Every public school in West Virginia is closed right now while teachers strike for better pay and health insurance. Today’s 55-county work stoppage is an escalation of a smaller seven-county walkout held last Friday, which was followed by rallies and protests in the state capital over the weekend as teachers waited for the state senate to address their needs, which include increased wages and improvement to health benefits for teachers and all public employees through the state’s Public Employees Insurance Agency.
Students and parents alike knew that they had a long weekend coming. While nobody can know how other families explained why there were only two days of school this week, at least one Jefferson County mom told her 10-year-old son the truth: teachers don’t get paid enough.
So he decided to do something about it.
As fifth-grade teacher Shannon Franks Dinges reports on Facebook, when school started on Tuesday morning, she found a note on her desk. The note reads ”My mom told me why we have no school on Friday and Thursday,” and the boy included a $5 bill.
These kids today. Dinges, who has seven children of her own, reports that the student refused to take the money back when she thanked him, so she snuck it into a thank you card with orders not to open it until he got home.
Meanwhile, thousands of teachers have stormed the Capitol building today alongside local protests across the state, all with the support of the American Federation of Teachers.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers joined the teachers at Riverside. She grabbed a bullhorn and told teachers gathered near the school that they deserved more.
"These teachers have had less than a $1,000 increase in the last 10 years,” Weingarten said. “What does that say to the kids and to parents about the value of education in this state?”
It’s important to note that West Virginia’s teachers are some of the lowest paid in the country, no matter whose numbers are used. CNBC places the Mountain State in the bottom five; Business Insider places it in the bottom four. Rankings aside, with one of the lowest entry-level salaries of any field requiring a college degree, educators across the country struggle to survive in their chosen vocation, with nearly half of all new teachers seeking other careers within their first five years.
Gov. Jim Justice did sign a pay raise late Wednesday, but teachers argue that the raise doesn’t come close to covering the changes to their health insurance, and thus doesn’t solve the problems at hand.
Meanwhile, West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrissey declared the work stoppage unlawful, and posed vague threats to any educators participating.