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

SB4, Unjust Laws, and LSC

This article picks up a conversation about how laws governing immigration affect our college students. You can read the other parts here [1, 2, 3].

Brief Updates with DACA and SB4

1. The Fifth Circuit of Appeals: A three-judge panel unanimously sustained Texas SB4. We address this as the main of our discussion, below.
2. Neither Democrats nor Republicans amassed willingness to pass a clean DREAM Act to protect hundred of thousands of young migrants affected by the loss of DACA.
3. ICE increases aggressive separation of families across the country, including separating parents from children; as part of their strategy, ICE continues consistent policies of disinformation to confuse local communities and institutions
4. Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions III, U.S. Attorney General -- never a friend of migrants -- has promised "using every power” in his suit against the State of California’s sanctuary laws, using rhetoric supporting Arizona’s HB 1070 (“Show Your Papers”), which has largely been shown to be unconstitutional.
5. On 26 February, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the president’s appeal of the Ninth Circuit Court Jan. 9 nationwide injunction that halted Trump’s move to rescind DACA. Therefore, Homeland Security resumed DACA renewals. The White House appeal now returns to the Ninth Circuit.

Source: Center for Law and Social Policy

The Fifth Circuit -- Abandoning the Fourth Amendment

The Fifth Circuit -- the most conservative of appellate courts -- held that SB4

• is not preempted under the federal Constitution’s Supremacy Clause;
• its section requiring local governments (including public colleges) to comply with ICE immigration detainer requests does not violate the Fourth Amendment; and
• its provision prohibiting local laws or policies that “materially limit” immigration enforcement activities is not so vague as to violate the Fourteenth Amendment.

Importantly, the Fifth Circuit clarified that local entities -- such as colleges -- are not required to collaborate with federal immigration enforcement; that is, the court identified how local entities may help federal officials and whether they must. Stunningly, the Fifth Court ignored the Fourth Amendment (“against unreasonable searches and seizures”) when it comes to immigration arrest authority. The Court announced that immigration arrests do not require evidence of criminality; instead, the Court claims: “we…disavow any district court decisions that have suggested the Fourth Amendment requires probable cause of criminality in the immigration context.” Remember that immigration courts do not require defense, and migrants often are un-represented before the bench.

Remember, too, that ICE does not require warrants for entering private residences or business … or colleges. ICE uses Form I-274A which is not a warrant requiring a judge’s determination of “probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation.” No warrants. No defense. No rights. Professor of Law Michael Kagan notes:

At issue here is the power of the government to detain a person, citizen or immigrant, without probable cause, and without immediate review. An autocrat would very much enjoy this power.

Texas and Unjust Laws and Why a College Matters

We start with the idealistic and often untrue assumption that we all have rights in our republic: specifically, The Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution give defendants the right to counsel — to be represented by an attorney in court proceedings. But recall that the Immigration Courts do not provide defense counsel if the defense cannot pay legal protection, like criminal courts do. Further, ICE has increasingly threatened all organizations — private and public—that oppose his hatred. Not surprisingly, the Texas axis of Abbott-Patrick-Paxton enthusiastically support Albence’s xenophobic stance. These two truths — the White House hunts undocumented migrants and immigration courts do not provide defense for indigent migrants — act as inhumane, uncivilized, immoral, and hostile against anti-American claims of a just system. Attorney General Paxton, again, conflates all immigrants as criminals:

Enforcing immigration law prevents the release of individuals from custody who have been charged with serious crimes. ... Dangerous criminals shouldn’t be allowed back into our communities to possibly commit more crimes.

Meanwhile, the current practice of ICE sees all undocumented migrants as targets for detention and deportation.

We see that already in our college. Our undocumented students or students with undocumented family members are increasingly stressed, absent from class, and withdrawing. I have had a student who withdrew because his undocumented family returned to Mexico; the student needed to work to support his nephews and nieces. Another student’s family has made her -- at age 21 -- the legal custodian of her little brother in case parents are deported. Other students in threatened families just disappear, without a conversation. A recent study by Kathleen Roche in The Journal of Adolescent Health shows that students in undocumented families are experiencing increased emotional stress under the current U.S. immigration policies.

With that context, we return to SB4 and the State of Texas’s insistent assault on our college students.

Labor News (UPDATE): Black Hawk College Union Members Overwhelmingly Approve Vote to Strike

UPDATE: 

The Black Hawk College strike was averted after an agreement was reached between the Union and the board. Educators will have improved pay, health care, and fairer overtime loads.

