider how some states, like [link=https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=jj1q]Kansas[/link] and [link=https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=jjar]Oklahoma[/link] both of which were relatively affluent in the 1970s, but have now fallen far behind have gone in for [link=https://www.npr.org/2018/02/08/584064306/tax-cuts-put-oklahoma-in-a-bind-now-gov-fallin-wants-to-raise-taxes]radical tax cuts[/link], and ended up savaging their education systems. External forces have put them in a hole, but theyre digging it deeper.
And when it comes to national politics, lets face it: Trumpland is in effect voting for its own impoverishment. New Deal programs and public investment played a significant role in the great postwar convergence; conservative efforts to downsize government will hurt people all across America, but it will disproportionately hurt the very regions that put the G.O.P. in power.
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The sooner we get back to home schooling and lack of indoctrination, the better.
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Nowing things is overrated. Just trust your gut like the presedent. No need to be thinking and book lernin.
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You’ve never read chemistry for communist or biology for Bolsheviks by Saul Alinsky?
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Quote from Nice Guy
Nowing things is overrated. Just trust your gut like the presedent. No need to be thinking and book lernin.
That brings up something not many people are aware of: they believe FAR more than they know. Like an unbelievable amount. True knowledge has gone by the wayside, especially once the Marxists came around and indoctrinated guys like you and the supporters of politicians dissimilar to Donald Trump.-
Time to raise taxes and pay people living wages and really make America great again by investing in America.
[link=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/26/opinion/red-arizona-republican-teacher-strike.html]https://www.nytimes.com/2…an-teacher-strike.html[/link]
Tens of thousands of teachers are walking out of their schools in Arizona on Thursday. Arizona is the latest conservative state with protesters demanding an increase in teacher salaries and more resources for students. In this video op-ed, four conservative teachers lament the conditions in their classrooms and, in turn, wrestle with their political beliefs.
Im a die-hard Republican, and Im dying inside, says Allison Ryal-Bagley, an elementary school substitute teacher.
Republicans arent taking care of our kids.
Over the last decade, Arizona has had the greatest decrease in per-student spending in the country a 36.6 percent drop since 2008 making it 48th in the nation. Arizona also ranks 43rd in teacher pay, at nearly $11,000 less than the national average, according to the National Education Association.
If paying teachers a living wage to educate our children is Marxism count me in.
Invest in education.
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Too many people have bought into the Republican anti-people pro-affluent war-on-government mythology that public workers and unions are stealing money from everyone living high on the hog while performing nothing jobs. Like teachers. This trend has been to the detriment of the public for decades now as money is transferred from the middle class to the upper income groups.
What’s wrong with living wages for public employees?
[link=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/26/opinion/public-service-wages.html]https://www.nytimes.com/2…lic-service-wages.html[/link]
When we fail to invest in public services, living standards decline and communities suffer overcrowded classrooms, understaffed prisons and more.
[link=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/22/business/economy/public-employees.html]https://www.nytimes.com/2…/public-employees.html[/link]
But lets remember what originally made public-sector jobs middle class: labor unions. The right to bargain collectively has allowed millions of public service workers like my father, a Cleveland bus driver and a member of the Amalgamated Transit Union, to live the American dream.
Denigration of teachers work has inspired walkouts in Oklahoma, West Virginia, Kentucky and Arizona. This is just the tip of the spear. If the court rules against unions, we will see more labor unrest, more people moved to collective action and more public service workers standing up for dignity and respect.
[link=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/22/business/economy/public-employees.html]https://www.nytimes.com/2…/public-employees.html[/link]
The anxiety and seething anger that followed the disappearance of middle-income jobs in factory towns has helped reshape the American political map and topple longstanding policies on tariffs and immigration.
But globalization and automation arent the only forces responsible for the loss of those reliable paychecks. So is the steady erosion of the public sector.
For generations of Americans, working for a state or local government as a teacher, firefighter, bus driver or nurse provided a comfortable nook in [link=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/11/business/economy/middle-class-but-feeling-economically-insecure.html]the middle class[/link]. No less than automobile assembly lines and steel plants, the public sector ensured that even workers without a college education could afford a home, a minivan, movie nights and a family vacation.
In recent years, though, the ranks of state and local employees have languished even as the populations they serve have grown. They now account for the [link=https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=ju4l]smallest share of the American civilian work force[/link] since 1967.
The 19.5 million workers who remain are finding themselves financially downgraded. [link=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/02/us/teacher-strikes-oklahoma-kentucky.html]Teachers[/link] who have been protesting low wages and sparse resources in [link=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/12/us/oklahoma-teachers-strike.html]Oklahoma[/link], [link=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/06/us/west-virginia-teachers-strike-deal.html?action=click&contentCollection=U.S.&module=RelatedCoverage®ion=Marginalia&pgtype=article]West Virginia[/link] and Kentucky and those in Arizona who say they [link=https://www.npr.org/2018/04/22/604702008/arizona-teachers-plan-to-strike-on-thursday]plan to walk out[/link] on Thursday are just one thread in that larger skein.
