Education

Slinghot: Take The High Road

April 5, 2023 Barbara Madeloni, Labor Notes. Strategize! Campaigns, Education, Opposition, Smears

When I ran for president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association I ran headlong into attacks about my character, my competency, and the intentions of our reform caucus. We were accused of being divisive, of being controlled by outside forces, and of cheating. As we campaigned, we tapped into a deep vein of anger and disappointment with the former leadership. We put forward a vision of well-funded schools, autonomy in the classroom, and dignity at work. We invited each other into building a fighting union that would organize to achieve these goals. Instead of proposing their own vision, our opponents pulled out all the stops to discredit me as an individual. Each week, when the campaign committee met, there were new reports of things said about me and us, and new revelations of bad deals they had made.

LA’s Teachers Make Good On Promise To Support Community Schools

March 25, 2023 Jeff Bryant, LA Progressive. Organize! California, Education, Los Angeles, Strikes, Worker Rights and Jobs

Los Angeles, California - “We should have been miserable,” said Emily Grijalva, recalling the first days of the 2019 strike by Los Angeles teachers. Grijalva, who is currently the community school and restorative justice coordinator at Felicitas and Gonzalo Mendez High School, joined her colleagues on the picket line in 2019 despite the biting cold and an unusual, prolonged rainstorm that flooded city streets and sidewalks and drenched picketers. Many of them did not wear, much less own, suitable rain gear for their normally sunny, mild Southern California climate. “But even through the rain and cold, we felt togetherness and support from the community.

65,000 Los Angeles Education Workers Are On A Historic Three-Day Strike

March 23, 2023 People's Dispatch. Resist! California, Education, Los Angeles, Strikes, Teachers, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Los Angeles, California - 65,000 workers from Service Employees International Union Local 99 and United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) began a three-day strike on Tuesday, March 21. SEIU Local 99 workers are striking amidst contract negotiations around higher salaries, more full-time work schedules, better treatment, and more staffing. The SEIU workers represent a broad cross section of school staff, such as bus drivers, custodians, campus aides, and cafeteria workers. The union claims that apart from refusing to budge on key workers’ demands such as a 30% raise and more full time hours, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is also harassing and threatening workers for participating in union activity.

Black Educators Are Reimagining A Better School System

March 22, 2023 Henry Hicks IV, In These Times. Resist! Black Lives Matter (BLM), Education, Public schools, Teachers

Woodbridge, VA - The plastic sign displayed prominently on De’Ana Forbes’ classroom door is especially fitting this week. In big bold letters: “Warning! History Teacher Zone. Your understanding of the past may be corrected at any time.” It’s early in this sleepy suburb 45 minutes outside Washington, D.C., and the sun is still rising over Freedom High School as students jog inside from late-arriving buses, backpacks half-hung over shoulders with winter coats swinging. They push through crowded hallways and hurry to first period. Forbes, 28, who teaches U.S. history and social studies, is one of many teachers across the country participating in the annual Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action, held this year February 6 – 10.

‘If They Strike, We Won’t Cross The Picket Line’

March 21, 2023 Megan Giovannetti and Jasmin Joseph, In These Times. Resist! Education, Los Angeles, Service Industry, Strikes, Teachers, Worker Rights and Jobs

Los Angeles, California - Following weeks of uncharacteristically gloomy days, the weather broke late in the afternoon on Wednesday, March 15, seemingly in preparation for the 4:30 PM Unite for Los Angeles Schools rally in Grand Park outside City Hall. The gathered crowd buzzed with excitement and righteous indignation. Drums and horns sounded, signs and t-shirts were given out and street vendors peddled everything from cotton candy to tacos, making the event feel more like a music festival than a rally. Our headliners? Leaders from two of the largest unions in Los Angeles County.

Teachers And Education Workers Set To Strike!

March 18, 2023 Julia Wallace, Left Voice. Resist! Education, Los Angeles, Strikes, Teachers, Worker Rights and Jobs

Los Angeles, California - On Wednesday March 15, tens of thousands of teachers and education workers rallied at the steps of Los Angeles City Hall. The joint rally of K-12 teachers (UTLA) and education support staff (SEIU 99) was organized to announce plans for both unions to go on strike, with SEIU 99 taking the lead in the fight for better wages, improved staff to student ratios, and an end to harassment by administrators. The mood was lively, with a mariachi band made up of teachers playing for the crowd, teachers and support staff dancing to the music, and pockets of teachers and education workers striking up impromptu chants and banging on homemade drums.

Teachers’ Strike: Tories Go To War With NEU As Impasse Grows

March 15, 2023 Steve Topple, The Canary. Resist! Education, Strikes, Teachers, United Kingdom (UK), Worker Rights and Jobs

The National Education Union (NEU) began two days of strike action on Wednesday 15 March. The teachers’ strike saw countless staff walk out across England. So, what does the Tory government do? It puts out some shameless, baseless propaganda to try and turn parents against the NEU. Fortunately, it so far doesn’t appear to have worked – and the trade union has also hit back. NEU members are striking over pay, working conditions, and students’ education. For example, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) says governments have cut the real-terms pay of experienced and senior teachers by around £6,600 – or 13% – since 2010.