Source: Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Alpha Stock Images

Black Hawk College is a community college in Illinois with campuses in the cities of Moline and Galva. AFT colleagues in the Illinois Federation of Teachers (Local 1836) voted on 9 March 2018 to strike as negotiations between the union and administration have stalled. The union has not had a contract since the summer 2017. On March 9, it filed an intent-to-strike notice with BHC, paving the way for the union to strike after a 10-day waiting period that expired Monday.

Union member Professor Galen Leonhardy argues:

Whether our board members force us to strike or recognize the vulgarity of their recent rationalizations, I refuse to take yet another pay reduction, refuse to pay even more for health care, and refuse to support a board that wants to decrease by thousands and thousands of dollars, junior faculty members’ retirements.  

I refuse to have faith in and support a board that has spent millions adding buildings on campus while enrollments fell, new buildings, one of which remains essentially hollow, a place of learning without learners.  

I am done with authoritarian board members hiring and subsequently empowering authoritarian administrators who have fixated on chilling academic freedom while failing to fulfill their own basic responsibilities.

Our union leaders are doing a super job of helping members hold onto our health care, achieve a basic cost of living increase, prevent the board members from diminishing junior faculty members’ retirements, and keep the board members from cutting the salaries of our senior faculty members.  

Our union leaders have negotiated for more than a year with board members, with elected officials who have very limited backgrounds in education, folks who were willing to pay a lawyer astronomical amounts (over $100,000) just to prevent faculty and professional/technical employees from having even a cost of living raise.  Yet those same board members have given raises to our administrators (who appear to pay for their raises by laying off faculty members).

Thanks to the union, we have a wonderful health care and insurance plan. Had we trusted that our administrators would take care of us, we would never have had the quality of health care we currently enjoy.   If I get sick or have an accident, I will be taken care of.  I have a child who needed hospitalization, and the insurance covered almost all of the expenses.  Our family members get to attend the first two years of college for almost nothing.  I have a fair wage and a great retirement plan. And I have To thank the union for all of those things that help me to feel glad that I have the job I have.

Obviously, I am proud to be a union member, grateful to those past faculty members who put their jobs on the line to create the union, and honored to continue that legacy for future faculty members.

For an update on the negotiations:

http://qconline.com/news/bhc-union-exchange-contract-proposals/article_26cb88a9-5b50-5490-b135-b427fe0aac31.html

Considering Our Profession as a Death Sentence

In light of recent violence in Florida, Maine, Austin, and elsewhere, educators and staff must be aware of how education has shifted over decades from a respite of intellectual conversations to a politicized (and often silenced) rhetoric of violence -- physical, sexual, and emotional violence. Managers (politicians, including very local elected or “selected” politicians in the guise of educator administrators) respond to violence as policy and police without the systemic critique how society sees educators and students as threats.

Educator P. L. Thomas addresses this is part of his blog critique of the neoliberal educational complex:

For decades now, many of us in education who believe in the possibility of universal public education have feared the death of teaching and learning, but we have imagined that coming from policy, free market and accountability approaches to so-called reform.

But something more sinister is happening: Schools have always labored under the weight of the communities they serve, and teaching and learning is now dying a slow and horrible death because of America’s gun culture combined with those bureaucratic monsters many of us were mostly pointing to.

To read more, see Thomas’s “The Death of Teaching and Learning in America.”

Labor News: West Virginia Educators on Strike -- Update

On Tuesday, West Virginia officials agreed to a budget deal, ending the teacher strike by raising pay for all state workers by 5 percent. The deal follows more than a week of protests across the Appalachian state supported by the AFT.

More than 277,000 students were out of the classroom for nine school days as teachers pressed for higher salaries in West Virginia, where pay ranks near the bottom for U.S. teachers. 

The West Virginia Education Association hailed the deal, saying on its Facebook page: “WE WON!”

The win for teachers is especially notable given their political situation. While West Virginia has no laws explicitly making such a strike illegal, public employees such as teachers do not have a legal right to strike against their state or to collectively bargain. Teachers participating in the strike risked disciplinary action in mounting a work-stoppage, but they still worked together to make themselves heard, rally public support, and improve pay for all state workers. 

To remind us that these educators’ lives are among the poorest labor environment (the 48th lowest salary in the nation), we recommending the interview with teacher Katie Endicott, a high school English teacher, with the New York Times. 

We also recommend another interview with Jacobin’s Eric Blanc, who sat down with Jay O’Neal, a middle-school teacher and union activist in Charleston. O’Neal explains his organizing strategies, parents’ attitudes (positive), and union member dynamicism.

In the wake of the success of these teachers, it appears teachers in Oklahoma — one of only two states with lower pay than West Virginia before their action — may be following.

Labor News: West Virginia Educators on Strike

West Virginia's teacher salaries are among the lowest in the nation. According to the West Virginia Education Association, a new teacher with only a bachelor's degree will have a minimum starting salary of about $32,700. Teachers have called upon the state legislature to fund both pay raises and the public employee's health care program.