I was surprised to realize along the way I was no longer middle class, said Teresa Moore, who has spent 30 years investigating complaints of abused or neglected children, veterans and seniors in Oklahoma.
She raised two daughters in Alex, a rural dot southwest of the capital, on her salary. But when she applied for a mortgage nine years ago, the loan officer casually described her as low income.
At 57, Ms. Moore now earns just over $43,000
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[url=http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/386121-arizona-teachers-to-return-to-school-after-striking-deal-with-governor]Arizona teachers end strike after governor signs funding bill[/url]
Gov. Doug Ducey (R) [link=https://twitter.com/dougducey/status/992028377660866562/video/1]signed an education funding bill[/link] Thursday morning. The state House and Senate reportedly pulled an all-nighter to get the legislation to his desk.
Certified teachers will earn a 20 percent raise by 2020. Schools were also promised $100 million for support staff, including classroom aides and janitors.
Though teachers did not see all their goals met in the bill, they decided to end the walkout. The strike had closed more than 1,000 schools, keeping more than 800,000 students out of classrooms statewide.
In the end, funding for teacher pay raises will be $273 million.
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Bring back strong unions, it makes things better for all of us, like vaccines and herd immunity. People need to group and organize for their rights and living standards. Game theory. Just see what the teachers have done. Now keep up the good work & don’t be a 1 trick pony. Strengthen public unions as well as unions in the private sector.
[link=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/05/sunday-review/unions-teachers-money-strike.html]https://www.nytimes.com/2…hers-money-strike.html[/link]
On Thursday, a weeklong walkout by teachers in Arizona resulted in a major victory, as the states governor [link=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/03/us/arizona-teacher-walkout.html]approved[/link] a 10 to 20 percent wage increase and a significant investment in public schools.
That followed a roughly $6,000 salary increase that Oklahoma teachers won by threatening a walkout (and later following through). Which in turn came on the heels of a 5 percent raise for teachers in West Virginia, who had shut down schools for almost two weeks.
The teachers were intent on making a statement. No funding, no future! they [link=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/02/us/teacher-strikes-oklahoma-kentucky.html]chanted in Oklahoma[/link]. And their mantra seemed to carry the day.
Strong unions tend to be effective at securing gains for workers. Weak unions often shortchange the rank and file. The [link=http://www.epi.org/publication/union-decline-lowers-wages-of-nonunion-workers-the-overlooked-reason-why-wages-are-stuck-and-inequality-is-growing/]data show[/link] that workers in heavily unionized areas earn a significant premium over workers in lightly unionized areas. And unless the teacher movements in West Virginia, Oklahoma and Arizona breathe new life into unions, or birth lasting institutions to replace them, they are likely to be short-lived.
The teachers union in Racine is proof that strong unions provide more than just wage increases and protection from arbitrary bosses. They provide a kind of social glue making members feel invested in a larger mission and promoting a sense of solidarity. Thanks to their involvement in the union, Racine teachers immediately understood the threat that Governor Walkers plan posed. Hundreds trooped to the capital to resist it.
But, in the end, there is no substitute for a strong union in a long-term struggle against powerful antagonists. And even the West Virginia walkout would have been impossible without the unions, which presided over an authorization vote in every county. You cant organize a strike on Facebook, even if everyone sounds really excited, said Cathy Kunkel, an organizer with the progressive group Rise Up West Virginia who helped teachers strategize.
To really get teachers marching in lock step, Ms. Kunkel said, they needed the heft of a union.
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Interesting on unions because of the SCOTUS ruling. Hard to tell how this shakes out because if non-union members can benefit from union negotiating it might kill the unions. Why buy the cow if you get the milk for free.
In its 5-4 decision, justices ruled that employees who choose not to join labor associations but who work in union shops and benefit from union-negotiated contracts without paying union dues, do not have to pay agency fees similar to ones paid by full-fledged members that go to collective bargaining.
[link=http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny-news-janus-supreme-court-20180626-story.html]http://www.nydailynews.co…rt-20180626-story.html[/link] -
Get your cake & eat it too – for free.
Unions have to be more carful with spending. This ruling does not kill unions but it is the SCOTUS conservatives’ attempt to do just that. There was a lot of outside support for the Conservatives on SCOTUS to rule just this way. These people did NOT like the teachers actions in W.Virginia and Oklahoma for example & want to avoid people from organizing.
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Quote from Dr. ****er
The sooner we get back to home schooling and lack of indoctrination, the better.
I think you have it backwards. There is a lot of concern about immigrant assimilation. not to mention ignorance about government, the Constitution, rights, history and American culture. What should happen is just the opposite of home schooling, mandatory requirement of public schooling or minimum curriculum requirement for civics classes that cover education in government, America history including how past immigrants were both discriminated against and how they assimilated and American culture. The desire to avoid American socialization by fundamentalists is part of the problem.
Denmark for example is requiring just this, classes in Danish culture to teach immigrants the culture of the country to everyone, especially immigrants as a way of addressing people isolating themselves form the adopted country.
Those resisting adoption of learning about the adopted country’s culture also call it indoctrination. It’s just education about government and culture and how to assimilate.
