For Educators Grappling with Student Protests

 For educators grappling with student protests, here’s how to play a supporting role

From mentoring to monitoring to joining in, there is much faculty can do to foster constructive outcomes and help young people confront the injustices of the world they are inheriting.

Lee Smithey May 17, 2024

    As tent encampments have sprung up on college and university campuses — including my own at Swarthmore College — some, but not all, administrators have called in armed police to arrest student protestors. To date, police have arrested more than 2,800 students across the U.S. In some cases, law enforcement officers have forcefully arrested faculty members as well. Predictably, the repression has backfired, fueled solidarity among educators and led to the establishment of even more encampments from coast to coast (141 campuses in the U.S. at last count). 

If you are an educator, you may have spent recent weeks grappling with your position with respect to student nonviolent resistance. You’re not alone, and in this moment, perhaps it is helpful to identify ways teachers and staff at schools, colleges and universities have supported students engaged in nonviolent civil resistance. Below, I will share a range of options, progressing from familiar faculty roles to those with greater proximity to student nonviolent action.

 

https://wagingnonviolence.org/rs/2024/05/for-educators-grappling-with-student-protests-gaza-supporting-role/

 

We Stand With Oakland Teachers

The union contends that all of the district’s offers to date don’t leave teachers with enough money to keep pace with the Bay Area’s soaring housing costs. The average annual salary for Oakland teachers was $63,149 during the 2017-18 school year, according to a report from the state’s Department of Education. Salaries range from $46,570 to $83,724.

Before talks broke off Wednesday, Oakland Unified offered a 7 percent raise across 2 1/2 years retroactive to Jan. 1, 2019 and ending June 30, 2021, plus a 1.5 percent bonus. That’s up from the district’s original offer of 5 percent over three years but far short of the union’s demand of 12 percent over three years.

The union — which represents nurses, counselors, psychologists and other faculty members as well as teachers — wants smaller class sizes and the hiring of additional counselors and nurses.

“It isn’t a great increase, it isn’t a great raise, it’s just stretching things out, and it does not address the high cost of living that’s driving educators out of Oakland,” Oakland Education Association president said at a news conference Wednesday.

District spokesman John Sasaki would not say whether the district upped its offer ahead of the strike but did confirm that both parties met again at the bargaining table Wednesday morning following the release of an independent fact-finding report.

According to the report, the district can’t afford the union’s demand for a 12 percent raise across three years, not when it faces a budget shortfall estimated to reach $56.6 million by the 2020-21 school year. The deficit stems in part from a sharp decline in student enrollment over the past 15 years, from 54,000 to 37,000, and the district’s failure to budget accordingly. Union officials and other critics say that’s a result of the district’s fiscal mismanagement.

East Bay Voice.

Support Teachers in Wisconsin

As NEA members, we all have a big stake in stopping Governor Scott Walker's attempt to slash the benefits and take away the labor rights of teachers here in Wisconsin. He's made it clear that he hopes to be in the vanguard of a national movement to undermine collective bargaining.

For my wife Heather and me, the stakes are as personal as they can get. We're both teachers here in Sun Prairie, and, if Walker's plan doesn't get blocked, we'll be looking at a $13,200 pay cut. I don’t have to tell you how scary and disheartening that is for a family with two young children.

But what galls me the most is that this attack comes specifically because we are teachers. Our out-of-control governor is going after K-12 teachers, higher education faculty and staff, nurses, and public service workers. We all have to band together – because if it succeeds in Wisconsin, Governor Walker's strategy will be repeated in state after state. Already, the governors of Ohio, Indiana, Idaho, Florida and New Jersey are going after teachers. That's why we need your immediate PAC support to keep the pressure on.
Help the NEA Fund fight to protect public education and defend our right to collective bargaining.
Heather and I are doing our part to take a stand against Governor Walker’s dangerous proposals. I've been working the phones, mobilizing colleagues in the Wisconsin Education Association Council to call and email their legislators, and to attend rallies at the statehouse.