[Credit AFT-WV PRESIDENT CHRISTINE CAMPBELL]

The 2018-19 benefits plan for public employees would have increased health care premiums on some insurees, mostly due to a provision using total family income to set premiums for family and employee and spouse coverage, according to the Charleston Gazette-Mail. Local teachers also point to West Virginia's falling population and the strong pull for young teachers to move elsewhere, where pay and health subsidies are better. Without changes, they see a future with even fewer educators left in the state.


West Virginia teachers acted to strike on Thursday 22 February 2018 with the strike entering its fourth day on Tuesday 27 February. To be clear, the WV Attorney General Patrick Morrisy claims that teacher strikes and "concerted work stoppages" are illegal in WV, but local AFT leader Christine Campbell explains that "The crisis in public education in this state has come to a head, and teachers and service personnel have reached their breaking point." AFT President Randi Weingarten visited with teachers and walked with the march, in solidarity.

Read more: West Virginia Teachers Launch Statewide Strike

Texas 2018 Primary Elections

Voting for the 2018 primaries is in full swing, and early polls are open through Friday, March 2 for the March 6 Primaries.

Texas AFT's Committee on Political Education has recommended 26 candidates in contested Republican races and 26 in contested Democratic races based on who they see standing up for public education and educators.

Their endorsements can be seen below, or visit the website here.

Contested Races in March 6 Primaries

Need to know your district and who currently represents you? Check here.

U.S. House of Representatives

(CD = U.S. Congressional District)

CD 16: Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso

CD 29: Sylvia Garcia, D-Houston

CD 33: Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth

Lieutenant Governor

Scott Milder, R-Rockwall

Mike Collier, D-Houston

State Board of Education

District 2: Ruben Cortez, D-Brownsville

Texas Senate

(SD = State Senate District)

SD 10: Beverly Powell, D-Burleson

SD 15: John Whitmire, D-Houston

SD 16: Nathan Johnson, D-Dallas

SD 17: Kristin Tassin, R-Missouri City

SD 25: Shannon McClendon, R-Dripping Springs

SD 30: Craig Estes, R-Wichita Falls

SD 31: Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo

Texas House of Representatives

(HD = State House District)

HD 2: Dan Flynn, R-Van

HD 4: Ashley McKee, R-Eustace

HD 6: Ted Kamel, R-Tyler

HD 8 (dual): Cody Harris, R-Palestine, and Linda Timmerman, R-Corsicana

HD 9: Chris Paddie, R-Marshall

HD 14: John Raney, R-Bryan

HD 15: Jackie Waters, R-The Woodlands

HD 27: Ron Reynolds, D-Missouri City

HD 31: Ryan Guillen, D-Rio Grande City

HD 37: Rene Oliveira, D-Brownsville

HD 41: Bobby Guerra, D-McAllen

HD 54: Scott Cosper, R-Killeen

HD 55: Hugh Shine, R-Temple

HD 59: J.D. Sheffield, R-Gatesville

HD 60: Jim Largent, R-Granbury

HD 64: Lynn Stucky, R-Sanger

HD 75: Mary Gonzalez, D-Clint

HD 87: Four Price, R-Amarillo

HD 88: Ken King, R-Canadian

HD 99: Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth

HD 100: Eric Johnson, D-Dallas

HD 104: Roberto Alonzo, D-Dallas

HD 105: Terry Meza, D-Irving

HD 115: Julie Johnson, D-Dallas

HD 116: Diana Arevalo, D-San Antonio

HD 117: Philip Cortez, D-San Antonio

HD 118: Tomas Uresti, D-San Antonio

HD 121: Steve Allison, R-San Antonio

HD 122: Lyle Larson, R-San Antonio

HD 124: Ina Minjarez, D-San Antonio

HD 126: Sam Harless, R-Houston

HD 127: Dan Huberty, R-Houston

HD 138: Jenifer Rene Pool, D-Houston

HD 139: Jarvis Johnson, D-Houston

HD 142: Harold Dutton, D-Houston

HD 146: Shawn Thierry, D-Houston

HD 147: Garnet Coleman, D-Houston

HD 150: James Wilson, R-Houston

Link: Portrait of a Budget Cut

"My office mate once pointed out that there’s no such thing as a budget cut. There are only resource cuts, class cuts, people cuts. Budgets don’t hurt when they get cut. I do."

Last month at Inside Higher Ed, Adjunct Professor Sara Tatyana Bernstein wrote about her experience being a "budget cut" and the subtle dehumanization brought about not just by having her job and livelihood cut, but getting an email informing her of the cut titled "2017-2018 Budget Cuts."

