West Virginia Senate refuses to vote on teacher raises

[Judi Lynn]

Source: CBS/AP

CBS/AP March 2, 2018, 9:27 PM

The fate of the seven-day teacher's strike in West Virginia lay in the hands of the Republican-controlled state Senate, which refused on Friday to even take a vote on whether the teachers deserve a 5 percent pay raise. Teachers are protesting pay that's among the lowest in the nation, rising health care costs and a previously approved 2 percent raise for next year after four years without any increase.

Hundreds of teachers and supporters, including students, rallied at the Capitol, pressuring lawmakers to approve the settlement negotiated earlier this week by Gov. Jim Justice and union leaders. That deal included the raise for teachers, school service personnel and state troopers.

"We're still not close to resolving this critical issue," said Sen. Roman Prezioso, the Democratic minority leader, requesting a vote Friday. "Let's send the teachers and superintendents that I've seen here from all the different counties, send them home this weekend for a cooling off period. Let's start school Monday and say this Senate does support education in West Virginia."

Majority Leader Ryan Ferns made a motion to table the matter without comment. The Senate's Republicans did that, carrying the 20-13 vote. That left the bill in the Finance Committee, which has begun drafting a budget for the next fiscal year and could work through the weekend on some alternative.




Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/west-virginia-senate-refuses-to-vote-on-teacher-raises/

[a kennedy]

1. This is just so wrong......bastards.

[montanacowboy]

2. When will they ever learn?

They keep voting for the scum of the earth otherwise known as Repukians and fucking themselves and their families

[LenaBaby61]

3. I feel for those teachers who DIDN'T vote for the scum.

There in West Virginia.

As for the others that keep ON voting in there own worst interests for people like tRump etc. who don't care about them/their families etc., well

[OrlandoDem1]

4. How many were dumb enough to vote for the GOP? Nt

nt

[a la izquierda]

20. The governor was a Republican...

Who switched his affiliation to become a Democrat. Then he won the election and switched back.
So... yeah.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

5. In this country teachers are treated with contempt, poorly paid,

held responsible for things that are not in their purview, and people wonder why our collective academic achievement leaves something to be desired.

Okay, so our good schools are really very good. And there are still a lot of them out there. Plenty of parents do their best to get their kids to do well in school and support the teachers. Our secondary education is (at the moment) among the best in the world.

And then, West Virginia.

For a long time I didn't understand or appreciate teachers. Then I had kids. I gave serious thought to home schooling, and figured out by the time the oldest was three that I would not be a good home schooling mom. I had the good fortune to live in an excellent public school district and cheerfully sent my kids off. It was in the peripheral contacts with the system, back to school night, talking to other parents, listening to what my kid said, that I finally got it. There is a distant chance I could (with appropriate education) be a high school or junior college teacher in something like history, but there is no way on god's green earth that I could teach at the elementary or junior high/middle school level. Just corralling a classroom of even 15 kids would be beyond me.

If we don't as a country turn this around and start respecting teachers, supporting them, paying them appropriately, our entire educational system will fall to a third world level in a generation or so.

[BigmanPigman]

9. THANK YOU!!!!

It is the most underpaid and disrespected career and has been that may primarily be due to the large number of women. As a teacher and union rep for 15+ years I was always irritated with my fellow, younger teachers who would not support the union when we had no COLA for 5 years and the shared costs of our health benefits increases over 65%. Their excuse was always, "But we can't strike, what about the poor children? Who will take care of them?". That attitude was a detriment to any fair pay bargaining during my entire career. Women have been overworked and underpaid in most professions and teaching is a perfect example. We are not glorified babysitters. I have so many different credentials and I had to pay for all of it myself, not the district. If teachers are told to carry guns I see a severe shortage in the future.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

10. Yes, being female dominated has not helped.

I also know that back in the 1960s, when teacher unions were first being proposed, most teachers took the stand that they were professionals, not working class, and that unions just didn't belong for them. I recall even then being a bit puzzled. I was sufficiently working class to understand the value of unions, and knew that teachers, and nurses -- the other profession that resisted unionization for a long time -- really needed the protection of unions.

Simply from a personal standpoint: I like to think I was very good one-on-one with my two sons. I was, like most moms, their first teacher. I read to them, took them to parks, and on and on. I gave my kids the foundation that made them pretty easy to teach once they hit school. I also understood that I was highly privileged, in that I came from a background that valued education. I loved reading to them, I loved doing the things with young children that some people find boring, like playing patty-cake or doing Play-Doh projects. I also had the enormous privilege of being a stay at home mom, and could devote a lot of time and energy to my kids. My own mother worked while I was growing up. By the time my kids were in school, many of their classmates were in single parent households, or if two parents were present, both worked.

