Oklahoma Teachers Walkout for Education

On the morning of Monday April 2, thousands of Oklahoma teachers went to the State Capitol building in Oklahoma City to demand higher wages and more funding for essential parts of a teacher’s arsenal, like textbooks.

According to The Oklahoman’s Ben Felder, 200 of the 512 school districts in Oklahoma were forced to close due to the teacher walkout, with protests seemingly no closer to ending as of this writing.
Last week, Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin signed a bill that raised the average educators pay by $6,000, a $1,250 increased for support staff, and increased education funding by $50 million. However, that was only a fraction of what the Teachers Union demanded.

The union wanted a $10,000 pay increase over three years more for educators, a $5,000 increase for support staff, a pay raise for state employees, and finally $200 Million in increased educational funding.
Needless to say the both union and non-union teachers were less than pleased with the lowballing from the state government.

The walkouts garnered national attention with many news sources looking to see just how bad teachers had it to merit the largest teacher walkout in Oklahoma since the April 1990 walkout 28 years ago.

The teacher walkouts were motivated by not just their own salaries but also the conditions of the tools at the disposal of the teachers with outdated and tattered textbooks being a common sight in the rooms the teachers inhabit.

In CNN’s video report on what led to the walkouts, special education teacher Michael Turner was shown to get just over $1,000 a month from his career, a sight all too common in Oklahoma due to it being the state that pays teachers the least in the United States according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics  

If one were to go by Oklahoma’s minimum state salary requirements, a teacher with 20+ years of experience and a doctorate degree would make $46,000 a year. This is $2,083 less than the median household income in Oklahoma according to the United States Census Bureau.

It is unclear if this will resolve itself soon or if this will drag on, but the initiative shown by the Oklahoman teachers is spreading with many planned walkouts, like the ones in Arizona and Kentucky, drawing ever nearer.