Kentucky Teachers Call Wildcat Walkout In Resistance to Legislative Pension Scuttle

Source: Sarah Coomes Crisp, Twitter

Over the past 10 years, Republican-controlled legislatures across the country have slashed corporate taxes, decimated school funding, ignored teachers’ pleas for raises, and tried their best to crush public employees’ collective bargaining power through unions. Now, the teachers are fighting back. After West Virginia teachers went on strike, similar actions have been sweeping red states, from Oklahoma, to Arizona, and now, to Kentucky.

Last week, the Republican legislature majority unveiled a new 291-page pension bill, zipped it through both the House and Senate, and sent it to the governor's desk -- all in less than nine hours.

In response, many Kentucky schools closed on Friday as teachers walked out, according to the Courier Journal. The Kentucky Education Association, which represents teachers and other education professionals, slammed the pension law as a "classic legislative bait and switch."

It stripped all the 'local provision of wastewater services' language out of SB151 and replaced it with many of the harmful provisions of SB1. ... We haven't seen the bill, weren't allowed to testify. The bill hasn't had the required actuarial analysis, includes no fiscal impact statement and no fiscal note.

For more information, read “Teacher walkouts over pay and pensions have spread to Kentucky” at Vice.com