It's an important reminder of the need for solidarity between full time and adjunct faculty, and of the ways that rhetorical choices made by administration can rub salt in a wound.

Read her account, "Portrait of a Budget Cut," here.

Visit to Ted Cruz's Office

In the latest post, we organized a mini-visit at the office of Senator Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz in downtown Houston. Three comrades took a nice walk from the Sixth Ward, across Buffalo Bayou, and into the city streets until we arrived at the historic Esperson Building. On the 14th floor, we were buzzed by the aides until we were permitted to come into the office.

The young white aides were very polite, polished, and generous as they offered water as they seated us in a small comfortable meeting room, surrounded with emblems of American patriotism, the senator’s several “Love Me” wall awards and recognitions, and a tidy stack of conservative books. We should note that this visit occurred the morning after the Senate agreement on the budget, which failed to address DACA or immigration in any way, much to the disappointment and anger of many DREAMers. We discussed the senator’s press release and how he obviously disregarded the migration issue, though after the budget deal was reached, Senate Majority Leader McConnell had specifically stated that this budget agreement would permit the Senate to address migration immediately. 

Our discussion points centered on our concerns with our students and our college:

1. Senator Cruz has not yet provided leadership to demonstrate how our undocumented students are threatened in our communities by the current administration.
2. Our students are threatened, their families are threatened, and thus the college is threatened for any definition of “success.”
3. As educators, our priorities are to see student success, but the senator has been largely dis-engaged from the movement to protect DACA or “DREAMers.”

The aides’ only discussion point was that the senator will not accept “amnesty” for migration. Though we mentioned that President Ronald Reagan had signed an enormous amnesty with significant economic benefits, the aides had no response. In fact, both aides were very  uninformed about the Reagan amnesty: “I had just learned about Ronald Reagan …” [! -- NOTE: While understanding that aides are not responsible (or not?) to understand all recent political history, we found this odd that very enthusiastic supporters of the GOP narrative are apparently clueless about those recent policies; certainly the Senator is more informed, and we know that. But this does also reflect that even “informed” citizens are truly clueless about the broken migration system in the U.S., as we’ve attempted to discuss in the Advocate.]

Our conversation continued for about 20 minutes. We emphasized that the Senator must lead this discussion to protect our communities. We emphasized, too, that our students are immediately threatened and few if any institutions are challenging this inertia of silence. Again, the aides were very polite, very friendly, very uninformed. They emphasized that they would take notes of our visit and “tally” our position, forward the tally to their Washington office, and every night the senator would look at the “tally.”

We asked what was more effective -- a call, a visit, a letter -- and the aides said that they were all equal [this response is contrast with other discussions, and we need to understand this more]. We left the office, impressed with ourselves, found a coffee shop in the tunnels, and discussed additional strategies to be more informed and more assertive with our voices, our citizenship, and our educational resources. The morning was very positive, even if frustrating.

In another time, we’d like to discuss the point of “democracy” in this system, and if our visit was in fact practicing good “citizenship,” but for now, we felt that we did something -- we have rights that some others do not have. We exercised our rights. Let us celebrate these small things.

AFT Call for Action: A "Clean" DREAM Act

In the most recent issue of The Advocate, we called for an action at the downtown office of Senator Ted Cruz on Friday, February 9 to discuss the ways that a “clean” DREAM Act affects our students. The nature of this conversation may differ radically based on the actions taken in Congress to keep the government open past Thursday, February 8.

When Democratic leadership compromised with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to reopen the government on January 22, they agreed to continue funding through February 8 with a promise to vote on some version of a DREAM Act. As we approach Thursday, congress has yet to hold this vote, and it remains unclear what kind of legislation might be under consideration or even whether the government will be funded/open on Friday. Current likely bills, like the bipartisan USA Act, have come under fire from immigrants rights groups for combining the promise of a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers with increased funding that many believe will result in more deportations and militarization of the US-Mexico border.

As we are considering the importance of a DREAM Act/Renewal of DACA for many of our students, it’s equally important to remember students who have undocumented family members or who are themselves undocumented. A “clean” DREAM Act is one that would renew and expand DACA without potentially harming other migrants.

It’s difficult to guess exactly what kind of political situation we’ll wake up to on Friday, February 9, but we understand the climate and the needs of our students well. You can inform yourself more on this issue by reading our past articles on DACA and immigration [1, 2, 3], read here for a discussion of why a DREAM Act is important for the Texas economy, and look here and here for posts from Dreamers about the kind of immigration reform they support.

We’ll meet in front of Ted Cruz’s office at 10am on Friday, February 9 to discuss these issues. After meeting Cruz’s aides, we will gather for sandwiches nearby in solidarity.