Republican governors are giving teachers raises — but some teachers want more – By Erin Einhorn (NBC News) / Jan 16 2020
“Absolutely, we’re looking for an increase in our pay,” a union leader said, “but that doesn’t solve the big problem.”
When Tate Reeves stood before family, friends and lawmakers in Mississippi’s ornate House chamber to take his oath of office Tuesday, he used his first speech as governor to make a promise to the state’s 32,000 teachers.
“I am committed to elevating our public schools,” said Reeves, a Republican. “That means a pay raise for every teacher.”
Seven hours later, another Republican governor, Eric Holcomb of Indiana, used his State of the State address to make a similar promise, unveiling a plan that would direct at least $50 million toward boosting teacher pay this year.
They are among at least seven Republican governors — along with several Democrats — who have included raises for teachers among their priorities for 2020. That’s on top of at least 19 teacher salary increases that came primarily from Republican governors last year.
The efforts reflect not only a strong economy, but also the fact that public support for educators has risen to levels that appeared unlikely just a few years ago.
“It has reached a fever pitch,” said Lily Eskelsen García, president of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union. “The public is rooting for teachers in a way I’ve never seen before.”
For decades, as economic challenges caused belt-tightening across the country and as fiscal conservatives slashed public spending on education, conversations about teachers in statehouses tended to focus on issues like the high cost of pensions or on ways to tie teachers’ pay to students’ test scores.
A number of states passed laws to strip power from teachers and other public-sector unions, blaming them for high taxes and rising costs. And public employees unions suffered a financial blow when the Supreme Court, in its decision in Janus v. AFSCME in 2018, ruled that workers can’t be forced to pay fees to unions that represent them.
Plenty of pundits predicted that teachers and their unions would never recover the clout they once had.
But public sentiment toward teachers began to shift two years ago, when thousands of teachers streamed out of their classrooms in such states as West Virginia, Oklahoma and Arizona to protest low salaries and other issues in schools. Teachers made compelling cases about having to take second jobs — and even donate plasma — to make ends meet, with salaries typically far below those of other educated professionals.
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