Working is not easy. When I was young and single and worked full time I figured out that the workplace wasn't remotely sympathetic to the needs of parents. I was horrified even then. The underlying problem is that the world of work expects that workers have no other interest than the job. Wrong. You don't have to have a significant other, or children, to get that work may really not be the be all and end all of your life.

Meanwhile, teachers are more and more expected to pull up the slack for kids.

I once had a teacher tell me that if she could charge baby-sitting wages for the kids in the classroom she'd make more money.

[True Blue American]

14. I call that, Union Snobbery.

Something I have seen installed in the young for 40 years.

But you know what? That attitude still prevails for many.

They were taught to look down on those who work with their Hans. That still prevails today when we have a huge shortage.

Unions did not kill Manufacturing. Greedy Politicians and voters did.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

22. Well, teachers did finally understand that a union made sense.

Although the anti-union attitude these days is not snobbery, but something drummed up over the last 40 years by the constant drumbeat of telling people how awful unions are. Notice we have a business section to the newspaper and the nightly business report on TV, but no union pages or reports.

[True Blue American]

12. You just hit the nail on the head about younger

Teachers. This is not just a problem for Teachers. The same holds true for all Unions, both Public and Private.

I have watched this attitude prevail for over 30 years. The contempt for Organizations such as yours made the middle class in this country. But the contempt for the very organizations that provided this is blamed for every ill in this country by Republicans and those dumb enough to listen to them.

Kasich won by 2% during the Bush recession. Voters blamed Strickland.

The first thing Kasich did was try to break the Teachers Union. That was the fight of the century as Fopirefighters, Police and Teachers collected 1.3 Million signatures, took them to Columbus where voters voted him down by an overwhelming margin. He went into hiding,saying,” The people have spoken.

You see him today running all over, fine,good Christian who is so Moderate. But he quietly gave Private Schools millions, cut Public Schools to the bone. We had a scandal a week on his Private Schools, money stolen by his friends running those Schools.

I stand behind those Teachers who work so hard with little recognition.

Thank you,Bigman Pigman!

[SCantiGOP]

7. One of my best friends is from WV

He says his grandparents are certain most of the people in their area would have died during the Depression has it not been for FDR.
He goes home now and his (mostly poor) cousins all vote for Trump, he says, because of Jesus and coal and they didn’t like the colored President.

[Miigwech]

21. Too bad for them

[angrychair]

8. So they will give teachers guns and police training

Take on the extra insurance risk but won’t give them a 5% raise? Whatever...

[pazzyanne]

16. Who said the schools would pay for the guns and training.

In my years as a public school teacher, I was required to get a number of training hours every year, and I was expected to pay for that training. I was also expected to pay for any materials shortfall if I wanted to be able to do my job. My guess is the teachers will be required to buy their own gun and pay for the training out of their own pocket. As for pay raises, I was a NEA member who was out on one of the first strikes in Minnesota in December with 53 below zero wind chills to get a 3% raise after no raise or contract for 4 years. Add to that that it was just before Christmas and that Christmas was pretty dismal for the teachers. It was desperation that drove the teachers in my town to take this extreme measure.

[Midnight Writer]

11. Too bad there is not some kind of national health care system to take some pressure off these groups

[True Blue American]

13. That is why

We can not vote for one Republican, no matter how nice and honest you think they are. It is a Facade, nothing more.

[sfwriter]

15. amen. nt

[pazzyanne]

17. Amen!

[BumRushDaShow]

18. VOTING is Fundamental.

[SWBTATTReg]

19. It's time to quit making teaching and other similar professions scrapgoats...

At my company, a big corporate 500 company, one of my main jobs was in training, and we still had to train our incoming employees not just the corporate 500 company things, but some basic things as well. It didn't happen much, but it goes to show you that good fundamentals in the early years goes a long way in one's future. Companies can tell when they hire off of college campuses and the like. Believe me, they can tell rather quickly if a person has done their due in school...

After all, it's not just the job you're doing, e.g., computer software development, etc., but the enormous amount of communications via telephone, online, correspondence by mail, etc. Which in some cases, you'll spend more time doing this communications vs. the subject matter expertise you were hired initially for.