Student Loan Forgiveness Program Appears Headed For Defeat

March 6, 2023 Marjorie Cohn, Truthout. Educate! Education, Finance and the Economy, Student Debt, Supreme Court

A right-wing majority of the Supreme Court is on the verge of denying student debt relief to more than 40 million borrowers. On February 28, the high court heard oral arguments in a pair of cases challenging President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program. Instituted to ameliorate the effects of the COVID pandemic, the program could provide up to $20,000 of debt relief to people with federally held loans. The first case heard by the court was Biden v. Nebraska, brought by Republican state attorneys general from Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas and South Carolina against Biden, his Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and the Department of Education.

‘It’s Disrupted All Of My Lesson Plans’: Florida Ramps Up Censorship

March 1, 2023 Michael Sainato, The Real News Network. Educate! Censorship, Critical Race Theory, Education, Florida, LGBTQ Rights, Ron DeSantis

As the new semester began, teachers throughout Florida were faced with new state laws strictly limiting curricula—prompting schools to remove droves of books from their classrooms and libraries for fear of being in violation of the draconian but opaque new laws. An already-chilling reality gripping the third most populous state is getting even chillier in the wake of controversial legislation such as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill and the Stop Woke Act, which both went into effect in July 2022. The DeSantis administration rolled out several initiatives in January 2023 aimed at eliminating broad swathes of the existing curriculum, including banning the teaching of Advanced Placement (AP) African American Studies for high school students throughout Florida.

US Funneled Billions To Ukraine While Cutting Health And Education

February 26, 2023 People's Dispatch. Educate! Education, Health Care, Joe Biden, Medicare, Russia, Student Loans, Ukraine, US Congress, US Imperialism

February 24 marks the one-year anniversary of the Russia–Ukraine war, and in the past year, the US Congress has approved $113 billion in aid to Ukraine. Meanwhile, working people in the US are in dire economic straits, and desperately need relief from their government. When US President Joe Biden delivered his State of the Union Address in early February, over 160 million people—almost half of the nation’s population—reported having trouble paying weekly expenses. The cost of living had jumped by 8% while wages had only increased by 4% in the past year.

Temple’s Grad Students Say ‘Hell No’ To Bad Deal From University Bosses

February 23, 2023 Jason Koslowski, Left Voice. Resist! Education, Graduate School, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Protests, Temple University, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Grad workers in Philadelphia just decisively rejected an offer from Temple University’s administration. The vote was overwhelming: by a margin of 92 percent. TUGSA, a union of 750 teaching and research assistants at Temple University in Philadelphia, is entering the fourth week of its strike. TUGSA members make $19,500 a year in a city where annual rent alone runs about $23,000. The union is fighting for a 50 percent raise in wages. In earlier rounds of negotiating, the university’s offer was 2 percent, later raised to 3 percent. Just after the strike started, the administration escalated the fight in an unprecedented way, revoking the grad workers’ health insurance and their tuition remission.

USC Grad Workers Win Their Union, Join UAW

February 21, 2023 Graduate Student Workers At USC, Portside. Organize! California, Education, Graduate School, Unions, Victory, Worker Rights and Jobs

By a 93% margin, graduate workers at the University of Southern California have voted 1,599 to 122 in favor of joining the Graduate Student Workers Organizing Committee-United Auto Workers (GSWOC-UAW), according to ballots tallied today by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The victory caps a multi-year effort, with workers standing strong against USC administrators’ anti-union campaign. GSWOC-UAW will represent 3,000 Teaching Assistants, Research Assistants and Assistant Lecturers at USC. “We are so energized by this resounding vote in favor of our union,” said Stepp Mayes, a Graduate Student Worker in Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Platform Co-op School Community Assembly Highlights

February 21, 2023 Trebor Scholz, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Create! Cooperatives, Education, Platform Coops, Worker Rights

Relive the excitement of a packed Community Assembly! Over one hundred attendees gathered as part of Platform Co-op School on Wednesday, February 8, for a themed unconference on shared digital infrastructure. The goal was to bring people together, encourage cross-connections and collaborations, and help reduce the time and resources spent on creating new platforms from scratch. The Community Assembly, facilitated by OwnCo and Start.coop, both part of the PCC Solidarity Collaboratory, involved a brainstorming session to settle on topics including food delivery, public utility co-ops, business-to-business (B2B) platforms, decentralization, stakeholder engagement, the ethics of solidarity at scale, Web3, and energy co-ops.

2,000 Temple Students Walk Out To Support Grad Strike

February 17, 2023 Jason Koslowski , Left Voice. Resist! Education, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Protests, Temple University, Worker Rights and Jobs

All last week the whole campus was whispering about the student walkout. How big? Will it flop? It could be massive. Are you going? Are you canceling class? I’d been touching base with my union siblings and talking to my students the whole week. Our union leaders sent us all an email to remind us, with a wink, that only teachers create attendance policies; we can decide whether or not to cancel class; and let’s get ourselves to the rally. More than one ominous email from the bosses told faculty to keep away and warned the undergrads to do the same. But they’re almost laughably incompetent. My phone dings.

This School District Is Recruiting And Retaining Teachers

February 16, 2023 Cinnamon Janzer, Next City. Create! Education, Housing, Michigan, Teachers, Worker Rights and Jobs

Across the U.S., a staggering 55% of teachers are thinking about leaving their profession earlier than they had planned, according to a National Education Association survey. Those who go through with the change would join the roughly 600,000 teachers who, per U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, left the job between 2020 and 2022 — and the impacts on kids are dire. To fill the gaps created by the teacher shortage, classroom sizes swell, courses are canceled, and unqualified educators are brought on to fill open positions. One school district in Michigan has seen success with an innovative solution to help recruit and retain educators: Helping cover their rent and housing costs.

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