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A Good Samaritan helps out after finding out how little teachers are paid & yet the still spend their own salary to supply their children in class.
[link=https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/03/education/arizona-teacher-salary-facebook-post.html]https://www.nytimes.com/2…ary-facebook-post.html[/link]
After an elementary schoolteacher in Phoenix posted her salary on Facebook in March last year amid a statewide protest for more education funding, she got a lot of calls from the news media, and a lot of hate mail, too.
But a few months later, the teacher, Elisabeth Milich, said she received what seemed to be an unbelievable offer from a stranger in New York City: He would pay for the snacks and supplies she and her husband had been buying for her students with their own money.
I thought it was a one-time thing, Ms. Milich said on Thursday.
Instead, the man, Ben Adam, has since supplied her classroom at Whispering Wind Academy with colored pencils, paper clips, books, crackers and big bags of Hersheys Kisses for two semesters. He has also bought a butterfly farm for another teacher in Phoenix, and supplies for four other classrooms in the Phoenix area.
He started a website last month called Classroom Giving, which allows other people the chance to give necessities to teachers.
Mr. Adam, a freelance audio producer who owns a real estate company, learned about Ms. Milich on the HBO show Real Time With Bill Maher. He said he was shocked that she was paying for cleaning supplies and paintbrushes on a salary of about $35,000.I was just really disappointed to see how little she makes, Mr. Adam said on Thursday. I would be homeless with that kind of money.
For people like Ms. Milich, who are doing the right thing, he asked, why do we nickel and dime them?
[link]https://sites.google.com/site/classroomgiving/home[/link]
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“What’s The Matter With Kansas” can and should be expanded to What’s The Matter With West Virginia? And, “What’s The Matter With Rural Communities.” A lot of anger about being left behind as they reject plans and policies that could help them improve their lives and support the party and policies who work against the betterment of their communities.
Valuing education would be a good start. Not supporting politicians who do not have their best interests at heart would also help.
[link=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/21/us/50-years-into-the-war-on-poverty-hardship-hits-back.html]https://www.nytimes.com/2…ardship-hits-back.html[/link]
But a half-century later, with the poverty rate again on the rise, hardship seems merely to have taken on a new face in McDowell County. The economy is declining along with the coal industry, towns are hollowed out as people flee, and communities are scarred by family dissolution, prescription drug abuse and a high rate of imprisonment.
Fifty years after the war on poverty began, its anniversary is being observed with academic conferences and ideological sparring often focused, explicitly or implicitly, on the culture of poor urban residents. Almost forgotten is how many ways poverty plays out in America, and how much long-term poverty is a rural problem.
Of the 353 most persistently poor counties in the United States [link=http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/rural-economy-population/rural-poverty-well-being/geography-of-poverty.aspx]defined by Washington[/link] as having had a poverty rate above 20 percent in each of the past three decades 85 percent are rural. They are clustered in distinct regions: Indian reservations in the West; Hispanic communities in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas; a band across the Deep South and along the Mississippi Delta with a majority black population; and Appalachia, largely white, which has supplied some of Americas iconic imagery of rural poverty since the Depression-era photos of Walker Evans.
McDowell County is in some ways a place truly left behind, from which the educated few have fled, leaving almost no shreds of prosperity. But in a nation with more than 46 million people living below the poverty line 15 percent of the population it is also a sobering reminder of how much remains broken, in drearily familiar ways and utterly unexpected ones, 50 years on.
Alma and Randy McNeely, both 50, tried life in Tennessee. But they returned to McDowell County to be close to their large extended family.
The couple married when they were 16. In a family photo album, Ms. McNeely appears in her white wedding dress as if headed to the junior prom. Turning the albums pages for a visitor, she apologized for its lack of captions. Mama couldnt write, so, you know, there aint no names in it, she said.
Another photo in the album shows Randy Jr., the McNeelys son, known as Little Man. Little Man dropped out of high school six months shy of graduation, with me sitting here crying, Ms. McNeely said. He has been in and out of jail but is one of the lucky ones who have found work, at a junkyard run by a family friend.
Although Ms. McNeely encourages her granddaughter to aim for college, which would mean leaving McDowell County, she said that her other mommy and daddy meaning Emalees biological parents and all her aunts and uncles, they dont want her to go.
Today, fewer than one in three McDowell County residents are in the labor force. The chief effort to diversify the economy has been building prisons. The most impressive structure on Route 52, the twisting highway into Welch, is a state prison that occupies a former hospital. There is also a new federal prison on a mountaintop. But many residents have been skipped over for the well-paying jobs in corrections: They cant pass a drug test.
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Ms. McGuire, who grew up in poverty her father did not work and died of lung cancer at 49; her mother had married at 16 was the first in her family to attend college. On her first morning at Concord University in Athens, W.Va., about 50 miles from War, her roommate called her to breakfast. Ms. McGuire replied that she didnt have the money. She hadnt realized her scholarship included meals in a dining hall.
[b]I was as backward as these kids are, she said in the office of her school, one of few modern buildings in town. Were isolated. Part of our culture here is we tend to stick with our own. In her leaving for college, she said, youd think Id committed a crime.[/b]
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